PetCube's Glowing Pet Tracker 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 be an upgrade to your pet's collar and to help you locate them when they've gone a little -- off leash.

After taking some walkies with a couple of my friends' dogs (my cat was not a fan of the collar addition, nor walkies), I found the tracker to be an interesting offering for its sub-$50 price but with hit-or-miss GPS capabilities that seem to need some improvements. Here's what I learned.

Read more: The Best Home Pet Cams

Pricing and subscription

Let's talk about pricing first, because PetCube has positioned this tracker as an affordable option compared to many alternatives. It starts at $40 on sites like Amazon, and we've spotted it for lower already thanks to periodic discounts and other deals.

Considering the cam is tough, weather resistant and has a very appreciable battery life (rated for up to 30 days), that's an attractive price and one of my favorite things about PetCube's tracker. The subscription, which is necessary 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 a vet chat and warranty for a few bucks more. But let's take a look at what you get in return.

Setup and settings

PetCube's account setup and login remain easy and quick to use. Sign in, create a quick pet profile and you can add your tracker via Bluetooth once its fully charged. I took a leisurely 30 minutes or so for the setup process to explore my options, but you could do it faster if you really wanted to. You will, of course, 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 when GPS trackers can sometimes get complicated to manage. There's a quick map option to see where your pet is right away, tips on finding a lost pet (something this tracker is clearly made for) and snapshots of battery life.

Head over to settings and you can set up virtual fences, customize what notifications you get and choose how often you get updates and how the "Lost Pet" mode works. These settings are clear, intuitive and very important for quality of life, which I'll touch on 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 they may be traveling. But during my tests I found this feature wasn't as reliable as I would have liked, especially if I was trying to track down a lost pet.

The circles showing pet location can be a little too generous if you're trying to track where a smaller pet may be hiding. Also, even at a complete standstill the tracker location bounced around occasionally, a common GPS symptom but still unnerving if you're trying to find exactly where your pet went.

While the tracking can show that your pet moved between two locations it doesn't provide much information about how, so plotting your pet's favorite paths may be difficult with this tracker. When I first used it during a walk by the river, I noted that the tracker was still showing the pet a couple of miles away from where we had started. This is one issue with the update frequency setting, which is set low to help save battery life. It works -- battery life stayed above 95% for most of the time I tested -- but you sacrifice a lot of accuracy, too.

I changed the update frequency and was more satisfied with the tracker accuracy, but this setting needs some tweaks. After all, if your pet is missing you don't want to wait 10 minutes for the tracker to update their location. The lost pet mode helps with this when you set up a "Power Saving" zone, but it won't always help track a nearby pet, so I preferred the speedy updates.

Underappreciated locator features

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

First, it glows. Bring up the stats in the map screen and you'll have an option to light it up. The LEDs inside the clear case produce a gentle blue glow which is excellent in low-light conditions without blinding your eyes. It's a great option to have for any kind of low light conditions, particularly if your pet scampered off somewhere at night and could be hiding in any nook or cranny. 

Second, you also have a small siren option, which lets the collar beep several times to aid in tracking. Not very pleasant for your pet's ears but great for finding them fast if you know they're close by but aren't sure where they went. 

Final words and a collar warning

PetCube's tracker brings an interesting mix of affordability and useful extra features if you're looking for a collar upgrade. And while tracking isn't especially accurate, 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 standouts here.

But there's one final caveat: The stretchy case that the tracker fits into has loops to fit a collar through, but they are quite small. My cat's collar was no issue, but my friend's dog's collar couldn't really fit in. You'll want an especially thin collar for this tracker to fit comfortably, which could require some wardrobe changes.

For more info on pet tracking, check out our guide on why you should never use AirTags to track your pets, as well as an innovative geofencing options for pets from SpotOn.