What’s a good trail camera that’s not to expensive to run? I need to get a new cell cam to put out sometime this year.

Browning Command Ops 22 MP. Just replaced my Coverts with 2 more of these. Around a hundred bucks at TSC,

I'm in the same boat. Looked at the Tacticams.

my main question is ... is there a place to see the monthly/annual rates for the various brands phone rates?

The Browning i mentioned is not cell but they have one that isnt much more'. I dont have a good signal where mine are.

The past 3 years I have been using the Moultrie Edge Mobile Trail Cams. I have 4 cameras on my Missouri farm, Its $10 a month per camera, includes 1000 pictures and 10 videos each cam. Its great to have these cameras and be 500 miles away in Texas. Battery life last a good while between my trips up there. I cant complain about the Moultrie Game Cams

Been a big fan of Moultrie Mobile cameras. Lately, I’ve been using a lot of the Edge cameras and have been very pleased. Add in the lithium batteries and it lasts a Long time. The 16 batteries also last all g time.

Edge 2 & Edge 2 Pro are in my hands but haven’t tested at the ranch just yet, but overall, very impressed.

If anyone wants to place an order through moultriemobile.com you can use my discount code: MFT and get 10% off…

I have a Moultrie base cell cam. Takes decent pictures, but doesn't take pictures I know it should(me at feeder). Is the edge that much better than the base?

We have multiple accounts and have tried all kinds in all price ranges. I have narrowed down to two, Reconyx or Muddy Revolver. As new things come out, we will try them too.

Solar panels are a must in my opinion

I've had a pretty good experience with the Tactacam Reveal X Gen 2 and Pro Gen 2. With Energizer Lithium Batteries and the Reveal Solar Panel I get about 6-8 months out of a set of batteries (depend on location activity and sun exposure). Pic quality is good not great and the service can be expensive it you are running a lot of cameras.

The solar panel has a built in lithium battery that it recharges (it doesn't recharge the batteries in the camera). It's designed to use the power from the solar panel battery and when none is available it uses the batteries in the camera. They sell a rechargeable lithium power pack that works well but you have to take it out to recharge it. One of my buddies bought 2 for each camera so he can just swap them out each time he needs to. Kind of expensive to do this but it works well.

Browning

Boss swears by the 5G Spy Points with solar panel and rechargeable lithium battery pack. He's been running them in Haskell county for years with zero issues.

Weve run between 15-30 stealth cams on multiple properties at a time for years. Pick them up in early March and place them in late July. Will have to check models.

I ended up with a Moultrie Edge 2 and a HME solar battery pack. I'll put them out tomorrow.

I just bought the Stealth 360 and right now I am loving it. I have the solar pack hooked to it and definitely get good pics all the way around.

Spartans for years but recently added a Moultrie Edge Pro and really like it. No SD card needed. May change totally to the Moultrie when my Spartan yearly plans expire.

Just bought three Tactacam 3.0 and not the 3.0 Pro. $139 each.

Tactacam reveal is a great choice.

Tactacam

tactacam sk and have 4 running with zero issues and full battery all the time.

I run the Tactacam Reveals Gen 2s and the Stealth Cam Fusions all with solar panels (which is a must for cell cams). I have found Tactacams customer service to be much better that Stealth Cams when I had a repair needed earlier this year.

Probably a stupid question but have never ran or explored cell cams - do they run on a local network with connected devices downloading to a central hub camera? We have limited cell service on most of the ranch so would only main hub in the local network need cell service to be able to download photos remotely? What are the limitations (terrain, distance, etc) that limit transmissibility between points in the network?

Most still store on a Micro SD disk individually still but also house the photos on an upload basis to storage cloud which you can designate how many and what type, regular and high definition sent or allowed to be viewed as well as intervals.

More you pay, the more you can play...

I just got a new flyer from Cabelas/Bass Pro for the upcoming season but threw it away
yesterday. If my memory serves me correctly (which can let me down sometimes) , I remember seeing
the Tactacam 3.0 for $99 and the Tactacam Pro 3.0 for $119 or $129. Maybe someone else can confirm
it for those looking to buy Trail cameras. Here are some of my findings on trail cameras through the years.
The Tactacam is supposed to have 2 antennas in it per their technical staff, one internal and 1 external.
Where I am hunting it is so remote that we rarely get a bar of signal strength on our cell phones but we
manage to get 1-2 lights of signal strength on the Tactacam. Those that still have weak signals, we have purchased some
external antennas (cheap no name antennas instead of the expensive ones they want you to buy) and raised antenna heights to
get almost all of our cameras to come in and provide pictures. I am still in favor of putting SD cards in them even though the new
3.0 versions have internal memory. A lot of Trail Cameras transmit pictures with less pixel detail to save transfer time and bandwidth
versus the detail that's on the SD cards. Shorter transmit times can help save battery power too which can be nice if you are running on just AA batteries.
Some trail cameras can be set to take 1-3 pictures but when transmitting they send just 1 picture but the SD card has the additional 1-2 pictures
on it which can provide a slight angle change that can provide more detail. Sorry this is so long.
Great hunting to all of you this fall.

I posted this reply in another thread but i think it works on this one too.

I am currently using three Tactacam Reveal Pros, an Exodus Render and an Exodus Rival, along with two Spartan Golive 2s and one Spartan Gocam. In my opinion, the tactacams are not as good as the others. I have not had any problems with them but they app functionality is not quite as good of an interface as the other two brands. I think the Spartans take the best pics and videos but the exodus app is slightly better. I run solar packs on all so I have not had any battery issues with any of the brands. Exodus has had the best customer support and the only problem I have really had was a SIM card go bad on one. The owners manuals suck for all of them for any advance settings or suggestions. I don’t really have time to watch 6000 YouTube videos to find out how to work my damn cameras. Data plans are a toss up. I probably give Spartan a slight edge but exodus is close behind. Tactacams aren’t bad. They are a little cheaper than exodus and a good bit cheaper that Spartan and functionally wise it shows. They would probably be fine for anyone who hasn’t used any of the more premium brands because they won’t know what they are missing out on and they may not need anything more fancy anyway. Again, this is only my opinion based on actually using all three brands and your mileage may vary…..

The Tactacams are probably the best overall value. They don't do anything great but they don't do anything bad. Since I originally posted the above I have had to get an RMA to fix the motion sensor in one of the Spartans and another one has started acting up as well. Exodus probably is best overall but they are getting a new app in the next few weeks so I don't know what king of bugs that will have in it when launched.