Chipolo has a new Bluetooth tracker it’s announcing at CES 2022: the $35 Chipolo Card Spot, a new version of the company’s credit card-shaped Spot tracker that utilizes Apple’s Find My Bluetooth network for locating missing objects.
The idea of a credit card-shaped tracker for your wallet is nothing new, of course — both Chipolo and more established competitors like Tile have been making them for years. But like the Chipolo One Spot released last year, the Card Spot ditches Chipolo’s own Bluetooth tracking network in favor of support for Apple’s Find My mesh network, used by AirTags and other Apple devices.
Chipolo has been a smaller player in the Bluetooth tracking world for years, but it’s made its presence more known in recent months thanks to its quick support for Apple’s Find My network (the company actually announced its One Spot tracker before Apple’s AirTags were officially revealed).
The Card Spot supports the usual Find My feature set, including marking an item as missing with Apple’s Lost Mode and the recently added iOS 15 feature to “Notify When Left Behind” which, as the name implies, notifies you automatically if you leave your tracker (and the wallet that presumably contains it) behind. Unlike Apple’s AirTags, though, the Card Spot doesn’t have an ultra-wideband radio, meaning that it won’t be able to do the hyper-local tracking that Apple’s first-party tags can do.
On the spec side of things, the Card Spot has an audible alert that reaches 105dB in volume with a 200-foot range, while measuring in at 0.09 inches thick (or about three times as thick as an average credit card). The Card Spot also offers IPX5 water resistance, although the battery isn’t removable. Instead, Chipolo says that each Card Spot should offer about two years of battery life, with a return program that lets customers ship in their old tracker to be recycled in exchange for a 50 percent off discount code on a new one.
Preorders start January 4th, with the first Card Spots set to ship in February. Customers will be able to buy the Card Spot for $35, in a discounted two-pack for $60, or a “Spot Bundle” of two One Spot trackers and one Card Spot tracker for $77.