Product Reviews: Findster GPS Pet Tracker

Markus posing with the Findster Pet Tracker on his harness

Like so many of you, my wife and I are meticulous shoppers. Whether it be online or in-person, we tend to put a lot of research into the things we purchase so that we know we're putting our hard-earned money on the proper products. There are so many options for even basic items like leashes and collars that it's easy to get lost in what we're buying.

We will be writing reviews as we purchase and use these items ourselves. As you do your research for products you're planning to buy, our goal is to add another layer to that research.

Disclosure: We won the product we're reviewing today through an Instagram contest. Although we were looking at purchasing a dog GPS tracker ourselves, we had yet to find one at a cost we were willing to pay. Knowing all this, we give you our honest review of the Findster Pet Tracker.

Over a year ago now, we had a small incident with Markus where he managed to get away from us at a park and took off beyond some trees and out of sight. The park is supposed to be enclosed with a fence, but while exploring the beach, Markus locked on to a bird flying by, leapt over the fence and he was gone.

Since that moment, we've been a lot more hesitant allowing Markus to go off-leash in areas that aren't fully enclosed. Even then, we recognize his ability to leap over fences. His drive to hunt gets the better of him, which often leads him into trouble. We think that this has a lot to do with his first years as a dog that he spent on the streets where he had to scrounge for food and those behaviours have stuck with him until today.

We often find ourselves in a position where we don't necessarily feel comfortable letting him off-leash because we know he can take off at a moment's notice. At the same time, it's an important part of our training to allow him to go off-leash so we can work on behaviours like his outdoor obedience and his recall.

In speaking with some of our dog owner friends, some of them recommended a GPS dog tracker - something we can place on Markus while he's off-leash so if he does run off, we can track him on a phone. We did a bit of research, but never actually purchased one because we didn't think we'd use it enough to justify the cost. That said, we got lucky and won an Instagram contest for a new Findster Pet Tracker and since we've been using it for a few months now and we wanted to give you our review of the product today.

Reviewing the Findster Pet Tracker

The Findster Pet Tracker comes with two modules - one for the dog owner and the other for the dog

For this review, we broke it down into five parts: price, size, range, battery life and the Findster App. At this point, we don't have other pet trackers to compare to, so our assessment will be based on our experience with the Findster Pet Tracker. The Findster comes with two modules - one for the owner to communicate to the dog’s module, which is waterproof.

Price: One-Time VS. Subscription

One of the biggest reasons we never purchased a GPS tracker for ourselves was because of the pricing. In the pet tracker world, there are two types of pricing models - the one-time pricing and a subscription-based pricing. For us, both of these were hard to justify for how little we were going to use it.

The one-time price is what it sounds like - you purchase the GPS once and you get to use it as many times as you like. The downside is that the upfront cost of the one-time price appears to be higher. Subscription-based pricing works a little bit differently.

With subscription pricing model, you're paying a monthly (or annual) fee to use the app that comes with the GPS pet tracker. Some of these subscription fees aren't cheap and we simply don't let Markus go off-leash enough to justify the cost. We were leaning on the one-time cost GPS tracker if we were to purchase one, so that we only had to bite the bullet the one time for this reason.

Having had the GPS for a few months now, we've used it at a rate of once, maybe twice a month. We can't imagine having to pay the price of some of these pet trackers on a subscription model based on our usage. Since each of these pricing models have limited options, it's a good place to start if you're planning on purchasing a pet tracker.

Size of the Modules

Both the human and dog modules by Findster are about 2 by 2 inches big

While we were doing our research, one of the things we looked into was the size of the pet tracker. Initially, it was important for us to find something a little more discreet - something that we could tuck in somewhere on his harness without it being very noticeable. We did find some that were pretty small and the size of no more than a battery.

The Findster Tracker is the opposite of subtle. Measuring in at 2 inches by 2 inches, the tracker that goes on the dog is bigger than some of its alternatives. That said and having used it for a few months now, we've come to realize that the size doesn't really matter. When the tracker is attached to the harness or collar of the dog and they won't even know it's there.

Range

For a GPS pet tracker, the range will always be a determining factor. How far can the dog run off before we lose range? That is really important to know.

With the Findster, its range in an open outdoor area like a park is just under 5km (4.8km to be exact) and under congested urban areas, their site determines that it's up to 0.8km and with an average error of 1.5 to 3m.

I think about that moment Markus took off and we lost sight of him beyond the trees. It felt far and it felt long especially when you don't have eyes on the dog, but realistically, it likely wouldn't have been anymore than 0.5km and not close to a full km.

This is just to say that a 5km range is very far. If you're using the pet tracker as an accessory when you're going hiking, you're likely going to check in before you even hit the 1km range.

