Product review: Blusmart 12MP HD Infrared Hunting Trail Game Camera

My expectations for this camera were very high because I own Blusmart ASIN: B00SM4DOPY and it had captured a lot of wild life, it runs for 1 week on one set of batteries, and it is fairly easy to set up. This camera is a bit cheaper so I expected some features to be missing at a lower price but overall I expected a similar experience. Turns out the cameras are very different and I found this camera to be disappointing.

Setting up the camera is very tricky because of the primitive user interface. It has no LCD screen to show what the camera is seeing or to display menus. Instead it has an LCD display which displays codes (see video for an example of what it looks like). After many attempts I was not able to set it up in a way that would trigger any videos. Fortunately, the camera has two pre-sets: "A" for time lapse photos and "B" for motion activated video. The pre-sets do work. The quality of the video is not as good as my old Blusmart. The worst thing is that the camera runs only 1 day on a set of eight new AA batteries. This is not a fluke, I have gone through three sets of new batteries to convince myself that this is just how it works. The camera shows the battery level on the front display.

SET UP
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The mode is controlled by a slider inside the camera. The slide has 5 positions:
Left to right:
Set
Off
A
B
Manual

Set (left most switch) allows you to modify settings, including time and showing you were the camera is pointing by red laser beam. I had hard time switching into time changing mode until I turned off the camera while the setting was set to "Set" and then as I turned it on it immediately went into time change mode - blinking "T" which allowed me to change hours, minutes, months and year. I could not get Manual mode to work. "A" and "B" work fine. I mostly use "B" mode which records 10 second motion activated videos.

GENERAL NOTES
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The video quality is highly dependent on lighting. To get decent video the lighting has to be perfect (not too bright, not too dark, sun should be behind the camera).
This camera is robust, brown in color, and blends in with the bark of tree fairly well.
The camera records video on SD card (up to 32G). The camera produces AVI and JPG output. It generates files under a standard directory structure DCIM then 100MEDIA then SYNP0001.JPG or SYNP0001.AVI.
In addition to the camera and the case, the package include USB cable, TV cable, strap for attaching the camera to objects (say a tree) and a user manual.

Attached is a video of the camera and the video taken by the camera to illustrate my review.

If you deciding between several Blusmart cameras we are much (much!) happier with this Blusmart camera. It takes much better videos and the batteries last much longer.


You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★☆☆☆