Divining the location of that which was lost, the Motorola Moto Tag can reunite you with your valuables when disaster strikes.
Whether it’s luggage missing in transit or house keys dropped in the street, we all know that stomach-churning feeling of realising that we’ve lost something precious.
Rather than retracing your steps and hunting around on your own, attaching a tiny Bluetooth tracker to your most valuable possessions lets you take advantage of every compatible smartphone in the area to locate a lost item.
When someone else’s smartphone detects your Bluetooth tracker, their phone anonymously reports the location back to your phone, so you know where to start looking.
Choosing the best tracker for your belongings depends on your smartphone of choice. You can only set up an Apple AirTag or Samsung Galaxy SmartTag using an Apple or Samsung phone respectively, after which you can only rely on other smartphones of the same brand to help in the search for your lost items.
Alternatively, third-party trackers like Tile work with iOS and Android devices, but you’re only relying on other Tile users to help locate that which is lost.
The Motorola Moto Tag is more flexible in that you can set it up with any smartphone running Android 9.0 or above with Bluetooth Low Energy support. Likewise, all of these Android devices – practically every Android phone released in the last five years – can join in with the search when you lose something.
To pinpoint the location of your precious items, the Moto Tag taps into Google’s Find My Device network, which you can access from your Android smartphone. Find My Device is also accessible via a desktop browser, but for some reason doesn’t reveal the location of Moto Tags, only Android devices.
Table of contents
- First impressions
- Specs and price
- Features
- Lost in a crowd
- Lost in the woods
- Needle in a haystack
- Who is it for?
Motorola Moto Tag first impressions
The Motorola Moto Tag is a tiny, palm-sized Bluetooth tracker that’s light enough to attach to almost anything. Frustratingly, just like the Apple AirTag, there’s no way to attach the Moto Tag to things without shelling out for third-party accessories.
Unlike some rival trackers such as Tile, the Moto Tag lacks a tiny hole that you could use to tie the tracker to an object. Instead, like an Apple AirTag, the Motorola tracker is just a tiny smooth disc so you need to buy a separate holder in order to attach it to something like a key chain.
In the US, Motorola sells its own range of Moto Tag holders, but for some reason it hasn’t bothered making them available via its Australian website. This feels rather disrespectful to Australian customers.
The good news is that, perhaps not coincidentally, the Moto Tag is exactly the same dimensions as an AirTag. This means you can use Apple or third-party AirTag accessories to attach a Moto Tag to your precious items.
Like Apple, Motorola includes safety features which alert people if an unknown tracker has been travelling with them, perhaps slipped in their bag or snuck in their car by a would-be stalker.
Motorola Moto Tag specs and price
| Connectivity | Bluetooth Low Energy BLE Ultra-Wideband UWB (pending) |
| Compatibility | Android 9.0 over above with Bluetooth Low Energy support |
| Battery | Replaceable CR2032 watch battery, good for 12 months |
| Ruggedness | IP67 dust and water resist |
| Dimensions | 31.9 x 8 mm |
| Weight | 7.5 gm |
| Colours | Jade Green and Starlight Blue |
| Price | $55 single, $179 four-pack |
| Warranty | 1 year |
| Official website | Motorola Australia |
Features
Setting up a Motorola Moto Tag is fairly straightforward, you simply place the tracker alongside your Android phone and pull out the plastic battery tab so the Moto Tag powers up. Your Android phone should recognise the tracker straight away, otherwise you can press the ‘M’ symbol on the front for a few seconds to activate the pairing process.
Moto Tags run on a replaceable CR2032 watch battery, just like an AirTag, which Motorola says is good for 12 months.
Pairing a Moto Tag with your Android smartphone launches Google’s Find My Device app and also prompts you to install the Moto Tag app for managing your trackers. As an extra security precaution, when launching Google’s Find My Device app to see the location of your devices and trackers, you need to reenter your phone’s unlock code.
