Tracki Real-Time GPS Tracker Review

Tracki sells small real-time GPS trackers for vehicles, luggage, pets and family safety, with hardware around $14 to $29. The hardware price is the headline and it is genuinely low.

It is also not the number that matters. Every cellular GPS tracker needs a SIM and a data plan, because the device has to phone home to report a location. The monthly subscription, over a two-year ownership period, will cost several times what the tracker did. Any comparison against a Bluetooth tag like an AirTag has to start there — and the two do fundamentally different jobs. Bluetooth tags rely on other people's phones being nearby; a cellular tracker reports from anywhere with coverage, including a field at three in the morning.

So the buying question is simple. If what you need is finding keys around the house or luggage in an airport, a Bluetooth tag is cheaper and sufficient. If you need to know where a vehicle actually is, in real time, no Bluetooth tag will do it and the subscription is the price of entry.

Battery life is the specification to check per model and per reporting interval — updating every ten seconds and updating every ten minutes are very different power budgets, and the advertised figure always assumes the slower one.

One caution worth stating plainly: tracking a vehicle or person without their knowledge carries legal consequences in most places, and the fact that a device is easy to buy is not a statement about what is legal to do with it.

Sensible for fleet, vehicle and asset tracking where you accept the running cost. Not sensible if you assumed the $22 was the whole price.