Fi Smart Dog Collar Review (2019)
I've been interested in getting a GPS collar for Mani for awhile now, mostly because of all the traveling and backpacking we do together. Yes, she's almost always leashed (and typically clipped to my waist using a hands-free leash), but I still worry about what would happen if she somehow got away from me while backpacking. While hugely improved, she still doesn't have reliable recall, and there was that time I clipped the leash around a tree while putting up the tent and she chewed through the leash and freed herself. Fortunately, I caught her before she could run. Or what if we had a car wreck and she got scared and ran from the scene? Or if someone breaks into the house while she's home alone and she runs off (or worse-- is stolen)? The other day at the local [not dog] park, I unclipped her leash from my waist and held the end of it just to give her a little extra slack to play in the leaves (The Girl loves leaves). She was full-speed zig-zagging back-and-forth enjoying the leaves when the leash was yanked out of my hand. For several terrifying minutes she continued running back-and-forth like a crazed beast with my end of the leash in her mouth. Fortunately she was pretty focused on the leaves and didn't take off running. She eventually tired and laid down beside me, and I calmly picked up the leash and breathed a huge sigh of relief. If that had happened a few years earlier in Mani's life, I'm certain she would have run straight for the road and, if she made it across, kept going [the stuff nightmares are made of.] When we go to my parents' house in rural NWMO, I let her run off-leash in the hardwood forest behind the house, or sometimes on the gravel road between the house and the lake, or the dirt road that follows the bluff line . While "rural" doesn't necessarily equate to less dangers for off-leash dogs, it usually means less human-created ones (outside of hunting season). Being able to let her run hard and fast and long in these heavily wooded, sparsely populated areas while knowing that if I lost sight of her I could track her in an app on my cell phone, is a huge comfort to me.
I'd started following Fi on Instagram when I saw a sponsored ad for them boasting their collar as the most accurate tracking collar, operating on LTE-M cellular network, with a 2-3 month battery life. The module on the Fi collar also appeared to be so small and sleek, not something that would be a nuisance for the dog or that would necessarily scream "tracker" to potential dog thieves. I read the comments on Fi's posts for a couple of months, as I figured most people these days aren't afraid to offer a full-on rant in the comments section of a social media post if they've got something negative to say. Surprisingly, most of the comments were positive. I joined the Fi e-mail list, and when I received an e-mail offer for $75 off the collar, I jumped on it.
Price
Fi's Smart Dog Collar is regularly priced at $149, with the separate cellular subscription plans priced at $99 for a year; $186 for 2 years; or $248 for 3 years. I got Mani's collar on sale for $74 before tax. A service subscription comes with 30 free days of GPS/LTE-M, during which you can cancel at any time if you determine it's not going to work for you. Fi also has a 14-day return policy and a one-year limited warranty on the collar/module itself. When you purchase a collar, it will show subscription options at checkout. You can add a subscription later, but it seemed counterintuitive for me to buy the collar without the subscription up front. I knew I was looking for something that would track at greater distances, so I knew the subscription would be necessary. Currently I'm still in the free 30-day period, so I've not yet been charged for this, but after the first 30 days, the charge will automatically go on the method of payment I used at checkout. If I decide to cancel before the 30 days is over, I just have to contact Support (support@tryfi.com).
Customer Support
So how is support? The only particularly worrisome comments I had read on social media were about support/customer service not responding, and there doesn't appear to be a phone number--only an email address or a web form. My experience e-mailing them was that they responded in two days. Not bad in my opinion. So far I've only needed to contact them once, so I've got nothing more to add here, other than Fi's website has a pretty detailed FAQ and Help Center section that I'd recommend reading before reaching out to support. I'll address the reason I contacted them in a later section.
Functionality
ACTIVATION.