Managing your Motorola trackers between these two apps can be cumbersome at times. The Moto Tag app lets you check your trackers’ battery levels and make them beep so they’re easier to find when they’re nearby. This is especially handy if you’ve lost your keys down the back of the couch.
Tapping on ‘Find My Device’ in the Moto Tag app launches Google’s Find My Device app. Here you can see a list of your tracked Moto Tags and other Android devices.
Tapping on a Moto Tag which is listed in the Find My Device app displays a time-stamped last known location. You can use Google Maps to get directions to that location, but you can’t see the location history to track its movements over time.
From Google’s Find My Device app you can name and categorise your Moto Tags, share their location with trusted friends, make them beep and adjust the beep volume.
Inversely, you can press the ‘M’ button on a Moto Tag to make your Android phone beep or trigger the camera shutter remotely. That’s handy if you keep a Moto Tag on your keyring, assuming you know where your keys are.
Finally, you can use Google’s Find My Device app to mark your Moto Tag as lost, with the option to notify anyone who locates it with your contact details and perhaps the promise of a reward should they return it.
Unfortunately, you miss out on the ‘Notify When Left Behind’ option offered by Apple’s AirTags, which would reduce the likelihood of losing things in the first place.
Lost in a crowd
Put to the test, the Motorola Moto Tag is quick to help you find lost items in busy areas, but much slower once you get off the beaten track. Rather than attach a Moto Tag to luggage in transit through a busy airport, I decided to test its ability to locate items lost in public.
The initial plan was to leave a Moto Tag behind the counter at a friend’s shop in the local suburban shopping mall, to see how long it would take for passing Android phones to report its location.
In the end I didn’t need to wait. Calling my wife at home, who had the Android handset running Google’s Find My Device app, she could already see that I was standing outside the shop – thanks to the Moto Tag in my pocket. Walking out of the mall and across the road, it only took Find My Device a few minutes to update my location.
Only a few dozen people, wandering around a small shopping mall during a weekday lunchtime, ensured there were enough nearby Android devices to quickly report back on the Moto Tag’s location. So far, so good.
Back at home, the Android handset running Google’s Find My Device app told me the Moto Tag in my pocket was “near you right now”.
The app even identified which Google smart speaker in my house was closest to the tracker, so I could narrow down my search to the dining room. Getting the Moto Tag to beep made it easy to find.
You can also play a game of warmer/cooler in Google’s Find My Device app to locate your Moto Tag. The shape on the screen gets larger as you get closer to the tracker, but – unlike Apple – it doesn’t indicate a direction or distance, so you might end up walking in circles for a while. This is where Google’s lack of support for Ultra-Wideband makes a big difference, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Lost in the woods
The next test was to stash a Moto Tag alongside a nearby walking track, as if I’d dropped my keys while walking the dogs. It’s a tougher challenge which highlights the difference between Google and Apple’s Find My ecosystems.
Apple’s Find My network only needs a single passing iOS device to recognise an AirTag and report its location. Yet Google’s Find My Device network is set to work in “high-traffic areas only” by default. This means multiple Android devices must identify and triangulate a Moto Tag before its location is reported.
Another difference is that Apple takes advantage of both Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Ultra-Wideband (UWB), the latter of which provides greater range and a more precise location of AirTags – thus Apple’s extra assistance with direction and distance readings. While the Moto Tag features UWB, we’re still waiting for Google’s Find My Device network to support it, so for now it’s limited to relying on BLE.
As a result of these key differences, it took eight hours for my Moto Tag alongside the walking track to be located. Dozens of people had passed by since I hid the tracker that morning, and many of them surely would have had Android handsets in their pocket.
The first time I checked the Find My Device app to see if anyone had stumbled across the Moto Tag, the app suggested that I change the location settings from ‘With network in high-traffic areas only’ to ‘With network in all areas’, so that an item’s location can be reported by a single Android device.
I assumed this meant my Moto Tag could now be spotted and reported by a single Android phone, but a closer look at that menu reveals that it only refers to how my own Android smartphone behaves.
