Any input will be greatly appreciated.
Do you have a favorite model? Brand?
What are your experiences with reception and service issues?
What's your experience with battery life and is solar worth it? How about an extra antenna?
Any first hand knowledge, I know absolutely nothing about them but hoping to get two for scouting and trapping.

I have had a Reveal Tacticam since late March. I have been running it through its paces on the worst coverage areas of my farm. With the AT&T Sim card it has been performing well. In area I have been testing is a worse case as far as cell coverage so if I decide to acquire more of the cams they should work in my other areas that have much better cell service. I installed a solar panel late May and have had mixed results with it. I do think part of my issue is the cam is tucked back in the foot of the hill with a fair amount of shade with the leaves on and that coupled with some very poor cell service, I think the cam may be searching too much reducing my battery life. I plan to move it out more in the open this weekend to see if it improves. I like the app that is free for the tacticam. I am not dead set on the tacticam yet but it has performed well so far.

Good info thank you for taking the time to type it out

For the initial cost of camera, the monthly service fee, and the features of the app....Tactacam Reveal is the best option of the ones I have. 2.5 years of trouble free use and counting.

I have a Spartan GoCam, a Moultrie Edge, and the Tactacam.

Spartan = high camera cost, pitiful app with zero features that has to be reinstalled about 4 times a year for it to keep working. Camera is good though- no problems. 5 years.

Moultrie Edge = low camera cost. App is fantastic with the activity features. Has been in field since January. 1000s of pics....90% battery.

If I was to buy another cell cam....it'll be a Tactacam or the Moultrie Edge.

Out of the 8 tactacams I have , 4 of them died within the 1st year under warranty and it was a pain for tactacam to give me a new one or fix them. Got another one now that has died but haven't made it out to take it down to send in.

Think I would look into browning cams, they got excellent customer service and stand behind their products. Had an older cam of theirs that died and it was years out of warranty and they replaced it with a new cell cam.

Who was the dealer where you bought the Browning?

I may get one of those next.

We recently had someone cut through the property one night at midnight and come back through at 0600 that morning. The same Tactacam camera took the pics and you can’t tell squat. They now have a couple of my Spartans up to get good quality pics or even HD pics if wanted, if he comes back through.

I haven’t had the issues others mentioned with any of my Spartans. My only complaint with the App is I used to could take a pic on demand. They no longer have that function with my cheaper versions of the cameras. I have a buddy with the Go Live cameras and he can look at anytime of the day/night and see what’s in front of his camera in HD Video.

I know with mine I can get HD pics and count spurs coming off the antlers if I’m that interested, lol.

One day, all of the cam companies will either be in bed with the coms or they will have their own com companies and every cam out there will require a plan to work. No card slot, no internal memory. You either pay their fees or you don't get to play.

I have no idea why my app keeps freezing. I have to clear the cache/data and log back on. Reassign permissions, etc. Just had to do it again this morning. Had just done it less than 3 weeks ago too. Have had to do it at least 4 times in past year. I have deleted app and re-installed....same crap happens again. My Spartan is connected thru my Verizon account. I dont use the Spartan cell service plans. My Spartan app has zero extra features. Spartan is behind the times with their app. They need a serious upgrade. For the cost of their cameras the app is the worst on the market.

I have requested HD pics thru Tactacam. $5 for 50 requests. Pics are very clear.

I also uses Tactacam Reveals, 13 of them. They are a mixed bag of Gen 1 up to the newest Xpro. They have worked flawlessly for me minus encounters with bears breaking off antennas. Herd360 make better flexable antennas for them. Battery life is great but I have solar on cameras that are 30 miles away. The Reveals pick up cell signal on a farm that I can barely receive signal with my phone, in fact the phone is unusable but the cameras send pics perfectly. I tried Cuddeback on that same farm and they cant pick up the signal at all.

I’ve had 1 moultrie edge out for a two months, a second one a month and a 3rd for two weeks. I can say that the range of detection seems pretty good, day or night. Maybe not the fastest trigger speed but takes great pics and video. I set them up with different batteries to see which perform the best. One with 8 lithium energizer batteries, and the other two with 16 alkaline, Duracell in one, energizer in the other. The 8 lithium are still showing 100% after two months, the energizer with 16 has already dropped to 99 after 2 weeks and the duracell just dropped to 99%. I have good cell service where all 3 are. The cam with 8 lithium has been on a trail and taken close to 500 pics and 30 videos as I was testing that one before I got another. I am liking them so far. Time will tell how they perform. Lithium batteries are the way to go.

My experience with Lithium batteries is they always show 100% until they aren’t, lol. As in 100% and then dead.

I can’t disagree with you. But I do get a lot longer life in colder weather with them in trail cams and ecallers.

True, guess it all depends on how many pics they take as well. My Spartans with alkaline batteries on a trail or watching traps will last months. Put that same camera on feed getting 200+ pics a night and it drops significantly. All trails and traps are set for 0 seconds.
All feed is set for 2-3 minutes. I can always change that through the app if I get hogs and pulling a stalk from a distance.

I have four Moultries and love them. I use a Solar set up and love that as well. Just make sure it gets plenty of Sun Light.

Depending on how many cams a guy plans on needing would play a big part on how I would start. I started buying the cheaper cams of each brand and thought I could weed out what I liked and didn't like. In theory I would find what I liked and switch to that brand. What actually happened is Im currently running 5 different apps between 15 cameras. I found at least buying lower end cams that inevitably you'll get some really good ones and some that are pretty much garbage out of the package and that's even among the same brand and model. An example is I have one tactacam xb that has been garbage. I can only get a month out of lithium batteries getting only 300 or less pics in that time, it has been like that since day one but works well enough that it never qualified for warranty. I know enough guys that love tactacam that I happened to get a lemon but being 0/1 makes me hesitant to buy another one. One the flip side I have 2 cell links from spypoint that have about 1 star reviews everywhere and are the chincy little units that the SD card plugs into a regular cam and makes it a cell cam. Everything about them looks like a failure point but for me they've been working flawlessly for 3+ years.

Another factor is the cell plans. I have a bunch of the Bushnell cellucore 20 which midway has right now for $49. Had really good luck but the plans start at $10 a month so I favor the muddy cams for summer even though I don't like them as much because you get 500 pics for $5 which is plenty on public land big woods trails.

I have been using stealthcam, have 4 that have been on steady for over a year. Very happy with them. But recently bought 2 Muddy mitigator I think they are. Both stealthcam and Muddy operate on the same app which is very cheap. I use the 60 dollar solar battery on all my cameras and have not had to change any batteries. I will be buying more Muddies, as you can get an on demand picture with them anytime you want to see what is happening. The Muddies here go on sale for $69 often

I bought it directly off of Browning and contacted browning when it checked out. Think the guys name was Ralph I talked to.

Swamp, my DIL recently bought a spot on FB for a Tactacam Reveal 2.0. A guy apparently gets them at cost and was offering 10 spots for $18 a spot. She bought 1 spot and won the Camera and a solar charger.
My son has it deployed already and so far we like it. But, there is NO way to change the pic taking times. Guess it’s a good thing it came with a solar charger, lol.

Are we missing something or is that just how it is?

From what he’s found out, the 2.0 doesn’t have that option. It just takes pics whenever motion is detected. He can get 2-3 pics with the same time in the time stamp, almost like a Burst setting on other cams.