Tech
Nomad debuts new Apple Find My Tracking Card with MagSafe charging today, here’s our early hands-on impressions
The new Apple Find My-equipped Nomad Tracking Card is making its worldwide debut today. I have talked on end about these slim card-style wallet trackers in the past, posted on social about how much I love them, and now one of our favorite Apple accessory brands is entering the space for the first time. It will be available for purchase directly from the official Nomad site at any time now, but be sure to head below for more details and some of our early hands-on impressions of the new Nomad Apple Find My Tracking Card.
Hands-on with the new Apple Find My Nomad Tracking Card
The Nomad Tracking Card is, in many ways, very much like what we have seen from other brands in this product category – an ultra-thin card with an onboard battery, speaker, and Apple Find My tech that can slide directly into just about any wallet, minimalist card holder, or anything else along those lines.
Its footprint is basically the same size as your typical credit card or ID, albeit with some extra thickness to house the internal tech – its roughly twice as thick as your standard bank card (86mm x 54mm x 2mm).
Made of a rigid polycarbonate material, Tracking Card sports an IPX7 water- and dust-proof construction with a stealthy black treatment. There’s a flat black and very clean-looking front side with extremely minimalist “Nomad” printing in the bottom corner – it’s so small you can barely see it (and I love this subtle branding approach as many of you know already). On the flip side, Nomad has opted for a sort of technical printing design, presenting a sort of subtle grey mock schematic of the tech housed inside that incorporates the small, nearly flush pairing and chime button.
Apple Find My setup
As far as setup goes here, it really couldn’t be any more straight forward and simple. You can crack open the Apple Find My app, navigate to the Items menu along the bottom, hit the “+” sign, and then “Add Other Item.” Push the aforementioned button on the Nomad Tracking Card itself, and you’re done. You can name it and add an icon for your Find My map, just like any other third-party Find My gear. The whole process was entirely painless and takes maybe a minute.
Once it’s ready to go, it works just like any other Find My tracker, providing real-time map data of its whereabouts, and subsequently your wallet, alongside left behind notifications to your iPhone so you can course correct what could be a potentially devastating and super annoying situation.
Tracking Card wireless charging – MagSafe or Qi
One thing I hate about some of the Find My wallet trackers out there is the charging and battery setup. Some of them just don’t let you charge it, so despite the lengthy battery life on some of these options, they are essentially dead weight once the juice has depleted. But that’s not the case with Nomad’s.
The Tracking Card can be wirelessly charged with any Qi or MagSafe charger. And you won’t even have to do it very often – it holds a charge for 5 months. While I haven’t had enough time to test that out for myself just yet, after going hands-on with a couple of these I have no reason to believe Nomad couldn’t deliver here, and I will be following up with some more hands-on impressions once I know for sure.
There’s a small LED on the card – it will change from red to green while it’s on your charger to indicate the battery is ready to go. And as quick side note, despite its MagSafe compatibility – it will stick right onto your floating MagSafe charging pad when you’re phone isn’t on it – there are no magnets involved here. There’s just enough metal in the lightweight design for it to stick and you’ll never need to worry about it demagnetizing your cards because of it. It seems an awkward place to charge an item like this, but it works, and some folks have flat MagSafe charging pads as well – either way the wireless charging solution you already have will get the job done.
The new Nomad Tracking Card with Apple Find My is available for purchase starting today via the brand’s official site for $39.99 shipped. That’s on par with my favorite option from KeySmart that ticks all of the same boxes in terms of feature set (here’s my full review of that one). While we do see regularly deals on this model, Nomad has been one of our favorite accessory brands for quite some time, and its new Tracking Card looks as though it is certainly going to be giving the KeySmart SmartCard a run for its money.
Buy the Nomad Tracking Card with Apple Find My
Subscribe to the 9to5Toys YouTube Channel for all of the latest videos, reviews, and more!