Birdbuddy Pro Solar

Birdbuddy is the brand that made this category, and the Pro Solar is its flagship. It is also, on published specifications, the most interesting product here - not because the numbers are the biggest, but because of which numbers the company chose to publish and which it declined to.

The Pro Solar publishes a 1/2.7" sensor. That is the only sensor dimension published by any maker in this roundup, and it matters more than the resolution figure sitting next to it.

Here is why. A bird on a feeder perch is almost always backlit - it is outdoors, against the sky, at an hour when the light is coming from behind it. What determines whether you get a photograph or a silhouette is how much light the sensor gathers and how much dynamic range it has, not how many pixels it divides that light between. A larger sensor with HDR beats a smaller sensor at a higher resolution for this specific subject, consistently.

The Pro Solar publishes 2K video and 5MP stills with HDR. Two competitors advertise 4K. On the physics, the Birdbuddy configuration is the better one for this subject, and the fact that it is the only maker willing to publish the sensor dimension at all is a reasonable signal about which company expects that comparison to be made.

Birdbuddy publishes no species-identification count. Its competitors publish 6,000 and 10,000. In a category where that number is the headline feature, declining to print one is a decision, and it is the second thing that makes this product interesting.

The generous reading is that the company understands the number is meaningless for a backyard in Ohio and has chosen not to compete on it - which is consistent with a firm that publishes a sensor size. The cynical reading is that its identification is weaker and the silence is strategic. We cannot settle that from published material, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we can say is that the scale argument applies to every app in the category: the several dozen species that will visit your feeder are covered by all of them.

Birdbuddy sells the same camera in solar and non-solar trims, and the choice between them is entirely a question about your yard rather than your budget. In an open, sunny position the solar roof means you effectively stop thinking about power. Under a canopy it generates very little, and the non-solar version is the more sensible purchase - both models are listed above for exactly that reason. The solar roundup has the five-minute test for working out which yard you have.

The listing offers a subscription rather than requiring one, and does not publish its price. The camera, the notifications and the photographs work without it. This is the ordinary state of affairs in the category and we record it as an optional plan with an unpublished price rather than guessing at a figure - the three-year implications are in the cost guide.

2.4GHz only, like nearly everything here, and Birdbuddy's own support documentation is unusually direct about what that requires from your router. If your network publishes both bands under one name, expect to do something about it during setup rather than discovering it as a fault. The Wi-Fi guide walks through it.

Anyone who reacts badly to app-gated features, anyone in a heavily shaded yard who is drawn to the solar trim specifically, and anyone whose actual requirement is squirrel resistance - this is a plastic-bodied feeder and that is a different roundup.