Nuzzle GPS Collar - Review 2022

GPS pet trackers can help buy y'all peace of heed, but with monthly or yearly fees, that feeling of rubber doesn't come up cheap. Enter the $189.99 Nuzzle GPS Collar. The price might seem high, but information technology's more affordable than many other trackers in the long run because yous don't have to pay a service fee in order to use it. The hardware is nicely designed, and it tracks activeness in addition to location. The downsides are weak battery life, a hit-or-miss Bluetooth safe zone, and extras that are either so-so or oasis't yet been implemented. You're better off sticking with our Editors' Pick, the Whistle 3, even with its subscription charge.

Pricing, Design, and Features

The Nuzzle has a toll tag that can't exist beat—depending on how long yous retrieve y'all'll utilise it. The Whistle 3 costs $79.95, but over the first twelvemonth, with fees, it comes to $175.35. Add together some other year and the Whistle costs $246.75. Thus, in ii years, the Nuzzle could save you $56.76. The same goes for most other trackers with a GPS subscription.

Nuzzle offsets the ongoing GPS ante by getting a cut for whatsoever customer who buys insurance through the app. The company has a deal with Embrace Pet Insurance; the offer to buy insurance for your pet appears every bit ane of the tabs in the Nuzzle app. It'south specifically for "unexpected accidents and illness," with an option to added "wellness rewards." In the future, they promise y'all can place claims via the app.

The neckband and base station/charger ship in a tube-shaped box near 7 inches in diameter. I received the large collar in heavy-duty royal nylon (it also comes in orangish). Information technology is 1-inch wide and fits necks 14 to 22 inches. The suitable-for-cats small is 0.625-inches broad, for necks 8 to 11 inches. Unlike the large, it's made of waterproof TPU—like a Livestrong bracelet—also in orange and imperial. Both have an integrated subclass to hold the tracker.

Instead of clipping into a bracket like nigh others, you put the Nuzzle under the bracket, and so it'southward held confronting the neckband. I didn't use the included neckband; there is a separate bracket for mounting the tracker on your domestic dog'southward existing neckband using a plastic clip.

The tracker comes with ii rechargeable 300mAh lithium polymer batteries. Yous charge them with the base station. Information technology's a skilful thing at that place are two and they're easy to change with a push of a release button, because quite bluntly, bombardment life is poor, lasting a twenty-four hour period and a one-half in testing, tops. The claim of a five-twenty-four hours accuse is severely overestimated.

The tracker itself is under i ounce lonely, 1.45 ounces with the clip, and measures 0.75 by 2.25 by one.25 (HWD). It's made of matte blackness plastic and rated IPX8, making it waterproof. Length-wise it sports rubberized, curved wings. The company says the wings non only provide a secure fit—they help it stay under the subclass—but also include extended antennae.

It has a single LED lite. You tin activate it from the app to get a view on your pet at night, merely it's not as bright equally the one on the Link AKC; your pet would have to be in the pitch black for it to make much departure.

The Nuzzle uses two wireless connections. The beginning is Bluetooth. Not merely is it used for the setup when you lot connect the tracker to your Android or iOS telephone, it'southward also used by the base station/charger. Simply as with the Link AKC, when the Nuzzle is within range of the base of operations or your phone, the pet is in a prophylactic zone. When your pet wanders out of range, the app will send a button notification and yous can start tracking via GPS.

The 2nd network is AT&T's nationwide 3G for GPS—the same used by the Whistle 3 and Link AKC. Unlike those, Nuzzle works not just in the US (including Hawaii and Alaska), but also in Canada and Mexico. There'south a thirty-twenty-four hours money back guarantee if it doesn't work well where you live.

App and Performance

Setup requires you to fire up the app and create an account. The app supports multiple pet profiles. In that location'southward likewise a space to enter your veterinarian's info plus some text notes, though information technology's non as advanced as what the Link AKC does to concur pet info.

As mentioned, the base station uses Bluetooth to create a safe zone. Your account can back up multiple base of operations stations, which could be necessary for a big belongings. Yous set the base station range in the following increments: 100, 250, and 400 feet. Most other base stations don't permit this. I set mine to 100 anxiety to encounter what the app would do when my canine testing banana, Madison, went in the backyard to do her business. The app said she was out "exploring" and that she'd traveled 0.1 mile away, which was non the case (she was far closer than that).

In the Settings screen, under Notifications, you lot can adjust alerts for when your pet is outside unattended (meaning you're not with them, as indicated by the presence of your smartphone), dorsum inside base station range, or to let you know if the battery is low or the temperature is besides high. You tin can simply turn these notifications on or off. There are no options to become alerts via email or text—only push.

Activity is displayed in the most basic of stacked bar charts, color-coded to show the previous weeks' worth of data. Resting is purple, Exploring (dull meandering) is green, and Playing (faster movement) is orange. It's far from the neat representations you lot go with Whistle's bar charts, nor practice yous get Whistle's daily rundown of how many minutes of activity there were. Nuzzle also doesn't recommend activity levels for your canis familiaris like most other services. That'due south because information technology isn't really a step counter. Simply taking it in the car with you, without your pet, can register activeness.

The activity data is just held for xx hours in the tracker. If y'all don't sync with your smartphone in that time, you'll lose the information. It's supposed to offload data via the cell connection if you don't sync, but I yet saw gaps in activity data. And as of now, the app but shows vii days of activity; a future update may allow you go dorsum farther. The Whistle 3 app never deletes any action data (only does junk your tracking info after a day).

Location displays a map via Apple/TomTom on iOS and Google Maps on Android. Tracking a missing pet starts after the tracker realizes it's out of range of the base station and your telephone. To test this, I turned off Bluetooth on my iPhone and walked abroad from the house. At 300 feet I waited: The Whistle iii notified me at one minute, 47 seconds that it was out of range, while the Nuzzle took an extra 30 seconds.

When the tracker is out of range, you can trace your pet's movements in the app via a GPS update every 60 seconds. The app also shows your pet'due south pace (in meters per 2nd, despite using Majestic miles and feet everywhere else). When done, it provides a glimpse at where this "exploring" took them. Trying it in a motorcar ride shows how inexact tracking can be with infrequent lx-second check-ins and moving at a high speed, but the path is pretty clear when on a brisk hike.

My experience with high-temperature warnings hasn't been good with other trackers, but the Nuzzle didn't seem to throw a lot of false positives. That said, on an 88-caste day I put the Nuzzle tracker (sans dog) in a car in the sun, and didn't get a warning, though I did get one the next day with the aforementioned exam. None of the pet trackers I've seen take mastered this part.

Impact/standoff detection via the Nuzzle isn't active yet. When information technology is, the accelerometer and gyrometer in the tracker should be able to send you an alarm about any jarring bear upon felt by your pet. Information technology should exist interesting to see if it knows the divergence betwixt a canis familiaris jumping off a bed and something more than serious.

Conclusions

The Nuzzle shares some of the aforementioned problems at the Link AKC, since both rely on Bluetooth for prophylactic zones. The utilise of your home Wi-Fi router by the Whistle 3 seems to make more sense and cuts down on the demand for a base station. That said, the Nuzzle offers better value over time, equally you don't have to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription to go along the GPS signal going. But pet rubber is i of those areas where nickel-and-diming only isn't worth it. You'll pay more in the long run, but the Whistle 3 remains our Editors' Choice. The Nuzzle shows some promise, and could oust the Whistle with some refinement and improved reliability, merely it isn't there quite still.