TrackR bravo - Silver (Discontinued by Manufacturer)

by people ...

Quickly ring your lost item through the TrackR app
Pressing the button on the TrackR device makes your phone ring even on silent mode
Two-way separation alerts remind you to grab items before you leave them behind

Product Description Tired of losing your keys, wallet, or phone? Make misplacing your belongings a thing of the past with TrackR bravo! Attach the coin-sized TrackR bravo to any item - then use the TrackR app to locate it in seconds. Quickly ring a missing wallet around the home or press the button on the TrackR to ring your phone on silent mode. TrackR’s Crowd GPS Network enables you to even recover lost or stolen items on a map with GPS updates when another user walks by your missing item.

From the Manufacturer

$1,693,514 raised

Product Reviews

Comprehensive comparison of tracking devices: Tile, Nut, Trackr & Mynt

I received this product discounted in exchange for a review–I state this disclaimer upfront because that’s what I would want to know first, and I too am disturbed by the ratings inflation on Amazon for IEF reviews lately. I do not indiscriminately give 5star reviews, and they are only given for a fraction of products I try that I find are exceptional and I would buy myself at FULL price. If you wish not to view IEF reviews such as this, click on the filter link to the right of the review section, and then click on “verified purchases only”; that will take most of them out.A little background: I’m the kind of person who would lose her head if it wasn’t attached to her shoulders. OK, not that bad, but my mind can hold a million and one random academic facts, but not the current location of my keys or glasses. So, I was so thankful I was given the opportunity to review several tracking devices, in return for discounts. (I was able to get these offers on Trackr, Mynt & Nut, but not Tile–I bought a lightly used one on eBay just to include it in the comparison, because my review would not be complete without this brand, which is the industry leader currently).I will post pictures at the bottom of them together, side-by-side, so you can see the size and thickness comparison of each (note that the Mynt–the black oval one– is stuck to my key fob). From one end to the other, you’ll see: Tile, Nut, Trackr Bravo, Mynt, a quarter for size comparison (apologies for upside down pics). Also posted will be my screenshot from the app of this particular brand.To follow are my assessment for different qualities and my thoughts on how the brands compared. At the bottom of this review will be any specific stories about the particular brand I’m reviewing here. All 4 allow both the phone to find the device and the device to find the phone, but work to varying degrees, which I’ll cover separately.SIZE: Surface-area-wise, Trackr Bravo was the smallest, though Mynt is narrow and long (oval); followed by Nut and Tile, the biggest. Thickness-wise, Mynt wins out (truly is about 2 quarters thick), with Trackr Bravo a close second. Again, Tile is thickest, though its size still isn’t obtrusive on a key chain at all (you may not want to insert it into a wallet, though). All 4 can be either attached to a keychain or adhered to something with the included sticky tabs (the Mynt is shown here attached to my key fob).RELIABILITY–PHONE FINDING DEVICE: All 4 worked decently well for this function, though I haven’t tested it over varying distances yet (will update when I do). I did test it by having my mom hide the devices under clothes and such, and I would be in a different room with the phone. I did not find much difference in this function. I will say that the GPS locater for Tile & Mynt were spot-on. Trackr’s GPS sometimes pointed my device as being located in a Walmart about 2 miles down the road, sometimes at the right place at home. Nut’s GPS only uses the last known location of the object, so even after I lost it in upstate NY, it still pointed to the object being in NJ, where it clearly wasn’t.RELIABILITY–DEVICE FINDING PHONE: Here’s where the real differences came out. All 4 devices (including Tile 2.0, but not 1.0) can use the device to find the phone when you press them–or should, in theory. Tile was the only one that did this 100% of the times I tried within a 100 foot range. Mynt wasn’t doing this all the time until I reset it–now, it’s been pretty much 100% of the time also, though I will update as I use it more. Nut and Trackr were EXTREMELY spotty/sketchy, especially through walls. Some days, the unit could be right by the phone, and I could not get the phone to ring. Trackr in particular was set to music, and you could tell the music would come in and out for a split second, like as if you had a distant radio station on that had almost no reception. Of note here: you must have the sound on for some to work (but not for Tile, which can ring it even set to silent mode), and for all 4, you MUST ENABLE BLUETOOTH AT ALL TIMES. They use low energy Bluetooth technology to connect, so if you’re like me and sometimes turn Bluetooth off to save energy–forget about it if you want to ever find your phone this way. Lastly, you MUST REMEMBER TO LEAVE THE APPS RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND IN ORDER FOR THEM TO WORK–well, ALL EXCEPT MYNT, I believe (they don’t mention this, and I did try with the closed apps; Mynt was the only one that could connect with the phone).DEVICE SOUND: Out of the 4, Tile 2.0 has the loudest sound on the device (an improvement in the internal speaker was made after 1.0, which is why the new ones have 3 tiny holes in the back). Coming in second by my ear was Mynt, followed by Nut. The Trackr was the hardest to hear, especially if your item is buried under a pile of clothes or inside a purse or something. The small alarm is also high-pitched, at a frequency elder adults would have great trouble detecting.BATTERY LIFE: Tile lost big points in this category, because it was near perfect all around otherwise (except for size, but it was still smallish). It’s the