Some Follow-Up On the Chipolo CARD Spot

Earlier this month I posted my glowing review of the Chipolo CARD Spot, and I am still mostly happy with it. However, I spent the last week or so traveling with my wife from Omaha to Chicago to Cancún and then back, all the while carrying with us 4 AirTags in various bags and the Chipolo CARD Spot in my wallet — which served as an excellent stress-test of the "Left Behind" notifications both products support. The AirTags worked exactly as expected: I only got the notification when I dropped off our checked bag (as I expected I would). But the Chipolo CARD Spot? I got no fewer than four false Left Behind notifications in both airports — perhaps the most stressful and unpleasant place to have your phone say "Hey, your wallet is gone!" The first time it happened, I stopped dead in my tracks to rummage through my pockets in a panic (don't worry, no wallets were lost in the making of this blog post).

Now that I'm back home, I've been pondering why the Chipolo CARD Spot might be more prone to crying wolf than AirTags. After some digging, I found this page on Chipolo's support website that reminded me what the CARD Spot lacks: a U1 chip! From the support page:

Chipolo ONE Spot trackers only use Bluetooth technology to connect to your phone and are not equipped with ultra-wideband (UWB) technology.

Ultra-wideband technology is used for precision finding at close distances, which the Chipolo ONE Spot already covers with a very loud ring.

Now, naturally the lack of an ultra-wideband chip in the CARD Spot will make it more difficult to find than an AirTag — the U1 chip is what enables the fancy arrow guide pointing toward a lost AirTag. But now I'm wondering if the reliance on Bluetooth may also predispose the CARD Spot to false Left Behind alerts. Another wrinkle: I use an "RFID-blocking" Ridge wallet knock-off, which could(?) further interfere with the CARD Spot's connectivity to my iPhone — tricking it into thinking I had abandoned it. Or, perhaps, this is some sort of firmware issue Chipolo could fix with an update (I have sent support an email about the situation, but have not gotten a response yet).

I don't think a few false alarms are a deal breaker, but they are certainly an annoyance that makes an otherwise-great feature of an otherwise-great product a bit of a bitter pill.