Review: Chipolo Card Spot

Ten years ago, if you’d asked me what would be some of the most controversial devices that I'd test, I don’t think I would’ve answered “Bluetooth trackers.”

As it turns out, small devices that are intended to help you keep track of your wallet or kid can also be used by abusers to stalk their victims. So when I got the opportunity to test Chipolo’s latest tracker, the Card Spot, I had to try it. At CES this year, Chipolo announced that the Card Spot is now compatible with Apple’s Find My app, which uses all 1 billion reported Apple users in Apple’s Find My network to help locate your lost or stolen devices.

I slipped it into my husband’s wallet as he left for work one morning. Like me, my husband is an iPhone user, but he received no safety alerts that there was a tracker on him for two days. I also checked the Find My app repeatedly and saw that the Card Spot still marked its last known presence as my house, at the exact time my husband left that morning.

Like a Tile, the Card Spot doesn’t have ultra-wideband (UWB) capabilities. It’s limited to the 200-foot Bluetooth range. If you’re an Apple user who finds the AirTag’s awesome locating powers to be a little scary—or if you find them hard to attach to your wallet—the Card Spot is the natural pick, and its much safer.

The Card Spot is a slim, attractive little tracker that looks like a credit card. It’s 2.5-mm thick, about the same size as the Tile Slim and looks almost exactly the same. It has about the same Bluetooth range, too, and the battery reportedly doesn’t last quite as long—two years, compared to the Slim’s three. In fact, I had to slip my Tile Slim out of my wallet to replace it with the Card Spot.

Its other specs are comparable as well. The Card Spot is IPX5-rated, which means it can resist sprays of water; the Slim has a slightly better water-resistance rating, at IP67. The main difference—and the reason you should get the Card Spot over the Tile Slim, if you have an iPhone—is the seamless integration with the Find My app.

We can only speculate as to why Apple chooses which companies will integrate with Find My (Congressional antitrust hearings, cough, cough.) For whatever reason, Chipolo, and not Tile, is now the Bluetooth tracker integrated with the Find My app. For Apple users, it’s a no-brainer.

On my iPhone 11 I clicked Find My and simply added a new item (and picked a new emoji to represent it) rather than having to download a separate app with a much smaller and discrete user base.

Once you’re in Apple’s walled garden, getting out is exceptionally difficult. All its devices are designed to work very well together. The Apple HomePod Mini doesn’t sound quite as good as some other Bluetooth speakers that we’ve tried, but even my Sonos-loving spouse has been converted. Our house is now seeded with these convenient little softballs, which means that it’s ridiculously easy for Siri to find my iPhone—and now, my wallet.

The Card Spot is that very rare device that works exactly as it’s intended and does nothing more. If I leave it behind—in the house while I go on a walk, or behind a bush pretending I’d dropped my wallet—it pinged me no more than five minutes later. 

But if I tried to slip it on someone that was leaving me, all I saw was that the Card Spot had left Bluetooth range, for days at a time. It would be very hard indeed to use the Card Spot for nefarious purposes. If you're a Good Samaritan, you can identify found items by scanning them in the Find My app. I didn't get the opportunity to check whether this works, since my phone was already paired to my existing tester Card Spot. 

This seamless integration for Apple users comes at a cost. As Android users may have already guessed, you can't use the Card Spot if you don't use iOS. You can still use the original Chipolo Card, which is just as thin and uses the Chipolo app instead, and I'm guessing you would still have a hard time being stalked.