Bark Badge/HeyBuddy vs Byte Tag
If you are in the market for a QR dog tag, then you might just be spoiled for choice.
Two names specifically pop up: Bark Badge (Now known as HeyBuddy) and ByteTag.
Both are relatively new products - Bark Badge came out in 2020 and ByteTag in 2021.
We ordered one of each and have been using both for a couple of months. Here are our results:
Price
Bark Badge |
ByteTag |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| BarkBadge.com | ByteTag.co |
| 27.95$ for Badge | 19.95$ for Tag |
| - 4.19$ discount | - 3.00$ discount |
| 12.76$ for shipping | 10.05$ for shipping |
| Total: 36.52$ | Total: 27.00$ |
We bought both tags with our own money, but we used a 15% discount code on both. If you use our link then you can get 15% off too to either which one you choose.
This round is won by ByteTag, which is cheaper in not only tag price itself, but also the shipping cost. You’re shipping costs might be cheaper - ours costs so much because they both had to send it from the United States to here, Northern Europe.
Design
While both tags look good on paper, ByteTag, I don’t know why, but they actually sent us a tag that had the same picture, but a completely different design.
It’s supposed to be more roundish and have the color printed on the outside, but instead, we got an acrylic tag with the design printed on a paper on the inside.
This round is won by Bark Badge, whose tag looks like it was advertised and feels nice. Their app’s profile page design also looks a little bit more sleek.
Neither tag however supports printing your or your dog’s name inside the physical tag.
Functionality
I think the functionality can be summarised with this GIF.
Even though they have slight differences in their apps - at the end of the day, they both rely on the same logic.
First things first:
Neither of the tags has any GPS tracking in it.
It’s just a thing with a link to your profile on it. Here, try opening your camera app and scan in either QR code.
Here is how both of these things work.
You get the badge, you scan it in and fill out all of the information about your dog and yourself.
You put the tag on your dog’s collar.
Your dog happens to run away one day. You can’t do anything with the tags (no GPS).
Somebody else catches your dog.
That somebody else scans in the QR code and sends you their phone’s location. That somebody can also see your contact details on the page, if you have made them visible.
That person and you then meet up and you get your dog back.
And that is the logic for both of these tags.
That is why this round is a draw. They both do exactly the same thing - neither one has a unique feature which would make it better than the other.
Which one to choose?
On the basis of our testing alone, it’s pretty much a draw.
At the end of the day, they both pretty much to exactly the same thing - a profile for your dog which can be accessed through the QR code.
If you open up their stores and you see one which’s design you like, then go for it! What matters most is that you’ll like it.
But from a personal standpoint, if I had to choose one… then I would personally choose the ByteTag.
It’s simply cheaper and does the same basic thing as the other one does.
Plus, we have heard a few of our readers complaining that their Bark Badge / HeyBuddy tag never arrived.
But we haven’t heard anything like that for the ByteTag…
So our conclusion is that, if you want to get a QR dog tag, maybe try the ByteTag first.
But either one works, if you take a step back and look at the core functionality.
…but what if you want something even better?
There’s at least two problems that both of these tags have:
1. No GPS tracking
2. No name or phone number on the tag itself.
These two issues actually lead us looking at other options as well.
And as of right now, there actually isn’t a perfect answer for this problem. To our knowledge, there isn’t a tag with which you can do everything.
However, we do recommend this combo:
Get a regular engraved dog tag with basic info: Affiliate Link to Amazon
Get a Tractive GPS device: Affiliate Link to Tractive.com
This combo will cost you around 60$ to order and around 4-5$ month to pay for the mobile data for GPS tracking. But we believe that it is worth it if you have a dog that is keen on exploring the city and partying in the woods.
Let us know what did you get for your dog, and what we should review next!
