Do you lose stuff often, perhaps your keys, your favourite jacket or maybe even your children? Thought so. Well it appears that help is at hand in the form of the Loc8tor, a tracking device that will search out and find items that you've tagged.

Our quick take

The Loc8tor is a great device if you are prone to losing stuff as it easily helps you track down stuff in your home or out and about.

Super paranoid parents will also find the device useful if they want to give their child some roaming ability, but without the fear of leaving the safety zone.

But at £99 you've really got to realise you aren't to be trusted with any bag before you invest.

Loc8tor tracking device - 4.0 / 5

FORAGAINST
  • Easy to find stuff
  • useful if you like to forget bags at bars
  • Another gadget to carry in your bag

Think Aliens and the scene where Sigourney Weaver is trapped with the rest of the marines in the medical lab and there is that beep, beep, beep on the tracking device as the aliens are getting close and you're half way there to understanding how the Loc8ter works.

About the size of a slim mobile phone the Loc8tor tracking device offers a mono LCD screen and five buttons to help you find stuff you've lost.

The easy to use device works by you attaching small tracking devices (measuring 19.5mm W x30.5mm H x 8.5mm D or the size of a postage stamp) on the things you want to be able to find, or track in the future, and then using the Loc8tor to find them.

Rather than having the range of one of those stupid whistling keyrings, the Loc8tor has a very impressive range of 183 metres (600 feet) using directional audio and visual prompts to guide you directly to within 2.5cm (1 inch) of your lost item.

To find your lost or on the move package, there are two options. The easiest and most obvious is the order to simply locate stuff. Press the button and you can track stuff down by following the beeps on the screen just like playing a game of hot and cold.

Alternatively you can choose to track items so that if you leave a Tag behind or it moves out of range the device will start beeping at you. This we found in our tests was great for making sure you didn't leave bags behind at the pub after a night of drinking or as someone else pointed out to us if your child strayed to far away from you.

Before you panic thinking that 600 feet is a long way to get before the device starts beeping at you, you can set it to near, medium and far so you're not on the train and half way home before you realise that bag is causing a security alert at the station.

Super paranoid users can track up to 24 Tags per unit and the device also lets you enable multiple items to be simultaneously protected.

There are two versions available, the Loc8tor and the Loc8tor Plus to choose from with the main difference being that the Loc8tor Plus reviewed comes with three regular Tags and one Panic Tag rather than just two regular Tags and the ability to track and use the company's Panic Tags.

Panic Tags come with an additional button that enables a child or guardian to activate an alert sequence by pressing the panic button on the tag.

Alternatively a secondary use we found was helping you find the homing device if you've got a Tag but not the unit.

To recap

At £99 you've really got to realise you aren't to be trusted with any bag before you invest