9to5Mac
Find My Diary: First impressions of AirTag & Apple accessories
By Ben Lovejoy
April 30, 2021
Hands On: AirTag
I took delivery of my shiny new, and unusually cheap, new toys from Apple this morning. First impressions of AirTag are very good indeed – accessories, less so.
1
AirTag Accessories
There was no real surprise in the look and feel of the AirTags themselves – they are very much as I’d expected from Apple’s photos and description. The leather accessories are disappointing, however: The leather is thin, and has a plasticky feel to it, very much like fake leather. Indeed, if this weren’t from Apple, I would strongly suspect it was fake.
2
Pairing Experience
As with AirPods, the pairing experience couldn’t be easier. As soon as I brought a tag close to my phone, a pop-up appeared with a single Connect button. Tapping that gave me the option of choosing a preset like Keys, or entering my own name. In the case of my first AirTag, I selected Keys and it then automatically labeled the tag Ben’s Keys. That done, it immediately showed up when I opened the Find My app in exactly the same way as my other Apple devices.
3
Testing Finding
Once you enable the feature, your iPhone will unlock automatically with your Apple Watch the next time you wear a face mask. When your iPhone unlocks, you’ll receive a haptic feedback notification on your Apple Watch telling you that your iPhone was unlocked by the Apple Watch. There is also the option to quickly “Lock iPhone” directly from that Apple Watch notification.
4
The real test will come when I put one into Lost mode and try to find it somewhere in the city, something I hope to test over the weekend. But my first impressions of AirTag are that this is really fantastic tech, and an absolute bargain for the price.