Tractive Smart Cat GPS Tracker | Real-Time Location & Wellness Monitoring for Cats 6.5 lbs+ | Territory & Location History | Up to 5-Day Battery | Breakaway Collar Included (Mint)

I never ever write reviews of products, but the Tractive Cat Mini is an exception I find worthy.
I have had other trackers like the Bluetooth style ones you may attach to your keys, luggage, etc. that do not require a subscription to work. They work as designed, but they don’t work well enough at the times you need it to the most. What they did do was send me on an emotional rollercoaster thinking the worst about my cat’s whereabouts because I needed to pinpoint to the second where she was on a map. Instead of waiting and waiting for the tag locator to update, and there is no set interval for it to do that, you think the worst, and you may never know exactly if they don’t return. And to me that is the worst part about losing a pet/member of family, is never knowing. Yet the burden of if there was something you could had done about it. I believe that cats are not to spend their lives indoors and they have instinctual urges they can’t control to make them want to be free be it an indoor cat that escapes or one you take the risk of letting them outside during the day only. Its my belief to allow this and only hope my cat is savvy enough from life experience along with instincts to know there are predators present that given the opportunity to sustain their survival, may include ending hers . And my pet at almost 3 years old and living in a somewhat forested part of North Seattle with the occasional transient coyote, I take that risk and prepared for possibilities of letting my cat be a cat. So far, so good, but with much heartache at times.I was aware of the Tractive Cat Mini locator during all those times when using the other trackers and figured it probably worked in a similar fashion and probably just had some fancier app to download or something. But the main problem I had with giving the Tractive Cat Mini a chance was the requirement of a subscription for it to work. The upfront cost of the tracker was reasonable, but the yearly or monthly subscription was not. At least for my penny-pinching budget. Just another bill to pay.But I was so wrong. Being fed up with another emotional breakdown which luckily aways turned out for the best, I purchased the Tractive Cat Mini from Amazon while it was on sale for a promotion which made the price for me to be even more reasonable to offset the subscription price. I got it the next day and chose my subscription for a year. By the end of the 1st day of using it, I was kicking myself that I didn’t do it sooner and how much heartache I could have avoided because this tracker did what I thought was not possible. It showed very clear detailed maps of where my cat was when I needed to know and to the second without delay. The app was very user friendly with not a bunch of settings to get lost in but straight forward and actually fun to use when friending with other cat owners in your local area. Or worldwide. But most importantly, the reliability of the device and the app combined which I have not had one problem with either after close to one year of using both. I now know what you get for the cost of the subscription and it could be 10x higher than what I paid for what you actually get from it. After 1 year using this device daily, I am extremely happy with this product, which I find to be rare these days. And if battery life is your concern like it was for me, it all depends on your cat. For myself, my cat is 50/50 indoor outdoor cat with a 10-block territory which because of the tracker I now know, the battery lasts 5 days or more and really has to do with the weather. That being said, it depends on if she is in the power saving zone or not. The battery can last even longer than 5 days in some cases and that’s with full functionality with no compromising of its capabilities. To make sure it is charged is just a important part of my routine when getting a notification on my phone of battery getting low. And to me the best part of the Tractive app is being able to draw a perimeter over the satellite map of spots you do not want your pet to enter and getting a notification on your phone immediately if they cross into it and also a notification when the exit. My cat is also probably considered petite in body size at 11ish pounds and since the 1st hour of wearing the device on her collar, she was never uncomfortable about its size. It also works great in rural areas and responds comparative in the same way your phone makes or receives calls/texts because of signal strength or network.To end this review, again which I never do, I assure you, nobody coerced me, paid me anything, offered me product to spend the time to write this, but these are my true thoughts and feelings on how this product has improved my life along with my pets life (unknowingly of course) to have the peace of mind of your family members well-being and the ability to intervene at the drop of a hat at the time you need to the most. The whole package of what you get from this product by Tractive is money well spent and I guarantee you will not look back making you a long-time customer as long as you have a dog or cat because all the others can’t touch this one by a mile. And any upcoming or 2.0 versions will only be better than already great version of what you can already get. But credit is due when your expectations are exceeded after using a product to make an accurate and educated review like I am doing now so you can learn from my mistakes and to support a company making a great product that actually frees your mind, or better yet, gives you peace of mind of your furry friend which we can all agree is priceless. Thank you Tractive!

