Pod Trackers CU6595212318 2 GPS Plus Wi-Fi Pet Tracker and Activity Monitor

As much as I have loved, and want to love this product, I must say that the current software version and what-not puts it at a solid "meh".I have a large (20#) cat who will not convert to indoor only. Can't blame him. We recently moved and I wanted to be sure that he was not going to wander off and do something dangerous, so I researched a bunch of trackers. Pod 2 was a little expensive out the door, but included tracking for a year and was not overly huge, so we gave it a try.Initially, it worked quite well. Then it seemed like every other software update would hose some feature that I had come to rely on. For instance, it used to be that the pod worked great to pinpoint my cat's location even while he was on our wifi network. Now, (for the past month+), if the tracker is on our home wifi, it just shows him in the house. We have a strong network and it does me little good to know that he "might" be in the house, or he "might" be halfway down the steep bluff behind our house, or he "might" be halfway down the driveway!I think the final straw was when he came home limping severely last month. I quickly synced his Adventure (we record one every day to see what he is up to) and it came up blank. I reached out to tech support (who are always responsive, regardless or whether or not they can help. One star is just for them) and was told that I needed to perform a locate once I start recording in order to make sure that the GPS is tracking appropriately. OK, that is fine, but it's interesting that in a year of use, this has never been mentioned as something that I needed to do. So I don't know where the injury happened, which is kind of a big deal.OTOH, We used this to locate him the other day when he was out late, and it was able to accurately find him to within a few feet. So it has paid for itself.Unfortunately this current version absolutely chews through battery. A charge that used to last a full 12 + hours while recording an Adventure now is at 30% after a mere 5 hours. I understand that battery life is going to deteriorate over time, but this has happened over the past month, not gradually over the past year. And both batteries show the same behavior.Short story long, I really don't want to be the beta tester for this. I want to find my cat reliably when I need to. In the past year, some competitors have come out with upgraded versions of their trackers. I will be taking a hard look at them to see if a better option is available.

I really wanted to love Pod Tracker. Even though the initial setup was kludgy, once it was synched and working, the results were very precise. So far so good...for about 4 hours. Cuz that's how long a charge lasts. We have to track down the cat and switch out the battery midday to get coverage all day. Sure, it sucked but we went along with it. Until the battery casing on three of our four batteries cracked and we could no longer afix them to the transponder. We limped along on one battery, leaving it off in the morning, then putting it on for the afternoon. Grossly inconvenient and ineffective. If we discovered that the cat was missing, we'd have only a few hours of signal during which to track him down with before the battery died. So I went to their website to buy new batteries. Every battery is sold out. Version 2 is no longer supported, and v3 batteries won't work if you have a v2. I sent two messages to support to find out how to identify what version our unit is... if I had a v3 I'd go ahead and search eBay/Amzn for batteries. But I never got a response. Given that most every item on their website is out of stock, I suspect they may be going out of business.So, yeah, the lifetime of coverage is great, but a pet tracker has to work for more than a couple of hours at a time to be of use when your pet goes missing. We have a Tab Cat that lasts many weeks on each battery. Love Pod Tracker's concept, love the technology, but requiring battery changes every four hours is a non-starter.So let's wrap this up:1) ZERO CUSTOMER SUPPORT / SERVICE. You won't hear from anyone at Pod Trackers. Your pleas for help will fall on dead ears.2)The technology works really well, although it's kind of a moot point, since you only get 4hrs of battery life with each charge.3)If you own a version 2 unit, you're hosed. It's unsupported, you can't get replacement batteries, and it's not compatible with the current version.4)If your cat weighs less than about 10 pounds, it's a pretty hefty item to carry on his neck.4) If your cat likes to lose collars, this is probably not a good solution for you. Mine has ditched his collar a half dozen times.In all cases, we had to use Tab Cat to track the collar, since the Pod Tracker battery was dead.

Well, this thing disappointed me so much, it finally spurred me to write my first review...I had such high hopes, and really needed and wanted it to work. I spent the better part of a day researching, and settled on the Pod due to its great form factor, waterproof case, long battery life - and most importantly, the ability to swap batteries on the fly, instead of removing it from the dog and charging the whole unit.Some of the disappointments, I can live with. The battery doesn't last as long as they say it will, the app is clunky, and there is no option to just turn off the every-three-hours self locates (which drain the battery) and just do locates when I ask. Also, even though it's collecting locations every three hours, you can't actually GET that information. No, if I need it, I have to contact customer service and they'll give it to me. Huh? Why waste battery collecting data I can't even have...and why not allow me to turn it off?But there's another HUGE problem I cannot live with: the GPS just flat out does not work, about 75% of the time. This is out in the country, only sparse trees, no other GPS item I own has the kinds of problems this does. Time after time, I query the unit, it spins the app for 5 minutes, then declares there's no GPS. Truly worthless. I wish it weren't so. The manufacturers need to go back to the drawing board on this. Instead, they have customer service spewing BS like "it must be the clouds!" But clouds and rain do not affect GPS. Stop blaming the weather, and get to work fixing this. There are many great things about the design, I hope someday it's ready.

