SPYPOINT vs Moultrie: which cellular camera brand for a hog property

The real difference is the plan, not the camera

Both brands sell competent cameras in the same budget tier, and if you compare them on megapixels you will conclude the decision does not matter much. It does matter, and the reason is the subscription.

Moultrie's camera plans page states it in capitals: all cellular connected devices require a paid subscription. It publishes three tiers per camera, from an image-and-video allowance up to unlimited images, plus a higher tier that bundles its hunt planning features. There is no free camera tier. (The "free" wording in Moultrie's own intro refers to the app, not to a camera plan.)

SPYPOINT's photo transmission plans page publishes a free tier of 100 photos a month - "100 photos. Every month. No fees. No commitment." - and claims to offer the only free photo transmission plan for cellular devices, with three paid tiers above it. We do not print either brand's prices on this site, because they move; what we will say is that the gap between "free" and "the cheapest paid tier" is multiplied by every camera you own, every month, for as long as you own them.

For a hog property that is the whole argument. A hundred photos a month is thin if you are running a camera on a busy feeder - a sounder can burn that in two nights - but it is plenty for a trap camera whose job is to tell you whether the whole group is coming in yet, which is the job Texas A&M AgriLife's trapping guidance is built around. Run the free tier on your scout cameras and pay for the one over the feeder you hunt. See best hog trap cameras for the trap-side version of that argument.

SPYPOINT's own pages disagree, and you should know before you buy

Flash: the spec that decides a hog camera

A low-glow camera fires a faint red glow at the emitters when it takes a night photo. A no-glow camera does not. Game may or may not care; people do. If your camera faces a county road, a lease line or a neighbor's fence, a visible glow is an advertisement for a camera worth stealing, and on a hog property you are specifically photographing animals at night, every night.

SPYPOINT publishes switchable no-glow or low-glow LEDs on the Flex-Dark, set in the app - so one camera does both jobs and you can change your mind after it is hung. That is the best flash answer in this comparison and it is not close.

Both Moultrie cameras here are low-glow only: the Edge 3 and the Edge Solar both publish low-glow and nothing else. Moultrie does make a no-glow camera - the previous-generation Edge 2 Pro - and that is where the availability note below comes in. On SPYPOINT's side, note that the Flex-M twin pack states no flash type at all, on the listing or on SPYPOINT's own product page, which is its own kind of answer.

Power: Moultrie's win

This is where the money goes the other way. Moultrie publishes an integrated, adjustable 2.5 W solar panel on the Edge Solar, feeding an included 2600 mAh / 28 Wh rechargeable pack, with USB-C input as well - so there are no AA batteries to buy and no separate panel to mount and aim. It also publishes a 0.4 s trigger claim and an IP65 rating.

SPYPOINT, on both cameras here, does not publish a battery type or a runtime on its product pages. The Flex-Dark is also sold as a "Flex-Dark Solar" listing, so a solar version exists, but the figures that would let you plan a season are not stated. If your camera sits forty minutes from the gate, the brand that tells you how long it runs is worth something.

The caveat on integrated panels is real and applies to Moultrie here: a built-in panel needs sun. Under a thick canopy, which is exactly where hogs like to be, it will not keep up, and a battery-pack camera is the better answer. We go through that trade in best solar trail cameras.

Feeder control: Moultrie's other win

Moultrie sells the camera and the feeder timer, and it has joined them up. The Edge 3 pairs with Moultrie's Bluetooth feeder timers - the Pro Hunter III kit is the documented example - so the camera becomes the cellular bridge and you can change the feed schedule from the app instead of driving out with a ladder.

On a hog property that is more useful than it first sounds. Hog behavior at a feeder responds to when the feed drops, and being able to shift a spin time by an hour from the truck - after watching last night's photos - is a real tool rather than a gadget. Our feeder timer ranking covers the timer side, and when hogs are most active covers what you would be adjusting toward.

SPYPOINT has nothing equivalent in our registry. If you are building a feeder setup from scratch and you want one app for the camera and the timer, that points at Moultrie.

The published specs, side by side

Read the Field of view row and the Warranty row. Moultrie publishes a 50-degree view on both of its cameras and SPYPOINT publishes none; SPYPOINT publishes a two-year warranty on both of its cameras and we could find no published Moultrie term. Each brand is filling in a cell the other leaves empty, which is the pattern on this whole page.

What neither brand publishes

Three things are missing on both sides and are worth going in knowing.

• Honest night video quality. Every figure in the photo and video row is a resolution, not an image-quality measurement. A 40MP claim on a cellular camera is an interpolated on-demand still; what reaches your phone is a compressed thumbnail on most plans. Do not buy on megapixels.
• Real-world transmission behavior. Neither brand publishes how many photos per day it will actually push on a given tier in weak signal, which is the thing that decides whether a camera is useful at the back of a place.
• Trigger figures that agree with themselves. On the Flex-Dark, SPYPOINT's series page claims 0.3 s while the retail listing says 0.4 s. We carry both and label the claim, because a tenth of a second is inside the noise anyway - but a brand that cannot agree with itself on a headline spec has told you something.

Every performance number on this page is tagged as the maker's claim for this reason. Our how we choose page explains how we score claims we cannot verify.

An availability note worth knowing

Which brand for which property

One last thing: do not buy a cellular camera for a spot you have not proven holds hogs. A cheap card camera and two weeks tells you that for no monthly cost, and then you put the cellular camera where it earns its plan. The card-camera options are in best trail camera for night, and cellular vs non-cellular is the decision underneath this whole page. If you have already settled on cellular and just want the ranking, that is best cellular trail cameras, which includes Tactacam as a third option neither brand on this page has to answer for.