Switching to ‘With network in all areas’ meant that my Android phone could now be the sole phone to report someone else’s lost items. But it didn’t change the fact I was still waiting on multiple Android phones to report the location of my lost Moto Tag – unless one of those Android users had also changed this obscure setting on their phone.
This means you could be in for a long wait to find a Moto Tag lost in a quiet area, unless passing Android users have decided to be a good Samaritan and change the settings on their phone. This is unlikely considering that the menu is buried in Android, and Google doesn’t draw attention to the issue unless you’re an active Find My Device user.
Considering that reporting is anonymous, it makes little sense that Google doesn’t enable “With network in all areas” on every Android phone by default. Without this, it’s never going to be as reliable as Apple’s network once you get away from crowds.
Google’s view is that: “Aggregation by default is a safety protection which makes unwanted tracking to a private location, like your home, more difficult”. That’s understandable, but little consolation if Find My Device refuses to find something precious that you dropped in a quiet area.
If Google’s Find My Device was relying on triangulation, then leaving a Moto Tag alongside a walking track might mean that everyone passes on the same trajectory so Find My Device struggles to get a precise fix. To test this theory, I moved the Moto Tag further along the track to a crossroads, to a busier area where people would approach it from all sides.
With this shift, the Moto Tag was detected more often. Yet it still seemed to be ignored until the evening rush of dog walkers finally achieved the critical mass of Android passersby required to convince Google’s Find My Device that it was time for my lost Moto Tag to report back to base.
Testing on multiple days returned similar results and I suspect that passing Android owners needed to linger in the area rather than walk past briskly in order for the Moto Tag to be reported.
Needle in a haystack
Once the Moto Tag was located in Google’s Find My Device app, the reported location was quite vague. The circle on the map has a 50-metre radius, the centre of which was about 25 metres from its actual location.
Finding the Moto Tag would have required a very long game of warmer/colder if I didn’t already know where to look. The beep is also harder to hear outside, and would be even more difficult if the tracker was muffled inside a bag.
Once I moved the Moto Tag to the crossroads, the reported location was far less accurate. The true location lay outside the circle on the map, insisting it was more than 50 metres away on the other side of the creek. It’s unlikely I would have managed to find it, even with the assistance of warmer/colder clues and follow-the-beep.
I didn’t have an Apple AirTag on hand for comparison, but I had the next best thing in the form of the AirPods Pro 2 earbuds, which show up in Apple’s Find My app just like an AirTag.
I put the AirPods Pro 2 in my pocket, left my other Apple gear at home, and walked back along the track to the hidden Moto Tag. Even though I didn’t pass anyone, after a few minutes my wife at home could see my location on my iPhone – likely thanks to an iGadget in a nearby house taking advantage of long-range UWB.
So while Google’s network took hours to find the Moto Tag in a quiet area, and perhaps required Android users to linger in the vicinity, Apple’s network found my makeshift AirTag in minutes. Results will obviously vary, but I know which network I’d rather be relying on if I actually lost something valuable.
Who is the Motorola Moto Tag for?
If you’re an Android owner who’s worried about losing valuable possessions, then a Moto Tag could save the day. That said, the lack of Ultra-Wideband support from Google for more precise location tracking is frustrating, which means you’re probably in for a much longer search than if you were an iPhone owner hunting for a lost AirTag.
Of course, you need to hope that you’re lucky enough to lose your valuables in what Google considers to be a high-traffic area. If you drop something away from the crowds, even if people walk past regularly, you’ll likely need to wait a lot longer for it to be reported than if you were waiting for news of a lost AirTag.
To be fair, the Moto Tag’s shortcomings are really the shortcomings of Google’s Find My Device network. As Google’s network improves, a Motorola Moto Tag will be more likely to save the day when disaster strikes.
The post Motorola Moto Tag tracker review: Android’s finder of lost things appeared first on GadgetGuy.
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