Four years after the original AirTag debuted, Apple is expected to finally launch AirTag 2 later this month. Here’s an overview of how the two products are rumored to compare.

We’ve been expecting Apple to launch its new AirTag for a while now. Rumors pinned a launch around mid-year, then iOS 18.6 hinted at its debut, and finally many—myself included—thought it might arrive during the iPhone 17 event.

Now, the latest AirTag 2 expectations are for an October launch .

Perhaps it’s fitting for a product whose predecessor arrived much later than expected, despite evidence it had long been ready to go.

Will AirTag 2 be worth the wait?

Rumors indicate the AirTag successor won’t be a radical departure from the original model. Instead, it will focus largely on improvements to the existing feature set.

Regarding AirTag 2’s design, Mark Gurman that the product “will look similar to the current model”.

I suspect we might still see a slight size reduction to make the device thinner. For example, to make it fit better inside of wallets. Apple’s miniaturization skills have progressed a lot in the last four years.

Mostly though, AirTag 2 is expected to focus on three upgrades:

• offering better range
• upgrading the wireless chip
• improving privacy, such as by making the speaker harder to remove

Likely, Apple will replace the current first-gen Ultra Wideband chip inside AirTag with the more recent second-gen version.

This UWB upgrade should lead AirTag 2 to offer Precision Finding at up to 30-90 meters, a 3x improvement over the current 10-30 meter range.

Privacy has been one of the longstanding concerns with AirTag, despite Apple’s software efforts to make it ill-fitting for stalking or other illicit uses.

AirTag 2 making the speaker harder to remove will be a good thing, but hopefully there are other privacy improvements coming too.

If you’re interested in picking up more AirTags, Amazon . Is this because the company believes AirTag 2 is launching soon, and needs to clear inventory? Who knows.

But if you don’t want to wait and see what Apple has in store for the new AirTag, now’s a good time to buy.