We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Fi (pronounced "fie" as in Wi-Fi, or Fido) is a new company with an eponymous product that's all about tracking your dog's activity and location. The Fi Smart Dog Collar has a nicer, more streamlined design than much of the competition, with a slightly high $149 price to match. It uses a base station for charging and creating a safe zone in your home, and will send an alert to your phone if your dog travels outside of it. The collar's best feature, however, is battery life. The Fi can go about a month between charges, which means it can protect your pup longer than other smart collars on the market, and that earns it our Editors' Choice. Pricing and Design The Fi itself is a solid, waterproof (IP68) tracker about the size of a match box, with a housing of brushed steel and black plastic, and a light bar between the two areas. It weighs 1.3 ounces on its own and only works with Fi canvas collars. Collar sizes range from S (13 inches) to XL (34.5 inches) and currently come in gray or bright yellow, though more colors are promised for the future (for $29 each). Adding a 13-inch collar brings the total weight to 4.3 ounces. The box also includes a charger block, a mini USB cable, and a base station (similar to the size of the tracker, and which doubles as a charger). You can't currently buy extra base stations separately, but Fi claims most users won't need one, as your phone also works as its own mini safe zone (more on this in a bit). Like most dog trackers, the initial outlay of money—$149—isn't all there is to it, as you need a GPS Plan for location tracking and data storage. It goes for $99 per year, $186 for two years, or $248 for three years. That brings the total two-year cost to $335, compared with $266.75 for the Whistle 3. You have the option to forego the subscription and only use the Fi for activity tracking, but it won't save past health activity for comparison. Each Fi Collar has a one-year warranty, and a two-week trial period for full returns. Features and Battery Life Like the Whistle 3, the Fi Collar uses AT&T's towers for GPS positioning, which means you'll want to look elsewhere if you live somewhere with zero AT&T coverage. It doesn't matter what carrier you use on your smartphone for the Fi mobile app. The tracker's best feature is its stunning battery life. After one month of use, my test collar still had 18 percent battery left. Fi explains that this is because the collar communicates with a low-power, wide-area LTE-M network every few minutes, but otherwise doesn't use the battery. It can also eek out a full day or two of power when in Lost mode. Fi claims that for a dog at home, that seldom goes out and never gets lost, the battery can last as long as three months. I'm not convinced of that, as my relatively sedentary test dog Gretta knocked the battery down in slightly over a month of lying about. However, the fact that the Fi Collar lasted even that long is worth major kudos. App and Performance Like the competition, the Fi Collar requires a companion app for Android or iOS for setup and monitoring. There's no web-based interface, so don't expect to check in on your pup's activity via desktop. Setup in the app starts with creating a profile of your dog and attaching the base station to your home Wi-Fi. You then set up a safe zone area around the base and specify its size, to cover your home and property. The profile creation only allows you to pick one breed, rather than multiple breeds for a mix, but there are some interesting mixes already included (like Labrabull). You can set up multiple dog profiles, but that assumes you have multiple Fi Collars; you can't switch one Fi Collar easily from one pet to another. In an upcoming release, you'll be allowed to specify a light color to appear on the collar for when you want to locate a pet in the dark. The Fi also uses your phone's Bluetooth connection as a safe zone, so if your dog is in Bluetooth range of the phone, it's considered safe. The safe zone is depicted on the integrated Google Map in the Fi app as a blue circle (the only shape currently available). You can pinch-zoom in or out to increase or decrease a zone's area. The goal of the safe zone is for Fi to notify you (via push and/or text) the minute the dog exits the area without you. In my tests, the fastest response I received after leaving the safe zone was around 3.5 minutes. I wish it was faster, but I tested against a Whistle 3, and the Fi generally came in first (though only by a few seconds). That said, once you know your dog is on the loose, the Fi's Lost mode activates with a red button right on the map. Click it and the collar starts connecting to the LTE-M towers every minute so you're getting much quicker updates. The LED in the Fi housing also pulses red. If you click the phone icon at the top, you can connect directly to the Fi Emergency Line to get some more assistance with finding your lost pup. Activity tracking on the Fi is basic step counts. Click the count in the app and you'll see that the daily goal is generically set at 10,000 steps, plus a bar graph showing major activity periods for the day, week, or month. As long as you have an active subscription, the data is saved for comparison. It lacks a lot of what the Whistle 3 offers in this area, like distance traveled and calories burned, and offers no easy way to share the info it collects. Fi has an excellent "invite an owner" option so you can send invites to family, friends, or dog walkers; they can then use the app for the same tracking without having to create a new profile. Conclusions The Fi Smart Dog Collar is a solid pet tracker with the best battery life on the market. I wouldn't mind skipping the base station and using home Wi-Fi for a safe zone like Whistle 3 does, but at least the base also doubles as a charger. It's certainly the strongest competition to the Whistle we've seen, and with continued updates, we're confident it will only get better. So if battery life is one of you biggest concerns when it comes to tracking your pet, the Fi joins the Whistle 3 to share our Editors' Choice. Fi Smart Dog Collar Bottom Line: The Fi Smart Dog Collar tracks your pet's activity and location while offering unbeatable battery life.

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