I have a habit of being scatterbrained about where I leave my belongings lying around. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve broken multiple pairs of glasses by sitting on them after forgetting that I threw them down on my couch or bed. I’ve spent a fair share of mornings combing my home for my keys and/or wallet, only for a friend or family member to find them in the most blindingly obvious location. My fifth-grade science teacher nicknamed me “The Absent-Minded Professor,” which sure inflicted years of psychological damage upon me, but is also somewhat accurate.
So yeah, if anyone is in need of something to keep track of their stuff, it’s me. How fortunate that I got to test out Slightech’s Mynt Smart Tracker ($20) to see if it could ease the pain of my tragic forgetfulness; or, at the very least, help me find my keys.
Elegant, Nondescript Hardware
Mynt is a lightweight Bluetooth smart tracker, easy to attach to most items without being too bulky or heavy. I put it on my keychain, but you could just as easily place it in your wallet or stick it on to an item using the included adhesive pads. The Mynt is IP43 water resistant, meaning it is fully protected against spraying water, but shouldn’t be fully submerged. The Mynt boasts a 12-month battery life from a single CR2032 battery, easily removable via a latch on the side of the Mynt. The package also contains an extra battery, so you shouldn’t have to worry about shopping for another for at least a couple years after purchasing your Mynt.
The design of the Mynt is simple and somewhat minimalist, which is great if you don’t want it to stand out too much on whatever you’re attaching it to. In my case, it blended in so well on my keychain that I often forgot that I was carrying it around unless I was fumbling with my keys and noticed it (hm, maybe I really am absent-minded). I reviewed the silver model, which I liked for its sleek finish and which blended well with my keys, but it is also available in black, blue, and gold.
Slightech packed some extra features into the Mynt, turning it into a bit of a swiss army knife when paired with mobile device or Mac. Using a functionality selector in the Mynt app (more on that shortly), the Mynt can be made to work as a presentation remote, music controller, and remote camera shutter. You can even use the Mynt to track your phone— holding in the Mynt’s button will make your phone play a melody, which will continue to play as long as you keep the button held.
The App and Functions
Mynt’s app — available on iOS, Android and Mac — is the central hub for managing your trackers and works as the key to the Mynt’s remote tracking functionality. (Note for Mac users: the app is a direct download from the Mynt website and is not listed on the Mac App Store). I used the app on my iPhone X, 5th gen iPad, and MacBook Pro. The app works relatively the same across iPhone and iPad, but the Mac version is a bit different, and a tad lackluster compared to the phone and tablet app.
Completing the setup process for the Mynt Tracker is a snap, as the app displays easy to understand onscreen animations that walk you through exactly how to configure your Mynt. After setting up your Mynt, you are taken to the home screen.
The home screen also displays tips on how to maximize the functionality of your Mynt Tracker, with notes on such topics as using the app’s map function and phone locator. The home screen displays all your Mynt trackers if you have several to keep tabs on different items, and tapping each tracker opens their respective menus where you can trigger their alarms and manage settings.
Mynt’s app also lets you select which extra control feature you want to enable: music remote, camera shutter, presentation remote, or phone location. On mobile, toggling between these functions is a breeze. On Mac, things weren’t quite so simple. The only feature I was able to use was the Music remote, and even that was temperamental.
The app supports up to eight Mynts and allows you to categorize what you’ve attached them to, using icons to denote keys, purses, wallets, cars, and more. You can also tweak each these whenever you want, so if you want to switch over to tracking a different item, all you need to do is swipe over to a different selection on the app.
Some of these features like remote shutter and phone location are available on my Apple Watch, but I can say that I actually prefer the phone locating feature on the Mynt. While the Apple Watch locating feature makes your iPhone let out a couple of sonar-like pings, holding down the button on your Mynt causes the iPhone to play a loud melody for as long as you keep the button held down, making it much easier to track down in my experience.
One time during testing, the button pressed against my leg when I had the Mynt in my pocket, which set off the tone on my phone. This was just an isolated incident, but something to keep in mind in case you’re going to bring the Mynt with you to something like a meeting or movie where you don’t want to bring any unwanted attention to yourself.
If only the experience was as good on Mac. The macOS app was pretty disappointing to me. I couldn’t get the presentation remote or camera shutter to work, and the music remote, while technically functional, was temperamental and buggy. While it’s not a big loss, since the Mynt is a more mobile-centric device by design, I can’t help my disappointment with the Mac integration, especially since if it worked properly it would make for a great lower-cost alternative to many presentation remotes.
Discounting my experiences with the Mac app, Slightech delivers a solid platform for managing the Mynt tracker and its suite of features.
