I’m writing this review, desperately wishing that the new Tractive GPS dog device was better than it is. I really want to like this product, and in truth it’s quite possibly the best of its kind, but there are many issues that you need to be aware of if considering this dog tracker.
My wife and I are self-confessed gadget geeks, and our house is full of tech and automation. And given that the most precious thing to us both is our Border Collie, Storm, it’s only natural that our use of technology extends to keeping her safe and where she belongs. She’s four months old, and for the first three months I did extensive research into what dog trackers were available. Although none seem to be universally praised, Tractive did at least have the most consistently good user reviews. And, just as I purchased one, a new version was released. I sent the original one back and started our dog tracking experience with the latest generation, only available for a few weeks at time of review. Just for clarification, whatever you spend on the device itself you’ll also need to factor in the subscription costs of the sim, which is paid up-front for a 1-2 year package.
First reaction on opening the box is that it’s a much more compact device to the previous one. I’d had reservations about the clunky box of plastic which made up the previous model, but this is a much more ergonomic device. As you can see from my pictures it’s a much less intrusive item, even on our young pup. You get a rubberised plastic mount which attaches around your dog’s collar/harness quite securely, and then the GPS tracker snaps into this mount, held in by a couple of quick-release buttons on either side. It feels secure, and surprisingly our dog hasn’t been bothered by it at all. She’s not tried to remove it, or even scratch at it. It’s an easy operation to charge the device: Remove the GPS from your dog, unclip the battery half of the device and plug into the USB charging dock. Physically then, I’m very happy with the design.
In operation, though, there are things that aren’t so satisfactory. I’ll highlight my concerns:
1. Virtual-fencing: In theory, absolutely brilliant. In reality, flawed. The app allows you to highlight an area in which your dog can be, and if it strays out of this area you get an alert sent to your phone to warn you. The smallest radius that this can be set to is 50m, which at first I thought was too large for my liking, but I soon realised why. Every ten minutes or so I was getting an alert to tell me that Storm had left the virtual-fence zone, despite her lying on the floor in front of me. I’d look at the map on the app and see that she’s apparently two streets away. And then ten minutes later, another alert to say she’d re-entered the zone, having not moved an inch. We tried to justify this, as we’re inside a house, but then we check our Find My iPhone app which correctly pinpointed two iPhones, two iPads and my Apple Watch to within a few metres which suggests it’s not that difficult. To counter these false-positives I’ve had to widen the radius of the virtual-fence, which really lessens the point of having it in the first place. Effectively, Storm could be 80m away from our property before we’d know. Which leads me to the next issue:
2. Refresh of location data. I mentioned before that we were getting alerts every 10 minutes or so. That’s because it seems to refresh the GPS location approximately every 10 minutes. A dog can travel a long way in 10 minutes. I’m not sure if this is consistent or not, but just before starting to write this review my wife and I carried out an experiment. She took Storm in the car to a park 9 miles away, and they were 1.5 miles away before I got an alert to say that Storm was outside of the virtual-fence zone. I opened up the app to see where they were, and watched it until it next refreshed. It was nearly 10 minutes when it did, and even then it said the location was 2 minutes old. All of this time I was tracking my wife’s phone on Find My iPhone and could see she was already another two miles further down the road. She’d been walking for a couple of minutes before the app refreshed to say they’d arrived at the park. This doesn’t inspire confidence that if Storm did go missing I’d be able to pinpoint her. There is a function in the app to allow “Live Tracking”, which refreshes quicker for a limited period of time but at the cost of reduced battery life. Which leads me nicely to the next point….
3. Battery life. The manufacturer’s claim is 2-5 days. In total truth, they’re not lying. The device has manged 48 hours….just! I’ve kept a close eye on the charge level throughout the day during this last week as the app tells you the percentage left, and leaving the tracker on the dog all of the time and never using the Live Tracking function I can just get 48 hours out of it before it dies. It’s not as impressive as I’d hoped.
4. The App. The app itself is pretty decent, although I have a few minor quibbles. Storm's profile never saves the picture we upload. I don’t know if this is because we have the app across four Apple devices, but I’ve tried saving it dozens of times and it’s still blank. Not a big issue I agree, however I’m also not entirely convinced by the tracking data. You can see the location history, and it zig-zags all over the place. Generally, where the heat maps are, the rough locations are correct, but zooming in shows that it’s very random. Overlay the data with Strava or RunKeeper (our human tracking apps) and Tractive is well out. It leads you to question the activity data that the app keeps, especially since I’m not sure if it’s taking into account when the dog is travelling in a car. The location map would suggest it can’t differentiate when the dog is out for a walk or travelling by car, something that even the Pokemon game knows how to do!
So, there are some considerable reasons as to why I can’t award this Tractive GPS a five-star review. It’s disappointing that even despite the flaws, it’s still the best tracker and no one seems to have come up with a more reliable method of tracking our dogs. Not withstanding how expensive dogs are to buy, and the considerable time invested in training them, ultimately they’re an important part of our families and I’m more than happy to invest whatever is necessary to keep her safe. Several times I’ve said, tongue in cheek, that it’s worth buying an extra Apple Watch for the dog instead. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. It’s a lot smaller, the battery life of two days is similar to the Tractive, the location tracking is absolutely on the nose and I pay £5 a month to EE for a sim deal. Maybe I'm tainted by how accurate modern tracking apps are for us humans, but why can't a device specifically made for tracking be just as good?
I’m not saying the Tractive GPS is a poor product, and any tracker for your dog is better than none (remembering that a GPS tracker does not replace the legal requirement for your dog to be micro-chipped), but I hope I’ve given you some useful information to consider before buying.
| Varumärke | Tractive |
|---|---|
| Modellnummer | TRDOG1 |
| Färg | Svart |
| Produktens mått | 7.2 x 2.9 x 1.6 cm; 30 Gram |
| Tillverkare | Tractive |
| Artikelnummer | TRDOG1 |
| ASIN | B07NDB3YBP |
