So for two years now I’ve been using various trail cameras that I’ve picked up from Amazon, Walmart, or Cabelas. I may have talked about this prior in blog posts about hunting or twitter or instagram.

In 2019, I bought a cheap trail cam from Amazon called Cam Park T45. It did its job, and takes pretty good quality pictures. I would up buying another one that year just to see the difference in models from the T45 and the T30. The T45 is the far superior one as the T30 is super zoomed in on what’s in front of it. You probably miss about 10 feet with it zoomed in as much as it is.

In 2020, I added a few more cameras, from Cam Park, still amazing quality pictures for the low price. By the end of the season I had six cameras and about four thousand (4000) pictures to go through, and technically still do.

In 2021, I found a camera at Walmart, the Spypoint W, aka the Walmart version of the EVO. Tried to make it work, and wasn’t getting anywhere. I returned it, and decided to swear off Spypoint cameras. Meanwhile I’m reading on Archery Talk that Tactacam is a good camera for cheap, approximately 100 dollars, but you can’t find them anywhere or if you do, people jack the prices up. Same time though, I’m looking at some of the other SpyPoint devices and thought to myself that maybe I just had a faulty device and with some conversation on Archery Talk, I was sold on the fact that I probably had a faulty device.

On Ebay, I wound up getting a Micro Solar and a Link-S, both from SpyPoint, and set them up in my parents backyard to see if there issues, or underlying concerns so that I could get in contact with them. Both cameras worked with no issues. About the end of March I stumbled upon two Tactcam Reveals at the local Walmart, and figured why not try them out too. In the Spring, of 2021, I brought the Spypoint and a few other Link-Micros, as well as the Tactacams and Campark, to our property out in Pennsylvania, and set them up. Over the last several months, I’ve been getting pictures daily from the Spypoint cameras, as well as the Tactacams and I think I can weigh in on my own thoughts between the two.

Tactacam. They come in at about one hundred to about one hundred-thirty dollars, which for a cellular trail camera, that’s inexpensive to some that are in the neighborhood of five hundred or so. The picture quality, is superb. I can clearly see what is in front of the camera. I do not like how there is no ‘free’ option for the transmission plan, you have to pay five dollars for the minimum pictures per camera. The battery life on the cameras is also very poor, where you get maybe two to three months off a charge. Most of the external accessories, like an external battery, is sold via a third party.

Spypoint. Right off the bat, Spypoint’s Micro is comparable to the Tactacam, and with thirty to fifty dollars more, you can get a solar version of the Micro, and it will keep itself charged. They also have those more expensive models that do just a bit more than the Micros. Their app allows you to schedule when you receive pictures to your phone, which helps with battery life. My cameras have been up at the property since April, some others that I brought up in July, and none have dropped lower than eighty percent. All of Spypoint’s accessories, are made and sold by Spypoint. There is also a free plan that you have once you activate you’re device, but if you join their Insider’s Club you also receive their basic plan, which is two hundred fifty photos per month, instead of one hundred. The downside to Spypoint though, is the quality of the image you get sent to your phone. At long distances, the image gets very blurry, which is normal, but even at some close up shots, it sometimes is hard to make out certain features deer or other animals have.

The biggest downside, for any trail camera, is if they have a problem, you have to go and retrieve the camera and try to figure out what’s wrong from that point through a company’s customer support.

Personally, I’m siding with using Spypoint Trail Cameras from now on. Between the free plan, how relatively cheap the cameras are, I’m in.