only one that has no battery replacement option; it is basically a disposable item. For $25 (probably after a year), might not suit everyone. The others have coin batteries you can change fairly easily, so we are talking only a dollar or two (a big difference from $25). So far, Trackr seems to be eating batteries fast (some say they need to replace every 3 months?? not near to the manufacturer’s estimate of a year). Mynt & Trackr do both have battery monitors that read how much life is still left, but only Mynt has an exact % reading and the reading appears to be more accurate than Trackr’s.CROWDSOURCING TO FIND: I can’t confirm this, but Trackr claims to have the largest population to use crowdsourcing to find the devices once they are declared lost. Tile is very popular and right up there as well, I’m sure. I am under the impression that Nut does not have a huge following in the USA, though I’m lacking data to that effect (I will say the one I declared lost in Cornell, 0 people have tried to track). Mynt, I’m not sure about. There’s no info in the app itself about crowdfind, but their website mentions this option for lost units.SEPARATION/ANTI-LOST ALERTS: I noticed that Nut, Trackr & Mynt all have these options; still yet to find it in Tile (someone please let me know if it has this option, I can’t see it in the app). These 3 send a notification if the object gets separated from your phone by a distance or out of your home wifi range. Nut also has a Silent period in addition to a Silent region (that the other 2 have); that means: no separation alerts within the time range you specify. Good to have, because Nut & Trackr were constantly giving me false alarms when I hadn’t even moved the objects they were attached to; and both were sitting next to the phone, unmoved (further making me think them to be unreliable).EASE OF USE IN APP: All of the apps were pretty user-friendly, I’d say. They all have different menus that take some getting used to. All 4 use GPS location finders in your smartphone to display maps (though the accuracy of the locations, as I said, vary). All 4 were easy to bind to my device(s) initially. Trackr is the only one that is integrated with Nest. It also has software which keeps track of how often you ring your device from your phone and vice versa, how many separation alerts you had, etc. It also has a little range-finder that tells you if you are getting closer and farther from the object (I call it a “Marco Polo” function), but in practice, I can’t get it to work too well until you’re practically on top of the object. Mynt has a TON of customability options for alarm sounds, volume, and what you use it for, etc. I will speak more about this in my Nut-specific review, but I really hate that if you declare a unit lost, you are forced to disable tracking from your own phone–makes no sense.OTHER FUNCTIONS: So far as I can tell, Mynt is the only one that has other options of use, including as a remote shutter for your phone camera, remote for a slide show, playing music, etc. All 4 claim they can also be used to find your car, pet, or child. I believe they all claim to be water resistant, though not submerged underwater. Tile used to be totally waterproof (since it is the only one with no battery drawer), but now the price of the small speaker holes may be that it is slightly less so (though I would guess it could withstand some rainstorms; the pin holes are truly tiny).Apologies for the length of that general comparison. Specifically for Trackr Bravo, I’m sorry to say that it ended up near the bottom of my rankings. It promises to do a lot, but in practice, it just had less range and spottier coverage than its competitors when the device tried to ring my phone. It was also the quietest and highest pitch of the 4 (it was hard to hear if under something). It is modern-looking and a nice size, but if I can’t depend on it, and it only works SOME of the time (the music going in and out very faintly then), I don’t know how much I can trust it with important things. The phone-to-device find-it wasn’t too bad, so I may keep it in the glove compartment of the car in case I forget where I parked. My one fear there is that I have heard how much they eat batteries–and that if you don’t ring it much, it goes dead without you knowing (I get these coin batteries in bulk, but it would be nice to know when to replace them–and the meter isn’t accurate). Oh, it has this “Marco Polo” find it function (getting warmer… colder… warmer…) that’s unique to the others, so I did at least like that, even though it didn’t work well until you are extremely close to your lost object. But after Trackr woke me up at 4AM with a false alarm (keys hadn’t moved an inch), I turned the safe home wifi zone on and will keep it in the car only.Update: RIDICULOUS–after less than two months of use, my Trackr ran out of batteries. I knew it consumed power like no one’s business, but expected it to last longer than this. Then, I bought the wrong batteries. After waiting wks for them to come, I realized that I bought the 2032 coin batteries instead of CR1620. I mean, blame that on me for not reading more carefully, but I just saw “3V” and assumed it used the same coin battery as every other tracking device or small electronic item I own–2032 is far more popular and easy to obtain. Now, I understand that Trackr probably uses this smaller battery to save on weight and size, but the trade off and how long it supplies power is not even a contest. The other trackers are only larger by a few millimeters and can last up to a year on one battery, versus a month and a half, not even with heavy use??! I have a TrackR now, so I might as well get the right batteries, but it loses more points in my book and another star off its rating. I am keeping my Trackr now just on my purse as a back up for the MYNT (which works better), which is on my keys and always in my purse. I was offered more discounts after purchasing this one, and I didnt take them – not even worth it at a half or quarter of the retail price.