Before use, the collar's charging base has to be activated and configured. This occurs through the smartphone app ("Fi") and requires that the base be connected to a wi-fi network, which is why I had to contact support. I use mobile hotspot for internet at home. When I discovered that I couldn't proceed with activation without wi-fi, I emailed support and asked: "Do I need wi-fi at home for the collar to work, or can I just run to a coffee shop, get on their wi-fi to finish activation, and never need wi-fi again?" Two days later, support responded with, "You'll be able to use the tracker without wi-fi, but not at optimum performance." Basically, I think, this means the 2-3 month battery life that Fi boasts will be more like a couple of weeks. Safe zones also work better when you have wi-fi, apparently, but this hasn't been a huge issue for me (more on safe zones soon). I'd actually already run to a coffee shop with collar and charging base in-hand and finished activation on their wi-fi network before I'd heard back from support. But it was nice to have the confirmation that it does, in fact, work without a continuous home wi-fi network, even if "not at optimum performance."
SAFE ZONES.
After activating the base and setting up Mani's profile, I created a safe zone around our house. A safe zone is an area you designate in the app where your dog is expected to be throughout a normal day. You can designate as many safe zones as you want, so if your dog goes to work with you or stays with a dog-sitter, you can program those into the app as safe zones. When the dog leaves and returns to a designated safe zone, the app will notify you (see images below). An important thing to know here is that you have to keep the app running in the background on your phone at all times for accuracy. I'd been closing out the app, as I normally do with all apps, and was getting random notifications that Mani had left home while I was out running errands. The first couple of these notifications worried me. Later I read that you have to keep the app running in the background with location settings always on to get the most accurate location pings. I've not had any safe zone errors since.
TRACKING & ACTIVITY MONITOR.
The opening screen in the app is a map that shows Mani's current location (as well as my location--or, my cell phone's location anyway) and her number of steps for the day. The first image below is a screen shot of what the opening screen looked like when I was a couple of miles from home. It shows Mani's location as a circle icon with her photo in it, and my location as a circle icon with a "T" in it. When we're in the same place, the two icons are conjoined. The second and third images below show the Alert Settings and Alert Modes in the app. Since my base is not continuously connected to a wi-fi network, I've opted for Smart Mode with Offline Alerts turned off to save battery power. This seems to be working fine for me. I still get notifications when Mani leaves the safe zone to go on walks with me ("Mani has left home with Tif"), usually up to about 5 minutes after leaving the house. Again, this--as well as the saved route we took while walking--became far more accurate once I started leaving the app running in the background on my phone. Mani and I often walk down alleys, and it would show us on a road instead. Now that I leave the app running it actually shows us as having walked down the alleys. Since location is pinged every 2-5 minutes, sometimes our saved walking routes will sloppily appear as though we cut through the neighbor's house. Pretty obvious, and definitely not a deal-breaker for me. In fact, my Garmin satellite device that I bring with me on backcountry trips does the same exact thing because I have it set to ping location every ten minutes, and it will connect the pings with the most direct path.
LOST DOG MODE.
The last image below shows the Lost Dog Mode screen (initiated by touching the red "lost" button in upper right of the home screen). If Mani were to go missing, initiating this mode would cause her collar to be steadily pinged as long as the app is open. This mode also automatically activates a pulsing red light on the collar's module (useful at night, so she has a better chance of being seen if darting across a busy street/highway, and also more easily seen by a search party, etc.). At the bottom of the Lost Dog Mode screen it shows how far away Mani is, if the collar's location is found. It also allows you to turn off the pulsing light if you'd rather conserve battery power for location services only, and it provides a Help Line, for what purpose I'm unsure, other than perhaps to provide emotional support.
Final Thoughts
One question I still have is if it will work when LTE-M cellular service is not available; and if so, how accurately? Over Christmas I plan to be at my parents' place in rural NWMO and I'll give it a real test there, where I can actually let Mani off-leash in an area that is both rural and covered in dense trees. I'm curious to know how that will impact performance, and I'll post a followup then. For now, I've gotta say that I'm pretty impressed, especially for not having the base continuously connected to a wi-fi network, which customer support had said was necessary for the collar to work at "optimum performance." I definitely don't plan to cancel this first year's subscription, so we'll have plenty of opportunities in the coming year to really put it to the test. I'll report back here as we do.
Really, why wouldn't I want to try everything within reason (and maybe even without reason) to protect and potentially save this amazing face?
