The 3 Best Trail Cameras of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Kyle Fitzgerald

After a new round of testing, the Bushnell Core S-4K No Glow Trail Camera is our new top pick, and the Meidase P60 Pro Trail Camera is our new runner-up. Our budget pick remains the same.

There’s nothing quite like seeing an animal in the wild, whether it’s a bear wandering into your backyard or a deer silently gliding through wooded backcountry.

But to catch these moments, you often need good timing and a little luck (or an adventure in the woods).

When you don’t have those, a great trail camera can do the work for you.

Since 2020, we’ve tested nine cameras in the wild—putting many of them through rainstorms, freezing conditions, and whipping winds—and reviewed hundreds of photos and videos.

We recommend the Bushnell Core S-4K No Glow Trail Camera because of its image quality, ease of setup, reliability, and two-year warranty.

This easy-to-set-up trail camera takes better images (including 4K video) and has a better warranty than all the cameras we tested.

This camera’s image quality isn’t as good as our top pick, but it captured action just as reliably (and sometimes performed better). However, it’s made by a less established brand, and its warranty isn’t as good.

This trail camera is a cinch to set up and takes better pictures than similarly priced models. It is less customizable than our other picks, though.

This easy-to-set-up trail camera takes better images (including 4K video) and has a better warranty than all the cameras we tested.

During our field testing, the Bushnell Core S-4K No Glow Trail Camera delivered the cleanest and most lifelike daytime and nighttime images of any trail camera we tested.

It’s simple to set up, and it consistently detected and captured movement up to 70 feet away (and sometimes beyond).

Its quick trigger speed and recovery time ensures that it doesn’t miss the action.

It has a hybrid photo-video mode, which takes a video after a burst of photos.

It’s our most expensive pick, but it’s the only one that delivers 4K video and offers a two-year warranty.

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This camera’s image quality isn’t as good as our top pick, but it captured action just as reliably (and sometimes performed better). However, it’s made by a less established brand, and its warranty isn’t as good.

While the Meidase P60 Pro Trail Camera doesn’t deliver the same image quality as our top pick, it’s a good value in every other way.

It has a fast trigger speed and a great recovery time, and during our field tests it consistently captured a lot of wildlife, big and small.

During our detection distance testing, the P60 Pro performed better than our top pick and regularly caught movement up to 100 feet away (at that distance, however, photo quality suffered for all the cameras we tested).

Like our top pick, it has a hybrid mode setting. When set, it takes a video after taking a burst of photos.

Unlike our top pick, it’s made by a less established brand and offers only a one-year warranty.

This trail camera is a cinch to set up and takes better pictures than similarly priced models. It is less customizable than our other picks, though.

The Wildgame Innovations Terra Extreme 14MP is a low-price trail camera that’s simple to use. It also won’t break the bank if you want to set up multiple cameras.

But be warned: It’s not very customizable and allows you to set only the date and time and choose between still and video. This does, however, make the setup process quicker and simpler than other cameras.

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I’m a staff writer covering outdoors and travel gear for Wirecutter. I’ve written and contributed to buying guides for camping chairs, first aid kits, and headlamps. I also previously worked as a photo editor at Wirecutter.

For this guide:

Most people who buy trail cameras are hunters, field researchers, or recreational wildlife watchers. This guide is primarily geared toward the latter—people who just get a kick out of seeing the animals that prowl around their homes or cabins.

Our favorite outdoor security cameras also allow you to spy on animals, and they add other features, like 24-7 video, two-way talking, and smart-home integration. But they produce relatively low-quality still images (with a fraction of the resolution found in most trail cameras) and must be placed in range of a Wi-Fi network or outlet.

If watching wildlife is your main goal, you’re going to want a dedicated trail camera.

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A ton of models are available in the trail camera category. They tend to come and go quickly. And they have a wide range of capabilities and features.

