I recently (Feb 2014) had the opportunity to evaluate different iBeacon hardware for a project.

http://roximity.com

* "ok" price

* horrible customer communication

* in reality to want to sell you their services and not the iBeacons.

* not configurable (proximity id, major, minor)

* really long shipping time to europe (4 weeks)

https://www.sticknfind.com

* "ok" price

* nice form factor (small)

* not really iBeacon compatible. They say you can flash their beacons to make them compatible, but i haven't found out how since their support is not responding.

* not configurable (proximity id, major, minor)

http://kontakt.io

* good price

* great support

* major, minor configurable. proximity id not

* form factor kinda bulky

* they seem to be able to deliver huge amount of beacons

http://www.easibeacon.com

* great price

* great support

* nice form factor (same as stickNFind)

* fully configurable (proximity id, major, minor)

* the company is relatively young

Can't say anything about the battery life yet, but the batteries were replaceable in each case.

Here's another one that combines Arduino http://blog.onlycoin.com/posts/2013/10/3/coin-arduino-ble-de...

Read our blog post on iBeacon battery life http://www.marconilabs.com/ibeacon-battery-life-does-size-ma...

Best, Pieter

Awesome summary! Thanks!

Gimbal beacons have the suckiest battery life. The ones that I had expired after only two months of usage. Of course you can replace the battery (big plus) but the maintenance would be costly if deployed at a customer site.

For series 10, absolutely. Their series 20 seems to have better battery life (4 AA), but they need to "approve" you in order to purchase them... still yet to see one in the wild.