*I'm going to paste the text from my original post that I made when I started this experiment. I updated it as it went along, but figured that a new post would be necessary to reach people interested who did not come back to the original post for updates.*

TLDR: Pebblebee and the Google Find My Device Network are hot garbage and the entire thing has not been rolled out in a way that it can be useful, reliable, or worth spending your money on at this time.

Original Post:

I did a local test around town today to see if our newly arrived PebbleBee trackers would work well. Unfortunately, they failed miserably and were never found, even after a few hours. (Yes, they are functioning correctly.

Anyway, as a test, I put the new PB tracker and an Air Tag in a box and we'll see what happens.

Update 1 July 3rd

After the postal worker picked it up, it took almost 11 hours before pinging to a new location. The Apple Air Tag worked great the whole time and kept giving me accurate updates throughout the day, but it was crickets for the PB. Even when the box was at the local post office where more phones should have been gathered, there was nothing from it. The Air Tag updated on the roads both in the postal carrier truck and also the semi that hauled it from my local city to a major city sorting hub. That PB didn't find a single Android sole to connect to the entire time.

Finally 11 hours later, it updated its location when it reached a large USPS sorting warehouse outside of a big city. This was the parcel's 2nd large hub stop. Since then it hasn't shown any update, but I'll continue tracking it and the Apple Air Tag tomorrow to follow it on the journey and return here to provide more edit updates to the post.

Update 2 July 4

As of this morning, the Apple Air Tag continues to update and show the parcel has stayed at the large sorting center overnight. The PB on the other hand has managed to get worse. It no longer shows its one and only updated position from last night at that sorting center. It now resorts back to its original position of being at my house before the postal worker picked up the package. When I ask it to update, it just spins for a moment and continues to say it was last seen at my home. Somehow, it completely lost that one movement update that happened 11 hours after leaving.

The PB finally pinged back at the sorting warehouse today late in the afternoon. It was the one and only updated it has given so far today. One thing I'm noticing that is super unhelpful is the fact that the Find My Device map display is not in satellite mode. It's just a grey scale map. The Apple map is super detailed satellite mode and that makes pinpointing a location much easier. I don't expect any movement from the parcel today since it's a federal holiday, so I likely won't have anything to add until tomorrow.

Update 3 July 5

I checked a few more times today. The PebbleBee is still reverting back to my home from July 3rd. Apple tag still working great as usual. My parcel is in a border state now, preparing for delivery tomorrow. The family member receiving it will mail it right back and that will allow extended testing. Again, the Apple tag updated going down the highway the entire time. The PebbleBee... nothing.

Update 4 July 6

The parcel has reached its destination. After the Apple Air Tag showed me it had reached a sorting warehouse about 30 minutes north of the final destination yesterday, I was able to track it this morning as it headed down the interstate to the final stop town. All this time, the Pebblebee was showing me its original location of my home on July 3rd. It was no longer even showing me its last known location that I had seen it update from when at a sorting center in my current home state.

The parcel will now be mailed back to me, which will allow more opportunities to see how the tracking will go, but I feel safe it concluding it from the one-way trip it just made.

*Conclusion*

It goes without saying that the Apple Air Tag worked wonderfully. Not only did it give me regular updates at post offices and postal sorting centers, it would even regularly update going down the road in the truck it was being carried in. So yes, the Air Tag is wonderful and that's why we maintain one Apple device so that we can utilize this technology in our suitcases for travel and a few other various things we track.

The Pebblebee and Google Find My Device network is, at this point in time, a complete failure. I don't think I'll send the Pebblebee trackers back, as I'd like to see how this goes in the future, plus we'll be traveling to another country soon that has a 78% market share of Android and only 21.5% market share of Apple. I'm especially interested in how that works out.

Probably the most disappointing thing about the Pebblebee was that despite it giving me just a few updates along the way when it was in large sorting warehouses, it quickly forgot these data points and would revert to its starting location of my home back on the day that I mailed the parcel. This is not helpful whatsoever. It was confirmed in other places at least twice, but instead of keeping that logged, it just...forgets it.

I also noted above that when pulling up the Find My Device page in a web browser on the computer and not on the app, the Pebblebee devices were not present. Why is this? What if you lose your phone and need to track these things in a browser on the computer. You're just out of luck?

I can't advise buying into the Android trackers at this time. I certainly won't put any more money into this product anytime soon. It's a pain to have to carry around an iPad Mini when we travel to utilize the superior Apple Air Tags, but it is what it is. We are a household that only uses Pixel phones and for some various reasons, can't switch over to iPhone at this point in time. Oddly enough, this tracker thing is somewhat of an important piece of tech with the travel we do and our desire to track items when abroad, but again, we'll stick with Apple for that task for the foreseeable future.

Was thinking of getting one for my wallet, but was wondering if it was worth the $35. Have any of y'all used it, and if so, was it worthy?