What is the Tile Slim?
Tile makes the best-selling Bluetooth trackers on the market. This isn’t the first Tile Slim the company has brought to market, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an entirely new product from the tracking firm.
The previous Tile Slim looked like a larger and, of course, slimmer version of the Tile Mate (without the hole for attaching it to a keyring). While other companies were making credit card-sized tracking devices, Tile opted to stick to a square design.
Related: Tile Mate and Tile Pro review
The new Tile Slim appears to be a realisation by Tile that a card-shaped tracker is what its customers actually want.
Tile Slim Design and Features – A credit card shape, but slimmer would be better
The big story here is undoubtedly Tile’s adoption of the credit card shape. Aside from that, the Tile Slim is all-black with a small logo in the bottom-left corner that also acts as the button for ending tones or locating your phone.
The Tile Slim could possibly be named the Tile Wallet, since it appears to be made for that sole purpose. Tile has marketed this Slim, and its predecessors, as units that can be attached to devices such as tablets and laptops for tracking purposes.
The notion of using this Tile Slim beyond the wallet isn’t completely out of the realms of possibility, but it feels like most people will buy it for its obvious-use case. If you do fancy sticking it to something then, unlike the Tile Sticker, you’ll have to buy the adhesive separately.
The one area in which the design of the Tile Slim falls short is with regards to its thickness. While you won’t experience any issue getting it into your wallet, it is as thick as around two credit cards. While technology may limit how thin the Tile Slim can currently go, or it may simply be a choice by Tile, a slimmer Slim would definitely be an improvement.
To use the Tile Slim, you simply connect the unit to the Tile app on your phone using Bluetooth and away you go. You can use your phone to make your Slim emit a ring if you’re having trouble finding it, and the app will also show you its last known location if you’ve lost it further afield.
Tile Slim App and Premium – Simple to operate, with some useful features
Using the Tile app is a wonderfully simple experience – and it has to be, Bluetooth trackers have mass-market appeal and so the app needs to be accessible to everyone.
You can connect as many trackers as you like to the app and the home screen displays their status in an easy-to-understand way. The map page is particularly notable. Tile will show you the location of all your trackers, whether in range or their last known location, on a map. The map is a quick and convenient way to catch up on the status of all your Tiles.
Tile has a subscription model, too, for added functionality. Tile Premium costs £30 for the year or £2.99 a month. The stand-out feature here is Smart Alerts.
The core experience of Tile is great, but what if the product could help you out before you lost or forgot something – that’s the point of Smart Alerts. Smart Alerts let you set a number of locations in the app and then assign Tiles to those locations. So, if you leave your house without the tracker attached to your keys, or leave your wallet behind at the office, Tile will notify you of the fact.
Smart Alerts are super clever, however, there is some room for improvement. Set up Smart Alerts and Tile will always notify you if you leave a location without the tracked item. However, you can’t set notifications for certain times. As such, if you have a Tile stuck to a work laptop, and you leave this at home or in the office on weekends, then you’ll receive notifications then too.
Tile Premium does offer some other neat features. If you have a Tile with a replaceable battery then the company will send you a new one when it runs out (unfortunately the Tile Slim battery isn’t replaceable). There’s also a three-year extended warranty, 30 days of location history and unlimited sharing with friends and family – so they can add your Tile to their app and help with tracking it.
Should I buy the Tile Slim?
It’s a bit of a no-brainer – if you want a Bluetooth tracker for your wallet then the Tile Slim is a must.
However, the question becomes harder to answer if you’re wanting to use it for anything other device. While it’s still the slimmest Tile around for tracking a tablet or laptop, for example, some devices do already provide their own tracking on-board (Apple’s Find My, for instance).
Also note that the Tile Slim doesn’t have a way to attach to keys. For location tracking of those devices, you’re better considering the Tile Mate or Tile Pro. This is also true if you’re after a tracker to slip into a secure pocket or bag – the Tile Mate is £5 cheaper than the Slim, so a far more suitable option when it comes to form factor and price.
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