'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
Can an iPhone in a speeding car help find a 'lost' AirTag?
Continuing my theme of leaving thirty bucks worth in various places, I decided to answer the question of whether an iPhone that's inside a car going along a road can detect a "lost" AirTag.
The AirTag in question is not lost but rather tucked away on the side of a semi-busy road, on a side without a sidewalk (called pavements here in the UK), where a few dozen cars went by every hour.
Would I get pings that my plucky AirTag had been detected by passing cars?
Must read: This is what happens when you lose an Apple AirTag
Finding a lost AirTag
About an hour after enabling the tag and dropping it off at its new -- and hopefully temporary -- home, I got my first ping at about 9 pm local time.
And the location was spot on.
I was impressed.
But that was the last I heard from the AirTag until the morning, when I started to receive sporadic pings. There were dozens of cars going past every hour, so the number seemed rather low to me.
Was it picking up iPhones in cars, or people with iPhones going past jogging or on bicycles?
To test my idea, I did the obvious thing -- I drove past the tag a few times. Sometimes the AirTag saw me. Sometimes it didn't. It worked better when I was going under 20 miles per hour (the limit on the road was 40 miles per hour) and had a better chance of being seen if I was on the side of the road the tag was on, but it sometimes worked when I cruised past at 40.
Given enough iPhones going past, eventually there will be a ping.
I tried a similar thing with one of my Tiles, and the only way I could get that to work was if I crawled past at walking pace, and even than the chances were less than 50:50.
Anything faster than that was a no-go.
So, yes, an iPhone in a speeding car can pick up an AirTag on the side of the road and ping back its location. It's not guaranteed, but the more people drive past, the better your chances. Add if you have pedestrians or cyclists, the probability of success increases.
So, if you're driving along, stick-shifting like Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious, and something equipped with an AirTag flies out of the window without you noticing, chances are that as long as other people are driving past that spot, and your tag is close to the road, you'll get a location ping.
For $29, this is impressive technology.