Test, Track
Sure, the Mynt packs in some cool extras, but let’s not forget that the core function of the device is locating your stuff. And that’s where the device truly shines.
Using the tracking features on the Mynt is as simple as opening the app, choosing the Mynt you wish to locate, and tapping the “Ring MYNT” button. At that point, a tone will sound on your tracker and will continue to ring until you press the button on the app again, indicating that you’ve located your Mynt. If you so choose, you can enable a notification to alert you when your Mynt is leaving the range of your phone On the flipside, you can also enable an alarm on the Mynt to sound when your phone is separated.
Over Bluetooth, the Mynt has a range of about 150 feet, good enough to locate over multiple rooms, or for apartment-dwellers like myself, through your entire living area. Over the course of testing, I was always able to get my phone and iPad to pick up the Mynt’s location and successfully use the ring feature anywhere in my apartment. I could even leave the apartment and walk down the hall and often still get it to pick up the Mynt’s Bluetooth signal.
In my experience, the water resistance was even better than what Mynt promotes. Although it is only quoted to be resistant to spraying water (i.e. at worst a light rainfall), I actually fully submerged the Mynt Tracker in my sink while water continued to pour in, and it continued to work perfectly. I wouldn’t recommend using it to track items you plan leaving out in extended periods of rainfall, or taking it for a swim, but my testing shows that you should be okay if you accidentally drop it in water on occasion.
The only issue I experienced with the Bluetooth tracking was when I linked it with my Mac, at which point I had to completely unpair it from my MacBook or else it would refuse to reconnect to my iPhone or iPad. As I stated earlier, it’s probably best to just ignore the Mac version. Outside of this, I was pleased with how easy it was to locate my keys over Bluetooth — and trust me, I needed to, even outside of simple test scenarios.
When the Mynt leaves your phone’s range, any phone within 150 feet that has the Mynt app installed can detect your tracker and help you locate it. This crowd-finding feature is how other major Bluetooth trackers like Tile handle out-of-range locating, and while it’s admirable to try and expand the tracking capabilities outside of Bluetooth range, you’re at the mercy of whether or not anyone else has the app installed. Sadly in my experience, the remote location feature wasn’t as flawless as the Bluetooth tracking.
To test out the remote tracking capabilities in a scenario where someone with the app actually is nearby, I gave to the Mynt to a coworker and had him take it from the Newegg offices to his home. I first had him install the app on his phone so that I could first see if the remote location features worked at all. Upon leaving the office that night, I immediately received the notification asking if I lost my keys, indicating that I had exited Bluetooth range of the Mynt. Throughout the evening the Mynt’s last known position continued to be shown as the Newegg offices. When I woke up the next morning, however, I saw a notification on my phone that the Mynt had been found. I pulled up the map to see that it had in fact been pinpointed to my coworker’s house.
That day, he deleted the Mynt app from his phone so to check if I was still able to track it when I wasn’t sure that someone with the app would be near the tracker. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any updates on the Mynt’s location from that point forward, until my coworker brought it back to the Newegg offices, at which point the tracker automatically reconnected to my phone.
My remote tracking experience is by no means a knock on the Mynt’s hardware functionality. I was able to track it when someone with the app was nearby, meaning it works as designed. It’s just that the remote tracking is totally dependent on whether or not you live in an area where a lot of people use the app. I feel that with any Bluetooth tracker, it’s best to look at remote location services as a bonus feature, rather than the primary function. Luckily, that primary function, Bluetooth tracking, is something the Mynt excels at.
Mynt ES
If you find the Mynt to be too quiet for your liking, Mynt now offers a simplified offshoot called the Mynt ES ($15), that Mynt states is three times louder than the standard Mynt tracker. The Mynt ES is a simpler device solely focused on tracking, excising the extra features of the regular Mynt like the presentation and music remotes. The rest of the hardware features are nearly the same, like a 12-month battery life via a single CR2032 and phone tracking by holding the ES’s button.
Slightech’s Mynt ES retails for even less than the already inexpensive Mynt Tracker, and even are available in a multipack bundle ($50) if you want to really get a jump start on finding your stuff.
A Fresh Experience
Mynt presents a tantalizing value proposition. It matches other popular Bluetooth trackers’ features for a lower price and packs in some sweet bonuses. The extra functions like the camera shutter and presentation remote are great, provided you use them on mobile; the Mac app still has a ways to go before it matches the excellent mobile experience.
The other caveat which goes for all Bluetooth trackers is that the remote tracking is totally dependent on other people installing the Mynt app, so I wouldn’t really recommend it solely for tracking items that will regularly leave Bluetooth range. If you just have a habit of misplacing your stuff around the house, then the Mynt is a perfect solution for “Absent-Minded Professors” everywhere.
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