Battery Life

The Findster Tracker comes with a USB charger that attaches to the tracker's rechargeable battery by magnet. We did find that sometimes the magnet didn't connect properly and we'd come back to find that the tracker hadn't been charging. This could be a bit annoying, but it's easy enough to tell that the tracker is charging because it comes with a light that flashes on the side of the tracker while it's charging.

The easy answer for how long the battery lasts depends on your use case and with that, I can only speak to my own. Some owners like to leave the tracker on their dog throughout the day so that if the dog wandered out of a "fenced" zone, the owner can be notified. Certainly, if someone were to use the tracker in this fashion, it's going to drain the battery a lot faster. For continuous use like day-long hike, the battery is said to last 12 hours.

For our use-case, we tend to use the tracker with Markus if we're planning to go off-leash in an unenclosed (but still somewhat enclosed) are or if we're doing a trail in a large forest. We've never had an issue with the battery life, though we always charge the tracker at the beginning of trips or hikes that we do. When used like this, the battery is said to last for 7 days. If you're actively charging it in between days or hikes, you should be fine anyhow.

Pro-Tip: Since it's a USB charger, we like to plug the tracker to the USB slot in the car and charge it as we're driving to the destination!

The Findster App

One of the things that we like the most about the Findster Pet Tracker is their app, though it certainly has its limitations. The app does all the basic functions well - like starting and ending walks. It'll find where you are on the map and you can start tracking your dog on the walk as well. If your dog is going off-leash, it can tell you how much more your dog walked compared to what you walked.

If you think you'll be walking a lot, there's a leaderboard on the app where you can compare your dog's activity with some of week's best users around the world. We're not anywhere close, so that's not a feature that we use.

Virtual Fences Feature

There's also the aforementioned virtual fences feature, which is pretty neat. You can put up a fence around a designated area and if your dog ever went beyond that area, you would receive a notification on your phone.

So let's say for example you're indoors doing chores and you wanted to let your dog outside to play. If your dog somehow manages to escape past the designated boundaries, you would receive a notification on your phone that the dog is outside its virtual fence. If they're on the escape, you can start tracking them on your phone.

Limitations of the App

We did notice some issues with the app that we're hoping can be fixed in future updates. At the time of this writing, we've been unable to find the stats to previous walks that we've done. We can find our daily or weekly stats, but as soon as we start a new hike, we lose the specific data to the old one(s). It'd be nice to compare steps and time lengths he's taken for a specific walk or hike, but we've yet to find this option.

Another unfortunate thing, which is likely just a limitation of the physical hardware is that you cannot control the tracker like starting and ending walks with multiple phones. In our case, the tracker is connected to my wife's phone and she has the ability to control all the features. As the secondary phone, my phone only has the ability to view the stats so if it were my turn to take Markus out, I would have to re-pair the tracker with my phone again.

The last limitation that the app has was that although the tracking works through GPS and not the network, our suspicion is that the map loads through the network. This distinction needs to be made because if you happen to be out of range where there's no reception, your map isn't going to load on your app. The tracker will still track where you are and how far you walk (because it is GPS), but your map will not have loaded and you'll only see a marker moving along an empty grid. If you're going to an area that you know doesn't have coverage, be sure to load the map before losing reception.

If your dog is lost during one of these times, you'd still be able to use the app because you would still see two points on the grid and the goal is to get to the two points together. It's inconvenient, but the basic functionality is still there.

Overall Thoughts

Markus smiling knowing he can run freely without losing us because of the Findster Pet Tracker!

In general, we like the Findster Pet Tracker when we do use it. If you're planning on purchasing one or have been doing the research to get one, my recommendation is to think about how you're going to use the tracker and then make a decision from there about the model you want to get. For us, subscription-based pricing simply didn't make sense since we don't use it nearly enough and the Findster Pet Tracker stands out for having a one-time cost.

In terms of the size, range and battery life, we find these to be fairly competitive no matter which pet tracker you go with. Unless you plan on letting your dog off-leash in the woods for day-long hikes, dog owners who use the tracker on a hike or day-to-day walks will find that the specs of most of the trackers will be more than adequate. That is certainly the case for us with the Findster Pet Tracker - we've never had to push it to its outer limits.

There are some flaws and limitations to the phone app that we've discussed, but the day-to-day functions of what it can do is more than enough. We hope that since these are software limitations, some of these issues can be upgraded in future app updates.

In the end, if your dog is an escape artist, you really can't put a price on the peace of mind that you get knowing that there's a fallback in case your dog does take off. When Markus took off on us, that period of losing sight and not knowing how far he was going was enough to make us realize that we needed something because he has that ability. In our case, we were lucky that he lost sight of the bird he was chasing, but everything would've been easier if we had a Findster Pet Tracker from the beginning!

We’re so grateful for your support of The Markus Project. We mostly choose our locations through searching and word of mouth. If you know of a park, trail or location you think we should check out, please share it with us. We’d love to know!