alt Hacker Newsi thought so too, but in practice i've been getting much better battery life from the official airtag on my keychain, than i do from the "atuvos" trackers that see much less use. high-precision UWB finding and half as many coin cells used makes the airtag an easy choice over the cheaper trackers for me.
the card-shaped one i've got in my wallet isn't going to be replaced by an official airtag any time soon though, that form factor is too nice.
There is a lot of variance amongst third party/clone tags. I had some grey plastic losanges for a while they were junk and all ended up in the trash. Now I have a bunch of Hoco tags and they’re decent (especially for the price)
Would love to know what card tag you’d recommend, I’m after one.