Petcube has made a name for itself with cameras that keep an eye on your pet. It’s branching out with the Petcube GPS Tracker, a collar designed to track your furry friend if it escapes the confines of your home or yard. This smart collar also lets you monitor your pet’s daily activity, albeit at the most basic level. For $52.99 plus subscription fees for cellular service, you get real-time and historical location and activity tracking for your dog or cat via mobile apps. That said, it was quite slow in processing escape alerts and live tracking in testing. The $129 Fi Series 3 is pricier, but justifies its cost with far better responsiveness, so it remains our Editors’ Choice winner for pet trackers. Design and SetupThe Petcube GPS Tracker comes in a cardboard container shaped like a dog bone, which my testing partner, Clark, a four-year-old pitbull, immediately stole and chewed.
As you can see by the bite mark, my dog knew this product was meant for him (Credit: Eric Griffith)
The unit itself is a small plastic rectangle, measuring 2.4 by 0.9 by 0.8 inches (LWH) and weighing only 1 ounce. It charges via a proprietary magnetic cable (provided) that plugs into a USB-A charging port (wall brick not included). Its lack of a port helps it earn an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance. The product has a 45-day money-back return policy and a one-year warranty.The slightly curved plastic tracker attaches to your pet’s collar via an included silicone case, which sports two belt loops on the bottom to slide a collar through. The loops should stretch to fit any collar about an inch or less wide, but they won’t easily pass over D-loops and plastic latches, and they won’t work at all if your dog wears a thick or studded collar. Clark, with his giant neck, essentially wears a wide leather belt, and I couldn’t slide the tracker on it whatsoever. Petcube needs to offer the attachment option in more sizes.
The PetCube GPS Tracker lit up, attached to an old collar (Credit: Eric Griffith)
One nice feature is that the silicone case glows in the dark. Better yet, the tracker itself has a bright light you can activate via the app and it can play a chirp sound on your command—features that can help you find a missing pooch at night.Setup requires a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network and a smartphone running the Petcube app (available for Android and iOS). The app also controls the company’s many pet surveillance cameras. As of this writing, the app only supports one pet tracker.Subscription PricesThe Petcube GPS Tracker, like competing models from Whistle and Fi, uses cellular towers to track your pet and triangulate their location if lost. Without the mobile network connectivity, it’s just a plastic brick (even though it has Wi-Fi). It uses LTE Cat M technology (LTE-M), a cellular network reserved for internet-of-things devices, and Petcube says it can reach 30% further than traditional LTE. It can use networks of any of the big three carriers and switch between them for coverage. It also uses Wi-Fi for positioning and powering a safe zone, but not for data transmission. There are two subscription options, both of which offer full live GPS location tracking. The cheaper service, Tracker Basic, includes seven-day storage for location and activity data and costs $12 per month, $84 for one year, or $120 for two years (dropping the price to the equivalent of $5 per month).
(Credit: Eric Griffith)
Tracker Premium offers unlimited data history, plus a lifetime warranty and the ability to chat 24/7 with a certified vet via the app. It costs $96 for one year (the equivalent of $8 a month), $144 for two years, or up to $300 for five years (back to $5 per month). A company representative told us that if your current tracker is lost or broken or Petcube releases a new model in the future, the prepaid subscription is transferable. For comparison, the Fi Smart Dog Collar Series 3 costs $102 up front, plus a $20 activation fee, and its data subscriptions start at $19 per month, or you can prepay $192 for one year or $336 for two years. Fi uses AT&T’s LTE-M network for connectivity, comes with a full collar, allows you to roll over a subscription to an upgraded model, and has an even better water resistance (IP68). The Fi Series 3 is also the best-looking GPS dog tracker on the market, period. GPS and Activity Tracking The Petcube GPS tracker uses a feature called a Virtual Fence to ensure that your dog is in a safe zone near your Wi-Fi network. If they get outside that signal, the collar can alert you. Setting up the radius of the Virtual Fence in the app isn’t very intuitive (partly because it defaults to meters), but once I mastered this feature, I was able to reset the size. Petcube recommends a Virtual Fence with a minimum radius of 50 meters to avoid false alarms. You can only make round zones; you don’t have the option to shape them into polygons like you do with the Fi Series 3. Multiple Virtual Fences—say, one for work, one for the park, one for home—are an option if your pet is a frequent traveler. The Petcube GPS Tracker also has Power Saving zones for when it’s within range of your Wi-Fi. Like the Virtual Fence, you can set up to five Power Saving zones in case you take the dog to other places—you simply need access to the Wi-Fi in those locations. Being within your phone’s Bluetooth range also keeps the tracker in the safe zone. The tracker provides location updates when your pet slides out of Wi-Fi range. You can set it to provide Rare, Normal, or Frequent location updates. Under ideal circumstances, if your pet never goes missing, the tracker promises up to 30 days of battery life. Of course, the more location updates you get, the faster the battery dwindles. In my real-world testing, it lasted about two to three weeks between charges. In Lost Pet mode, which you can easily activate with a swipe in the app, the tracker promises location updates every five to 15 seconds. However, you can’t turn on Lost Pet mode if the app sees the tracker is still in one of the Power Savings zones—particularly if it’s close to your phone. Lost Pet mode also has a finite duration (you set it at 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes) to save battery; after that, you must reactivate it.
