Apple AirTag 2 Review

Nearly five years after the original, Apple has produced a second-generation AirTag. The formula is essentially unchanged — the improvements are all internal, and there are three of them: a longer Bluetooth range, Precision Finding on the Apple Watch, and a considerably louder speaker. That last one matters more than it sounds, and not only for finding lost keys.

Apple has stayed faithful to the 2021 design. The AirTag 2 is the same compact round white puck, 8 mm thick and 31.9 mm across, with the Apple logo engraved at the centre. Free engraving on the front is still offered, whether a few letters or an emoji.

The back is again polished stainless steel, which is the one genuine design complaint. After a few years of use that material wears and scratches, and placing an aged first-generation tag beside a new one makes the difference obvious. It spoils the look of an otherwise neat object.

Water and dust resistance carries over at IP67, meaning fully dust-tight and protected against temporary immersion in fresh water to 1 metre for 30 minutes.

Because the shape is identical, the new tag works with every first-generation accessory — keyrings, cases, holders. Nobody upgrading needs to rebuy any of that, which is a small but real saving.

Power again comes from a user-replaceable CR2032 cell, supplied pre-installed, which Apple rates for about a year. Changing it is straightforward.

Every change Apple made is invisible from the outside. The first is a new-generation Bluetooth chip, the U2, which supports the Ultra Wideband technology the AirTag depends on. Apple's claim is that Precision Finding — the feature that guides you to a tag in real time with on-screen arrows, and the main thing separating AirTags from most third-party trackers — now works from up to 50 per cent further away.

Testing a first-generation tag against the new one bears this out. At around ten metres the original loses the ability to give useful positional information, falling back to vague guidance that the tag is far away, the signal is weak, and you should try moving in a different direction. Placed in the same spot, the AirTag 2 still points you in the right direction automatically and reports its distance in metres.

Measured across those tests, the AirTag 2 stayed connected and locatable to around twenty metres — roughly double the original, depending on what obstacles sit in the way.

The difference is real, but it is not transformative. If you regularly use Precision Finding, the new generation is more comfortable to live with. If you do not, it changes very little.

For the first time, Precision Finding is available on the Apple Watch, from the Series 9 and Ultra 2 onwards. It is enabled through Control Centre — reachable via the side button — by adding the Find Items function and selecting the tag you want.

The integration is well done. Haptic feedback genuinely helps: the vibrations indicate whether you are getting closer or further away, and it is possible to locate a mislaid tag without looking at the watch face at all. The one criticism is that the haptics could be stronger. In everyday use the iPhone remains the more natural tool, so this is a welcome addition rather than an important one.

Apple states the AirTag 2 is up to 50 per cent louder than its predecessor. That sounds like a minor specification change. It is not, because of how AirTags have been misused.

Tags have repeatedly been used to track people without their knowledge. US police found car thieves using them to follow targets home, and there have been cases of stalkers using them to track women. Apple's countermeasure is that a tag separated from its owner's iPhone starts sounding automatically, alerting whoever is unknowingly carrying it.

The problem was that the first generation was simply too quiet. Hidden in a car boot, a tag could go unnoticed for weeks — during which someone could be tracked freely.

Comparing the two generations directly, the difference in volume is clearly audible. An AirTag 2 hidden deep inside a suitcase at the far end of a stone-built country house could be heard ringing without straining. The original was considerably harder to detect in the same conditions.

That makes the louder speaker the most consequential change here — useful for finding your own belongings, and materially better as a safety measure.

Apple has, unusually, reduced the price of this generation relative to the original — a rare move, and a notable one given how many cheaper alternatives have appeared from brands such as Xiaomi.

No UK retail listing under the AirTag 2 name could be verified at the time of writing. Apple's UK site lists the product simply as AirTag, and no second-generation listing was found on Amazon UK, so no UK price is shown on this page. One caution if you are shopping around: Amazon UK carries third-party trackers using Apple's name in their titles at prices far below Apple's own, and those are not Apple products.

The AirTag 2 brings a set of welcome but modest improvements. The much louder speaker is the highlight, making a lost tag far easier to locate and closing a genuine safety gap in the original. Precision Finding on the Apple Watch is a pleasant addition, if a minor one, and the extended range makes the tracking experience slightly more comfortable.

After several years of waiting, though, these are timid changes. Apple has largely reproduced its 2021 recipe while correcting its weakest points. There is no urgency to replace tags you already own.

If you have not bought into the system yet, the case is different. AirTags genuinely make life easier — bags and keys become far simpler to recover, and they earn their keep on trips more than anywhere else. With the price now lower than the original launched at, this is a reasonable point to start.