Computer accessory maker Targus wants to make misplacing your backpack a thing of the past. At CES 2022 the company introduced a new backpack you can track with your iPhone — and the best part is you don’t need Apple’s AirTag for it.
The Targus Cypress Hero EcoSmart Backpack comes in-built with the technology behind Apple’s puck-sized tracker. This means you can pull up the Find My app on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, and/or Apple Watch and instantly trace down the backpack’s whereabouts. It houses a tracking module that constantly beams the backpack’s location and, thanks to a rechargeable battery, lasts over a year in one go.
That’s not all. The new Targus backpack’s tracking abilities work the other way around as well. It features a button you can click to ping and find your misplaced iPhone. Targus says the tracking module is “highly integrated” into the backpack and can’t simply be plucked out if stolen, unlike an AirTag accessory anyone can throw out of it.
Similar to the AirTag, the Targus backpack doesn’t need to be in your iPhone’s range for you to track it. Apple’s Find My network is crowdsourced, which means there’s a possibility of any iPhone owner in the world walking by it and anonymously relaying its coordinates back to you.
What’s more, the Targus Cypress Hero EcoSmart Backpack supports Apple’s Precision Finding feature. So if you own an iPhone 11 or a later model, your phone can precisely navigate you to the backpack with audio and visual feedback. It’s likely the first of the many accessories we’ll see this year that are compatible with Apple’s U1 chip and allow users to always know exactly where the item is.
Apart from that, the Targus Cypress Hero EcoSmart Backpack has all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a tech backpack, including padded compartments for a 16-inch notebook, accessories, and more. The company has also made sustainability a key focus of its lineup this year and the Cypress Hero EcoSmart Backpack, as a result, is constructed from 26 recycled plastic water bottles.
The Targus Cypress Hero EcoSmart Backpack is expected to go on sale later this year in spring or summer for a suggested price of $150 in the United States.