To narrow the field, we looked at cameras that were available from major retailers like Amazon, Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s, and Dick’s Sporting Goods, as well as from established brands like Browning, Bushnell, and Spypoint.

With the exception of our budget pick, which was last tested in 2020, we picked cameras to test based on these criteria:

What about megapixel count? Trail camera manufacturers market megapixel counts of 14, 30, 48, or more, but their cameras’ native resolutions are only a fraction of that number.

They get away with this thanks to interpolation, a process where the camera’s software enlarges its original picture, digitally filling in the details by adding pixels. Good interpolation can make the final result look (somewhat) natural, and bad interpolation can make an image look grainy, mushy, or oversharpened.

Either way, if you set your camera to a resolution that’s higher than its minimum setting, you’re likely getting digitally enhanced and enlarged results, for better or worse.

We considered several other important factors while testing our five finalists, the details of which you can find below. (Note that we didn’t retest our budget pick, which was tested in 2020, but we still stand by this recommendation.)

This easy-to-set-up trail camera takes better images (including 4K video) and has a better warranty than all the cameras we tested.

The Bushnell Core S-4K No Glow Trail Camera delivered the most lifelike daytime and nighttime images of any camera we tested, and its build quality and two-year warranty are better than the rest.

It takes the best images of all the trail cameras we tested. After looking over hundreds of photos and videos, we consistently preferred the images from the Core S-4K to any other camera.

The images aren’t perfect, but they were the most true-to-life in terms of exposure, detail, and saturation.

This camera also took some of the best night images and video, and it has customizable settings for capturing fast motion or prioritizing long-range subjects.

It produces 4K video and has a hybrid photo-video mode. Like its photos (and similar to every other trail camera), the Core S-4K’s 4K video is interpolated. That means the camera is not capable of recording native 4K video, so its final video output is digitally enhanced and enlarged to make it 4K.

Still, during our tests, its daytime and nighttime video surpassed competitors in exposure, detail, and color. It also has a hybrid photo-video mode, which means that it takes a video clip after a burst of photos.

It’s easy to set up. Once you turn it on, its 1.5-inch color screen shows you what its camera sees, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of positioning the camera (although it’s tricky to get your head out of the shot while simultaneously looking at the live view).

On other cameras, like our runner-up, the lens and the screen are attached to the door of the camera. This means that when you open it, the screen shows you the opposite direction of where it’s going to shoot, and you might need to do some test shots to get the right angle. Not so with the Core S-4K.

It starts automatically. Each time you turn it on, it starts a 10-second countdown until it starts looking for motion and taking photos, and the red LED blinks like a digital camera’s timer.

This feature is surprisingly handy. Other cameras require you to hold or hit a button to start its countdown. This is easy to forget, as I learned during my testing.

It’s customizable. The Core S-4K’s default settings are a good start, but it has lots of granular settings, too: camera-only, video-only, and hybrid modes; three image sizes to manage card space; number of pictures it takes in a burst; flash settings for long range, fast motion, or lower-intensity; and video length of up to one minute.

It has a better warranty and feels tougher than the rest. Bushnell’s trail cameras come with a two-year warranty, which is one year longer than the warranties offered by the other cameras we tested.

Compared with several other cameras we tested, the Core S-4K’s housing feels like it’s made of thicker plastic, and the latch that secures its housing is much sturdier than the rest (with the exception of the Browning model we tested).

It also has a metal clasp to hold its strap in place, which is far less likely to fail than the plastic ones on other cameras, especially in cold weather.

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This camera’s image quality isn’t as good as our top pick, but it captured action just as reliably (and sometimes performed better). However, it’s made by a less established brand, and its warranty isn’t as good.

If our top pick is unavailable, or you’re okay sacrificing a little photo quality for a less expensive camera, the Meidase P60 Pro Trail Camera is a great choice.

