The Glowing Pet Tracker from PetCube is an interesting collar upgrade

Are you looking for a collar upgrade for your furry friend? I was able to get my hands on one of PetCube’s latest inventions, a pet tracker designed to upgrade your pet’s collar and help you locate him when he’s gotten a little loose.

After doing some walkies with a few of my friends’ dogs (my cat wasn’t a fan of the addition of a collar, nor of walkies), I thought the tracker was an interesting offering for its sub-$50 price point, but with a hit and miss GPS capabilities that seem to need some improvements. This is what I learned.

Read more: The best pet cams for your home

Prices and subscription

Let’s talk about price first, as PetCube has positioned this tracker as an affordable option compared to many alternatives. It starts at $40 on sites like Amazonand we’ve already seen it cheaper thanks to periodic discounts and other offers.

Considering the camera is rugged, weatherproof and has a very significant battery life (up to 30 days), that’s an attractive price and one of my favorite things about PetCube’s tracker. The subscription required to use the GPS tracking starts at $5 per month if you go for the two-year plan, which is also lower than many competing services. The Premium version adds vet chat and warranty for a few dollars more. But let’s see what you get in return.

Installation and settings

Setting up and logging in to PetCube’s account remains simple and quick to use. Log in, quickly create a pet profile and you can add your tracker via Bluetooth once it’s fully charged. I took about 30 minutes of the installation process to explore my options, but you could do it faster if you really wanted to. You obviously need to give PetCube location permissions for the tracker to work.

Once set up, the app does most of the work for you, which is a big plus as GPS trackers can be complicated to manage. There’s a quick map option to instantly see where your pet is, tips for finding a lost pet (something this tracker was clearly made for), and battery life snapshots.

Head into the settings and you can set up virtual fences, customize which notifications you receive and choose how often you get updates and how the “Lost Pet” mode works. These settings are clear, intuitive and terribly important for quality of life, which I will discuss below. Anyone interested in this cheap tracker should spend some time in the settings menu.

GPS tracking takes some work

The heart of the collar tracker is the GPS tracking itself, which uses generous circles to show where your pet is and how he/she may be traveling. But during my testing, I found that this feature wasn’t as reliable as I would have liked, especially when trying to track down a lost pet.

The circles indicating the pet’s location may be a little too generous when trying to figure out where a smaller pet might be hiding. Even at a complete stop, the tracker’s location would occasionally bounce around, a common GPS symptom, but still unnerving if you’re trying to figure out exactly where your pet went.

While the tracking may show that your pet has moved between two locations, it doesn’t provide much information about how, so it can be tricky to map out your pet’s favorite paths with this tracker. When I first used it on a walk along the river, I noticed that the tracker still showed the pet a few miles away from where we started. This is an issue with the update frequency setting, which is set low to preserve battery life. It works – battery life stayed above 95% for most of the time I tested – but you also sacrifice a lot of accuracy.

I changed the update frequency and was more satisfied with the tracker’s accuracy, but this setting needs some adjustments. After all, if your pet is missing, you don’t want to wait 10 minutes for the tracker to update its location. Lost Pet Mode helps with this if you set a “Power Saving” zone, but it doesn’t always help track down a nearby pet, so I preferred quick updates.

Underrated search functions

The PetCube tracker also comes with some extra features – which ended up being my favorite part. GPS collar trackers are usually just trackers, with few additional features. But PetCube’s tracker has some additions that make it much better at locating lost pets and much more useful when biking or jogging with your pet in the early morning or evening.

First, it glows. Open the stats on the map screen and you will have an option to highlight it. The LEDs in the clear housing produce a soft blue glow that is excellent in low light, without dazzling your eyes. It’s a great option for low-light conditions, especially if your pet runs off somewhere at night and can hide in a nook or cranny.

Secondly, you also have a small siren option, which allows the collar to beep multiple times to assist with tracking. Not very pleasant on your pet’s ears, but great for finding them quickly when you know they are nearby but are not sure where they have gone.

Last words and a collar warning

PetCube’s tracker offers an interesting mix of affordability and useful extra features if you’re looking to upgrade the collar. And while the tracking isn’t particularly precise, playing around with modes and settings can usually get you closer to the results and updates you want. The lost pet mode and light/sound options are particular highlights here.

But there’s one final caveat: the stretchy case that holds the tracker has loops that a collar can fit through, but they’re quite small. My cat’s collar wasn’t a problem, but my friend’s dog’s collar didn’t really fit. You’ll need a particularly thin collar for this tracker to fit comfortably, which may require some changes of clothing.

For more information about pet tracking, check out our guide to why you should never use AirTags to track your pets, as well as SpotOn’s innovative pet geofencing options.