Very limited use - would not buy again

As other reviews have noted, it mostly doesn’t work in the way the advertising suggests. The crux of the matter is the technology at the core of this product which is bluetooth. The BT signal just isn’t powerful enough to do the job and so frequently one finds that a Trackr device is disconnected from the phone and cannot be found even though it’s just around a corner, well within the 30 feet/9 meters. And 9 meters, even if it worked perfectly, is not exactly impressive. But it doesn’t work perfectly. For example over two stories of a house, or just between two rooms it doesn’t work. Sometimes it doesn’t work even with straight line of sight. Another thing is the long time it takes the phone to connect to the devices. You see, they aren’t connected permanently, that would presumably cost too much battery life. So when you need to find something the phone first needs to connect to it. Which typically takes 1-2 minutes. Sort of defeats the purpose.This Trackr business is probably quite typical for all these Kickstarter and what have you projects. Seemed like a good idea at the time but there was a reason why larger companies hadn’t brought it to market before you even thought about it.I see that a competing product, the “Tile” gets better average reviews but when one digs into the 1-, 2- and 3-star comments it’s obvious that due to the same core technology being used, the same problems apply.Anyway, the Trackr isn’t completely useless. Here are ways in which it has been useful to me:- when not sure whether the object I am looking for is even at the same general location as I: on the phone tracker I can check where it was last seen so I at least know I am searching in the right place- my keys dropped into a pile of clothes, dog accessories and various other junk in the entrance hall of our house and I did find them quickly with the tracker; mind you I would have found them anyway, but this was a little faster- while sitting on the loo the other day I wondered where all my things were so I opened the door, held the phone outside and triggered; I was comforted to know that all three items were in the entrance hall where I thought they would be

Forget it it is 100% useless

Another s..t object sold with a tricking advertising. If it is more than 15 yards far from your phone it is out of Bluetooth range so it is not true that you can find it out of your home, but this could be acceptable. The main problem is that its ring is so very low that you can listen to it only if you are within 2 feet ( 60 cm ) from the object in a totally silent ambient. I bought it 2 times. Last year and I threw it in the garbage after 1 hour, I bought it again because I thought that it was improved but it is not. Forget it.

Bought three Trackr Bravo’s. Tried to connect them to my iPhone 6 and 6+ Blue tooth without success

Bought three Trackr Bravo’s. Tried to connect them to my iPhone 6 and 6+ Blue tooth without success. Tried to reach Trackr but they have no phone number and only offer email support. Sent two emails with a single response in 5 days. Product does not work and has awful tech and customer service

the Amazing Trackr! Terribly unethical vendor peddling products that are …

God, these are awful. Several of my friends have them and after more than 90 days less than 10% of them still work. The manufacturer is VERY aggressively spamming Amazon with reviews by people who have only reviewed…wait for it….the Amazing Trackr!Terribly unethical vendor peddling products that are not ready for the consumer and spending more covering their tracks on Social Media than they are fixing the danged awful products they ship!

One Star Rating

not a good product is Sept 26,2016 and the location beep speaker doesn’t work no more.I replaced the battery and the same thing the speaker doesn’t work. Its blinking blue light so its connected to my IphoneAt least it should work for a year before it breaks.

One Star

kind of useless. Stopped working after first use. I still have it on my keys.

Terrible product that has never worked as described

Terrible product that has never worked as described. I could be 5 feet from it and still not pick anything up. Don’t buy!!!

It has no range and unless someone else has the …

It has no range and unless someone else has the app and is by what your looking for your not going to find it. Total bummer

Waste of time and money

Had a very poor purchasing experience and set it up yesterday. Misplaced my wallet this morning by leaving it in a pocket in the car in the garage and the app couldn’t find it…

I have really enjoyed this product

I have really enjoyed this product, I feel like I have a piece of mind knowing I can find my keys or my car!!!When you get past 50 you start to suffer from CRS.

It never did me any good unless I had the app running in the background …

Battery life is crazy low. It never did me any good unless I had the app running in the background which isn’t practical

Buyer be ware! Does not work!

I’m really sad that these things don’t work. I bought 10 and none of them seems to stay on or can ever be located by my phone.

False alarms are a deal breaker

I was eagerly anticipating getting a TrackR… but it turns out to be a very unreliable product. If it worked well.. I would LOVE it, but it’s mostly unusable for me.

Great little device. Durable too

Great little device These are getting much better at crowdsourcing and finding the location. Had these just over a year before I wrote this review and beside a battery…