Nuzzle GPS Collar

GPS pet trackers can help buy you peace of mind, but with monthly or yearly fees, that feeling of safety doesn't come cheap. Enter the $189.99 Nuzzle GPS Collar. The price might seem high, but it's more affordable than many other trackers in the long run because you don't have to pay a service fee in order to use it. The hardware is nicely designed, and it tracks activity in addition to location. The downsides are weak battery life, a hit-or-miss Bluetooth safe zone, and extras that are either so-so or haven't yet been implemented. You're better off sticking with our Editors' Choice, the Whistle 3, even with its subscription charge.

Pricing, Design, and Features

The Nuzzle has a price tag that can't be beat—depending on how long you think you'll use it. The Whistle 3 costs $79.95, but over the first year, with fees, it comes to $175.35. Add another year and the Whistle costs $246.75. Thus, in two years, the Nuzzle could save you $56.76. The same goes for most other trackers with a GPS subscription.

Nuzzle offsets the ongoing GPS dues by getting a cut for any customer who buys insurance through the app. The company has a deal with Embrace Pet Insurance; the offer to buy insurance for your pet appears as one of the tabs in the Nuzzle app. It's specifically for "unexpected accidents and illness," with an option to added "wellness rewards." In the future, they promise you can place claims via the app.

The collar and base station/charger ship in a tube-shaped box about 7 inches in diameter. I received the large collar in heavy-duty purple nylon (it also comes in orange). It is 1-inch wide and fits necks 14 to 22 inches. The suitable-for-cats small is 0.625-inches wide, for necks 8 to 11 inches. Unlike the large, it's made of waterproof TPU—like a Livestrong bracelet—also in orange and purple. Both have an integrated bracket to hold the tracker.

Instead of clipping into a bracket like most others, you put the Nuzzle under the bracket, so it's held against the collar. I didn't use the included collar; there is a separate bracket for mounting the tracker on your dog's existing collar using a plastic clip.

The tracker comes with two rechargeable 300mAh lithium polymer batteries. You charge them with the base station. It's a good thing there are two and they're easy to change with a push of a release button, because quite frankly, battery life is poor, lasting a day and a half in testing, tops. The claim of a five-day charge is severely overestimated.

The tracker itself is under 1 ounce alone, 1.45 ounces with the clip, and measures 0.75 by 2.25 by 1.25 (HWD). It's made of matte black plastic and rated IPX8, making it waterproof. Length-wise it sports rubberized, curved wings. The company says the wings not only provide a secure fit—they help it stay under the bracket—but also include extended antennae.

It has a single LED light. You can activate it from the app to get a view on your pet at night, but it's not as bright as the one on the Link AKC; your pet would have to be in the pitch black for it to make much difference.

The Nuzzle uses two wireless connections. The first is Bluetooth. Not only is it used for the setup when you connect the tracker to your Android or iOS phone, it's also used by the base station/charger. Just as with the Link AKC, when the Nuzzle is within range of the base or your phone, the pet is in a safe zone. When your pet wanders out of range, the app will send a push notification and you can start tracking via GPS.

The second network is AT&T's nationwide 3G for GPS—the same used by the Whistle 3 and Link AKC. Unlike those, Nuzzle works not just in the US (including Hawaii and Alaska), but also in Canada and Mexico. There's a 30-day money back guarantee if it doesn't work well where you live.

App and Performance

Setup requires you to fire up the app and create an account. The app supports multiple pet profiles. There's also a space to enter your veterinarian's info plus some text notes, though it's not as advanced as what the Link AKC does to hold pet info.

As mentioned, the base station uses Bluetooth to create a safe zone. Your account can support multiple base stations, which could be necessary for a large property. You set the base station range in the following increments: 100, 250, and 400 feet. Most other base stations don't allow this. I set mine to 100 feet to see what the app would do when my canine testing assistant, Madison, went in the backyard to do her business. The app said she was out "exploring" and that she'd traveled 0.1 mile away, which was not the case (she was far closer than that).

In the Settings screen, under Notifications, you can adjust alerts for when your pet is outside unattended (meaning you're not with them, as indicated by the presence of your smartphone), back inside base station range, or to let you know if the battery is low or the temperature is too high. You can only turn these notifications on or off. There are no options to get alerts via email or text—only push.

Activity is displayed in the most basic of stacked bar charts, color-coded to show the previous weeks' worth of data. Resting is purple, Exploring (slow meandering) is green, and Playing (faster movement) is orange. It's far from the neat representations you get with Whistle's bar charts, nor do you get Whistle's daily rundown of how many minutes of activity there were. Nuzzle also doesn't recommend activity levels for your dog like most other services. That's because it isn't really a step counter. Just taking it in the car with you, without your pet, can register activity.

The activity data is only held for 20 hours in the tracker. If you don't sync with your smartphone in that time, you'll lose the information. It's supposed to offload data via the cell connection if you don't sync, but I still saw gaps in activity data. And as of now, the app only shows seven days of activity; a future update may let you go back farther. The Whistle 3 app never deletes any activity data (but does junk your tracking info after a day).

Location displays a map via Apple/TomTom on iOS and Google Maps on Android. Tracking a missing pet starts after the tracker realizes it's out of range of the base station and your phone. To test this, I turned off Bluetooth on my iPhone and walked away from the house. At 300 feet I waited: The Whistle 3 notified me at 1 minute, 47 seconds that it was out of range, while the Nuzzle took an extra 30 seconds.

When the tracker is out of range, you can trace your pet's movements in the app via a GPS update every 60 seconds. The app also shows your pet's pace (in meters per second, despite using Imperial miles and feet everywhere else). When done, it provides a glimpse at where this "exploring" took them. Trying it in a car ride shows how inexact tracking can be with infrequent 60-second check-ins and moving at a high speed, but the path is pretty clear when on a brisk hike.

My experience with high-temperature warnings hasn't been good with other trackers, but the Nuzzle didn't seem to throw a lot of false positives. That said, on an 88-degree day I put the Nuzzle tracker (sans dog) in a car in the sun, and didn't get a warning, though I did get one the next day with the same test. None of the pet trackers I've seen have mastered this function.

Impact/collision detection via the Nuzzle isn't active yet. When it is, the accelerometer and gyrometer in the tracker should be able to send you an alert about any jarring impact felt by your pet. It should be interesting to see if it knows the difference between a dog jumping off a bed and something more serious.

Conclusions

The Nuzzle shares some of the same issues at the Link AKC, since both rely on Bluetooth for safe zones. The use of your home Wi-Fi router by the Whistle 3 seems to make more sense and cuts down on the need for a base station. That said, the Nuzzle offers better value over time, as you don't have to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription to keep the GPS signal going. But pet safety is one of those areas where nickel-and-diming simply isn't worth it. You'll pay more in the long run, but the Whistle 3 remains our Editors' Choice. The Nuzzle shows some promise, and could oust the Whistle with some refinement and improved reliability, but it isn't there quite yet.