Xiaomi Tag – Airtag for half the price – and it’s much better

In addition to the physical design, it is entirely which discovery network the tile connects to that determines how effective it is. Apple’s Airtag obviously uses Apple’s own Find network and the Find app in the iPhone, but so does the Xiaomi Tag. In addition to that, you can instead choose to connect the Xiaomi Tag to Google’s almost equally effective Find Hub. So total freedom of choice and a very low price. Xiaomi Tag costs half of what the corresponding competitors cost, both those who can only use one of the systems and those who, like Xiaomi Tag, can use either. However, we should point out that the tag only uses one system at a time. You choose when you start it the first time, but if you regret it and want to connect with an iPhone instead of an Android, just do a reset and start over. A good way to avoid locking yourself into an ecosystem if you ever want to change phone brands in the future.

I’ve been testing the Xiaomi Tag for the past few weeks, first connected via Google’s Find network and a Xiaomi phone, and then after a reset connected to an iPhone and Apple’s Find network. Throughout, it has performed well, responding and reporting position quickly and simply running stable throughout.

Hiding under a staircase and then we waited

I started by hiding the tag under a staircase near the office. The stairs lead down from a vantage point, which made it a good place to test. It is some distance from houses, so no one who lives permanently reports the position, but the stairs themselves have both many passers-by and some who stop for a while and admire the view.

Once the Xiaomi tag is up and running, it reports the position from here several times per hour, on par with other devices connected to the same network. Because as I mentioned, I’m testing several competitors simultaneously, including Apple’s own Airtags and the Motorola Moto Tag connected to Google’s Find network.

In that comparison, the Xiaomi Tag has several clear advantages. Unlike the other two, the tag from Xiaomi physically has a loop, so it can easily be attached to a key chain, for example, without any additional accessories. The additional advantages are of course the price, which is half of what the others cost, and the ability to choose which network you want to use. Xiaomi is not alone in the latter, for example it also offers Chipolo, but even compared to Chipolo itself, the Xiaomi Tag is half as expensive.

In addition to putting the Xiaomi Tag under a staircase at a viewpoint for a couple of days, during the test period I have carried the tag with me on several flights. Then I have always been able to keep track of my checked-in luggage and every time, even during stopovers, the tag has been able to show its location in the app quickly after arrival.

Xiaomi Tag does not have its own app, but relies entirely on Google’s Find Hub and Apple’s Find, but it does well. For example, during the latter part of the test, I receive a message in Apple’s Find app that a system update has arrived for the Xiaomi Tag, and then the download and the update are handled smoothly directly in Apple’s app. Taken as a whole, this means that the functionality of the tag is dependent on Find on iPhone and Find Hub on Android, so for example with Apple you can get notifications when you forget the device and move away from it, but that functionality is not yet available in Google Find Hub.

The Xiaomi Tag offers excellent functionality regardless of whether it connects to Google or Apple and given the low price, there are really no reasons to choose one of the significantly more expensive competitors.