I have had the Pod Tracker 2 for around 5 months now and I feel that I can give the product a full review. I bought this product as my cat went missing one night and I'm sure that he was stuck in someone's garage nearby. Firstly, the tracker seems well designed and secures well onto a cat's collar with the zip ties provided. Although it is a decent size (see pics attached of it on my cat, he is around 10 months old in this pic so not fully grown), I wouldn't say that it's too big and it's not really heavy enough for your cat to really notice it on their collar. The device appears quite durable, it's got multiple scuffs and scrapes on it now from my cat crawling under fences etc. and it hasn't affected the device at all. The battery system works well with having two batteries, meaning that you can always have one charged up ready to replace the other (I tend to just swap the battery every morning before letting my cat out so that it's got a fresh charge, it would probably last for 2 days but I prefer to just have a fresh one every morning).So, to the important bit, the actual tracking. When I first started using the Pod I found the tracking not very effective, I would only actually get a location on my cat probably once in every 5 attempts at tracking, and this is in an area that has full 4G coverage, much higher than the 2G coverage required. I was in contact a lot with the Pod team about this issue who were quite responsive in helping me try to fix this, even calling me from Australia to try and guide me through a few options. After a few weeks like this I had accepted that the item wasn't great, but I then started using the 'safe zone' feature which really seemed to improve things, along with the Pod team updating the app to a new interface which was a lot easier to use. When using the safe zone feature, the tracker will automatically connect to the device at time intervals which you determine (I have mine set to refresh the location every 20 minutes which doesn't waste the battery too much), to make sure your pet is staying close to home, it will send an alert to your phone if your pet leaves this zone and when they subsequently return to it. Having this constant refresh rate seems to make the Pod much more responsive to finding my cat and I rarely cannot view his location whether it picks him up on WiFi from the houses around mine or in GPS locations in the fields behind my house.In other reviews I have noticed people mentioning that the tracking is not as accurate as they would have hoped, only giving a location within about a 5-10 metre radius of your pet, I would say that this is probably true but in all honesty from a device that is trying to track a small moving object (i.e. my cat), it's more than adequate at providing an accurate enough location to give you reassurance of where they are. Overall I would say that the product is well worth having if you just want to make sure that your pet is staying close by and as a back-up in case they go missing, I would also recommend using the safe zone feature so that you are constantly getting a location on your pet at whatever time interval you choose.

We have two bengals, one of whom (Hendrix) went missing earlier this year for nearly three weeks. As he'd got in a van and ended up 10 miles away, we knew we'd been very lucky to find him. On the basis we might not be so lucky next time, we looked into a gps tracker or I'd never have let them out again! The Pod Tracker has been a life saver. I can check on their location at any time and also see how active they've been so I know if I need to give these high energy cats extra playtime! Both cats took no notice when the Pods were attached to their collars and you get to know where they like to hangout and spend their days. The batteries wear out quicker if you use the safe zone or adventure modes, but they come with two batteries per Pod so you always have a spare.It's accuracy depends on cloud cover, and how much 'stuff' is around, but on a clear day it can be pin point accurate, and I know they are walking along a fence before I even look out of the window. Jagger is an expert at finding spots where it can't quite track him, but he always pops up eventually.I now know that if either of them go on an unexpected car or van journey from being too nosy, that I will have a starting point to find them.The customer support is absolutely excellent as well, the support team are very knowledgable about the product and respond quickly despite being on the other side of the world.I wouldn't be without a Pod Tracker now, it's peace of mind when I'm at work or elsewhere. Excellent product.

Good, but my cat lost it in some bushes and we could never find it in the last place it dinged before running out of battery. A very, very expensive loss and could easily happen to anyone.I'd only had it a couple of weeks and the company didn't do much to help me out on this one. After bugging them for a while they eventually offered me a generous half price off of a second one, which was extremely kind, but by then I was just mad to have spent so much on something that would end up lost forever that I didn't want to spend more money on the product, it might happen again after all.It's a shame there isn't an inbuilt feature that allows you to find a lost pod. It must happen reasonably regularly. Shame really.The product itself is reasonably sized, it fit on my small cat. Was kinda chunky on her, but I was using it to find out where she kept dissappearing to. Turns out she was travelling 1.5 miles away to an industrial estate to feast on baby rabbits round there.The pod obviously helped me find that much out, so it worked well, but an expensive piece of information indeed.The app is OK, could do with improvements, but they seem to update it regularly.

Don't buy it unless.... they update it to have an audible beep. My cat lost her collar 3 times. The first 2 times hunting for it was hard in long grasses and only knowing it's "somewhere" 10m from me as the GPS is not very accurate and I was relying on the Bluetooth. 3rd time... I couldn't find it I'm going to look again soon now that it's winter and things have died down... but it is very annoying that I couldn't just turn on a beep to listen for and find it... that's £130 blown in < 2 months of use.I wouldn't buy again unless they added a way to find a dropped pod.

The actual product seems to just about do what it is supposed to do, as long as you are prepared to put up with quite a lot of stress and hassle to deal with it.First is attaching it to a collar - not that easy, and if the fairly cheap rubber breaks when you are trying (which ours did straight out of the box) then don't expect any support whatsoever from the company - I tried, and they could not have been less interested.So - you get over that by buying cable ties, and whilst these are slightly easier, they do end up leaving hard, jagged plastic ends ready to stick into your pet and cause cuts or grazes if you dont get it quite right,Then you manage the product itself - app is patchy, and seems to pick up the pod when it feels like, rather than when you want.Once you have pressed refresh and reset enough times, it does manage, so i guess as a last resort it would probably help for a lost pet.Battery life is ok, but working out whether the pod is on is not easy at all, and if you get it wrong, then the thing will be dead when you come to use it. You will also get repeated, high annoying reminders and sound effects that you didn't ask for on your phone all thought the middle of the night.Oh, and anyone who has seen their previous website, with the large boasts about receiving 50% off future upgrades? Guess what? That wasnt true, and turns out they have conveniently forgotten about that now.Overall, as a pet tracking product on its own it would probably deserve 3, maybe 3.5 stars. When coupled with the customer service of the pod firm, which is so appalling, then it reduces to 2, and that is generous. It would almost be better to lose a pet than have to deal with those people again.