After my positive experiences with the Winnes Bicycle Tracker rear light, I had the opportunity to test the bigger brother of the bike tracker:
The Winnes Car Tracker with 3 months stand by.
The car tracker works similar to the bike tracker and can be integrated into the same mobile app. Therefore I have now all my three GPS devices in one place.
The mobile app integration of several Winnes trackers needs to be done manually by the support team via WhatsApp.
The car tracker needs a „pay as you go“ SIM card and connects directly to the mobile network. This means no Bluetooth or WiFi connection is needed and the device works completely independent. As most of the tracker comes with „hidden“ monthly subscriptions the Winnes device can be run with any operator. For me, this is key as the running cost a much cheaper and no contract is needed.
I am using giffgaff and Tesco SIM cards and both of them work perfectly. After one month of testing the car tracker, my credit is still £9.14 (of £ 10).
The Winnes car GPS tracker has a built-in magnet to attach the device to a car. I did not test this yet as I plan to use the tracker when and wherever I need a tracking.
Most of the time the device is just in my backpack – and it feels great even I never lost a backpack ;)
Going to the park and playground with the kids I found it very useful to attach the device to the stroller or at my sons Go-Kart.
And of course, playing „hide and find the device“ is great fun with the kids.
The device is very solid as the main use is to track a car. Therefore it is too big and heavy to put it into the kids pocket. There are smaller devices available for this usage.
After one month of testing, I quite like the device and the idea to use it when and wherever I need a tracking makes a lot of sense for me. The price and the monthly costs are unbeatable.
Saying so the strong build in magnet is a bit of an issue when my mobile phone is in the same bag as the tracker. Also, the mobile app is still „work in progress“ and the interface is not very shiny. An API do services like IFTTT would be great too.