The Smart Finder Is UGreen’s Latest AirTag Competitor. Should You Buy It?

Back in 2021, Apple decided to open up its Find My ecosystem to other companies. As long as they met a bunch of strict criteria, they could make devices that connected to and used that network, just like an iPhone, MacBook, or AirTag does.

Third-party manufacturers quickly jumped on board, and soon a whole range of new trackers hit the market. Many of the first ones looked and felt like carbon copies of the AirTag, but after that, all kinds of different shapes and sizes could be yours.

UGreen is one of my favorite accessory makers, but up until now I’ve mostly used its chargers and cables. The company’s trackers were new to me when they offered to send one out, but since I’d owned an AirTag for years, I was interested to see how, if it all, it would differ.

Note that UGreen makes a few different trackers: this is the Smart Finder, model number CM816.

What’s in the Box?

From the product photos on the website and front of the box, I expected the Smart Finder to be larger than it is. It’s bigger than an AirTag, but not by much: a 1.4″ (36mm) square instead of a 1.3″ (32mm) circle.

As well as the tag itself, inside the box there’s a small mountain of unnecessary safety information, instructions in half dozen languages, some cute stickers, a lanyard for attaching it to other items, and a tool that’s meant to help replace the battery but looks a whole lot like a SIM card remover.

There’s not too much to say about the tag itself: it has a notch on one edge for attaching a keyring or that lanyard, a small button and indicator light on the front, and tech specs printed on the back.

The inclusion of notches and lanyards like this is one of the differentiators between the Smart Tracker and an AirTag. With the Apple version, you need to buy a separate holder to attach it to your keyring or anything else. With the Smart Tracker, it’s built in.

Pressing that SIM remover replacement tool into the tiny hole under the notch opens up the battery cover: there’s a flat CR2032 battery inside, which UGreen suggests can last up to two years.

I suspect that’s optimistic, since I haven’t seen any of the other trackers that use the same battery claim (or indeed, last) for more than a year, but we’ll see how that goes.

It’s a simple thing, but I have to say that I like the little pack of stickers They’ve got stylised pictures of things like a key, bike, backpack, and suitcase, so you can easily identify which is which if you’ve got several Smart Finders on the go.

Setup and Use

Setup is about as straightforward as it gets, at least when you’re using a third-party product in the Apple ecosystem. Pulling the plastic tab out of tracker turns it on: it’s automatically in pairing mode at that point.

I just fired up the Find My app on an iPhone 16, added an “Other” type of product, and it was detected straight away. If, say, you get distracted by chatting to your partner and forget to add the tracker within five minutes, holding down the button for two seconds puts it back in pairing mode and lets you have another go. Ask me how I know.

Once it was paired, the Smart Finder worked much the same as the AirTag I already own. The Find My app shows its last known location, which you can get directions to (using Apple Maps only).

You can make it beep loudly to help track it down, and it works well: even stuffed under a sofa cushion, I could hear the noise from the other side of the room.

I’d seen reports that some third-party trackers don’t properly use the global Find My network: in other words, they can’t use other people’s passing Apple devices to report back their location. Thankfully, that’s not the case here.

When I left all the Apple devices at home and took the Smart Finder to the shops with me, my partner could still see its location in her Find My app, updating in close to real-time as I strolled along a busy street (presumably) full of iPhones.

You can also receive an alert whenever you and the tracker get separated, which I tested by dropping it on the kitchen table and then going out for a walk. Sure enough, once I got a couple of blocks from my house, a Find My notification popped up to let me know all about it.

Those two features (alerting when the tracker is somewhere I’m not, and being able to see its location whenever it’s near another Apple device) is the main way I’ve used my AirTag in the past, especially while traveling with checked luggage. It’s most likely how I’ll be using the Smart Finder in the future as well.

Because Apple has decided not to allow third-party tracker makers to use the Ultra Wideband chip in the iPhone, however, one thing you don’t get is Precision Tracking.

This is the feature that gives exact distances and directions once you get within a few feet of the AirTag or other Apple device you’re looking for. Depending on how and where you use/lose your AirTag, that may or may not be an issue for you.

The only other thing worth mentioning is the battery replacement process. Maybe I’m just inept, but I found it harder than expected: in the end, I had to press the removal tool into the hole with my thumb while prying open the cover with my other hand.

Obviously it’s not something you’ll do very often, but still, it should really be a bit easier.

Should You Buy This Instead of an AirTag?

For most people, the decision about whether to buy an AirTag or a Smart Finder (or indeed, any third-party tracker using the Find My network) comes down to two things: what they’ll use it for, and how much it costs.

If you’re someone who regularly loses your keys, or something else small that you can attach a tracker to, you’ll probably want an AirTag.

Precision Tracking makes it faster and easier to find items like this when their beeping sound is muffled (under the sofa, say, or in a jacket pocket), so if you’ll use that feature regularly, it’s only available on the AirTag.

If you plan to attach the tracker to something larger, though, it’s a different story. Backpacks, suitcases, pets, cars: if you can see it from the other side of the room, being given the location to within a few feet is fine.

At that point, the Smart Finder works just as well as an AirTag, at a much lower price. As I write this, there’s a coupon on Amazon that brings the cost down to under half that of the Apple version, and that’s before you buy a holder for the AirTag if you need it.

For something that covers many people’s needs just as well, that’s pretty hard to argue with. If you’re one of those people, put the Smart Finder on your shopping list.

All images via author