Tractive not attractive in many ways! AWFUL GPS
1. The battery life on the device sucks. And it sucks even more because the makers of this created a way to “save battery” by asking users to set up a Power Saving Zone. This requires setting up your home wi-fi to search for your pet via bluetooth under a tab called FIND NEARBY. They wanted to do the same thing the makers of Tile, Airtag and Galaxy Smartag did. However Tile , Airtag, etc. do not force you to have your phone GPS on at all times for this Power Safe Zone to work just via BLUETOOTH. Yet Tractive does which in turn extends the device’s battery and instead drains your phone battery. Why Tractive engineers force having phone GPS on with a feature that doesn’t find the pet via GPS. Strange!2. The IRONY of all the above is that the 2nd way Tractive allows you to track your pet is via Google GPS with a tab called LIVE. You can ONLY use the LIVE tab if you are far away from your home’s wi-fi Power Saving Zone since this feature really uses just GPS. Even turning off wi-fi on your phone WON’T allow you to use LIVE. One could think who cares to use LIVE via GPS if the cat is at home. EXCEPT if you set up Power Safe Zone it seems 70% of the time you cannot track the cat with FIND NEARBY. In other words setting Power Safe Zone messes up the app and your cat is untraceable . So you won’t know if cat left the house!I kept thinking it was a fluke . Attempted every solution to a lame girl. Erase cache on app, log in and out of the app, get close to the pet. ONLY SOLUTION was to erase the Wi-fi Power Saving Zone .3. After erasing the unusable “power saving zone” the battery on the device lasted about 40 hours. It takes around 3 hours for the device’s battery to charge. A cat or dog can get lost during this time. So I STRONGLY ADVICE swapping your pet to a temporarily Airtag if you have an Iphone or a Smarttag PLUS if you have a newer Samsung Galaxy. These bluetooth trackers are pretty accurate and have longer range bluetooth capability than Tractive. You are not required to have GPS enabled on your phone at all times to track your pet via bluetooth since they are not GPS trackers. They also don’t require a subscription. Having them wear something is better than nothing unless you want to purchase 2 Tractives devices AND pay 2 subscriptions for just 1 pet while one of the devices is charging. But wait read more…4. Tractive Ring tone is very low. The Galaxy Smartag Plus and Tile ring tone are a lot louder. You better wear a hearing aid to find your pet via the Tractive ring tone.5. While learning the Tractive app found an “interesting” button called Heat and Tracemap. This button supposedly shows where your cat has been. Somehow it showed my cat had moved 407 feet. Not sure how this could have happened. Unless my cat has invisible levitating powers unbeknown to me. The device was on my lap then on my cat who sat 5 feet away from me. Another fluke!6. Tractive has a tab called Virtual Fences. I live in a 4000 + sq foot home with 80 feet length of AC area. Was getting excited something finally would be of use in this app. Wanted to know if my cat jumped out in the pool, yard or escaped. EXCEPT when setting the perimeter around my home I kept getting a warning saying: ” The Virtual Fence is Too Small” . What?7. Tractive requires you to pay RIGHT AWAY for a subscription. You don’t even get a 1 day free trial test. Buy the device and be ready to pay upfront 1 year. Yes feel free to waste your time asking for your money back because we all have lots of it to spare trying to recover the $ that took us time to make.Dear Garmin please start making GPS devices for cats. You guys are the gurus of anything GPS.For now I will be testing the Marco Polo tracker and use this Tractive to track coons and possums inside my garbage can instead. That may be the only place this stupid device works.

Quería que pasaran unos meses antes de hacer la evaluación del producto. Este tracker lo compre para mi perrito. En realidad solo lo usamos cuando vamos a la playa, que lo dejo que vaya libre, sin correa. Hay veces que en la noche se separa y como es viejito ya no escucha su nombre de lejos, y esta aplicación ha sido maravillosa para eso. Basta ponerle modo “live” y en pocos segundos me dice exactamente donde esta, increible precision, me ha salvado de varios sustos, porque si se ha separado bastante.Algo importante es que la bateria solo dura 2 días, osea que en caso de emergencia que se pierdan tendrias máximo 2 dias para encontrarlo, pero en mi ocasion no ha pasado de 5 minutos que lo encuentro al encender el modo “live” asi que no es problema para mi.Es muy importante señalar que solo funciona en zonas donde tiene señal. Cuando vamos a la selva y pierdo la señal de mi telefono ya no funciona el tracker, que es completamente entendible. Así que para ese tipo de aventuras este dispositivo no es el adecuado, pero mientras estes en zonas donde siempre tienes señal funciona de maravilla.Es muy resistente al agua, mi perro se mete al mar con el. Solamente si llegando a casa lo enjuago con agua de grifo y jabon de manos y lo seco al 100% para evitar que la sal oxide la zona por donde carga la batería, ya que esta expuesta.Además tiene un par de funciones para monitorear funciones cardiacas del corazón, yo no ocupo mucho esto, pero puede ser bueno para temas de salud.En general, a pesar de ser para gatos, a mi perro le funciona de maravilla para lo que necesito. Al ser pequeño, no tiene una cosa enorme colgando de su cuello que le pese, le acomoda muy bien :)Y si, hay que pagar una suscripción anual para tener acceso a la red satelital. Es un costo elevado, pero a mi opinión nada es suficientemente elevado como la paz de saber donde está cuando lo soltamos libre en la playa!

Não estava claro para mim q era necessário uma assinatura de forma anual de 7 dólares por mês