(Credit: Petcube/PCMag)
As with other collars like the Fi Series 3, when your dog leaves the Virtual Fence safe zone, the collar turns to GPS mode and uses the cellular network to send an alert about the escape. You then have to manually activate Lost Dog mode in the app and use the rapid data refresh to track the pooch. In testing, the Petcube Tracker had a tough time realizing it was out of the Virtual Fence/Power Saving zone. After five minutes outside the zone, there was still no notification, and the app showed it as “At home in a Power Saving mode.”In another test, I walked the tracker up the hill myself, with my phone’s Bluetooth deactivated, and left the tracker in my neighbor’s planter. I went home to the safe zone and, while still waiting for a notification of the tracker being out of bounds, manually started Lost Pet mode. My phone finally emitted a purring sound—the notification that the tracker was out of the safe zone. That was cute. But the tracking just churned in a loading circle and didn’t provide any location details. When I walked back and stood next to it, I couldn’t even get the unit to chirp.
(Credit: Petcube/PCMag)
Part of the issue is that the tracker has to be actively moving to be tracked or communicated with when a pet is lost. In either case, it’s up to the owner to identify the pet as missing. It’s far from optimal.The Fi Series 3 performed much better overall in testing. It reliably sent escape alerts within three to five minutes of a safe zone exit and delivered about two live location updates per minute, on average, in Lost Dog mode. Otherwise, the Petcube GPS Tracker keeps tabs on your pet’s activity, but not in great detail—you’re not getting actual step counts or sleep tracking. You can set an activity goal for your pet, and it displays daily, weekly, and monthly stats on their total active time, kcals burned, and total distance traveled (again, in metric units for some reason). It’s basic stuff, but better than nothing. On the main screen of the app with access to the tracker, Petcube pushes other services, specifically its pet protection plan called Emergency Fund. With it, you pay ahead for emergency-only pet insurance (up to $3,000 annually for up to six pets) that requires a telehealth video conference with a vet before heading to the animal hospital. We didn’t get to try this, but other reviews online have it listed as everything from a scam to a godsend. Of course, you can also shop Petcube’s entire line of cams and treats in the mobile app. Verdict: Skip This Tracker for NowThe Petcube GPS Tracker does little to impress. A pet has to get pretty far out of a safe zone for the tracker to even notice and must be on the move for the device to update its GPS location. While it has decent pricing, a bright light, and a quality app, those strengths don’t make up for what it lacks compared with the Fi Series 3, which is not only more durable but offers faster escape alerts and more reliable live tracking. It’s a decent first attempt from Petcube, and hopefully, the 2.0 version will be one to consider, but for now, the Fi Series 3 remains our Editors’ Choice.
Pros
Highly durable
Glow-in-the-dark silicone case
Uses home Wi-Fi network as a safe zone
App supports multiple GPS trackers
45-day money-back guarantee
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The Bottom Line
The Petcube GPS Tracker is attractively priced but lags behind the competition when it comes to escape alerts and live tracking.
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