It’s reliable and takes a lot of images. I found a den in the woods that looked active, so I set the P60 Pro up near a tree to see what it would capture. It did not disappoint, taking hundreds of photos (and a bunch of videos) of an elusive bobcat. It was a highlight of my testing.

During distance and field testing, the P60 Pro photographed wildlife as consistently or better than more expensive cameras, even as I rotated all of the cameras through different areas. Perhaps it was in the right place at the right time, but when wildlife crossed its path, it did not miss.

Like our top pick, it has a lot of custom settings and a hybrid mode, which shoots a video after a photo or burst of photos.

It produces good (but not amazing) images. While it didn’t match our top pick’s image quality, the P60 Pro stood equal to or slightly above the rest of the pack, all of which cost more (with the exception of our budget pick). It also produces 2K video that looks surprisingly good for a camera in its price range.

It’s easy to set up, use, and customize. Its menu system is easy to navigate, and there are a lot of ways to customize its settings: shooting modes, photo quality, photo bursts, video quality and length, motion sensitivity, flash strength, and many more.

It’s not as easy to position as our top pick because its screen doesn’t show you what it’s going to shoot—it took me a few test shots to get it aimed correctly the first time.

Finally, it has a very clear start button, which is more intuitive than the GardePro and Vikeri models we tested.

It withstood testing in harsh weather. While testing through a few intense rainstorms, this camera fared as well as our top pick. Water leaked into the housing of two other Amazon best sellers, the GardePro A3S and the Vikeri 4K 32MP Trail Camera, each of which cost as much or more than the P60 Pro.

This trail camera is a cinch to set up and takes better pictures than similarly priced models. It is less customizable than our other picks, though.

The Wildgame Innovations Terra Extreme 14MP—which my colleague Sarah Witman tested in 2020—is a cheap, simple-to-use camera to start your trail camera journey.

It’s also great if you want to get multiple cameras without breaking the bank.

It’s cheap! Trail cameras frequently go on sale as new models are released, but at the time of publication, the Terra Extreme 14MP was almost one-third the cost of our top pick.

It has decent image quality for the price. The still photos and videos it produces can be a bit overexposed and pixelated, but they still look more true-to-life than those from similarly priced models, like the Moultrie A700i. It also records video in 15-second bursts, but it doesn’t record audio, unlike our other picks.

Its detection distance and trigger speed are solid. The Terra Extreme 14MP can detect movement up to 40 feet away, and its trigger speed is rated at 0.8 second, both of which are significantly lower than our other picks. Still, this is a good value when you consider its price and that photo quality falls off on most trail cameras beyond 40 to 60 feet.

It’s super simple. This camera has the fewest settings of any model we tested (it lets you set the date and time and choose between still or video), making it less customizable. But, on the plus side, the Terra Extreme 14MP takes only a few seconds to set up.

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We considered more than 100 models and tested nine, two of which are now discontinued. Of those that are left:

The GardePro A3S matched the reliability and photo quality of our runner-up (and suffers from the same photo-quality deficits).

The clamps that held the camera closed were flimsier than the Meidase P60 Pro Trail Camera, and during a rainstorm, water leaked into the housing of the camera.

At the time of testing, it cost as much as the P60 Pro, but it’s no longer listed on GardePro’s website. A customer support representative confirmed that it’s not discontinued but is now exclusively sold on Amazon. At the time of publication, it costs slightly more than our runner-up.

The Vikeri 4K 32MP Trail Camera is a best seller on Amazon and similarly priced to our top pick. Its daytime pictures were generally as good as that of our top pick, but the nighttime photos were not—its flash illumination area is uneven and much smaller.

Its nighttime images also suffered from more motion blur and graininess than that of its competitors.

Like the GardePro A3S, water leaked into its housing during a rainstorm.

Lastly, it has the least intuitive interface, and cycling through its photos on the display is painfully tedious.

The Browning Dark Ops Pro X 1080 trigger speed is rated on par with every other camera we tested, and it has good image quality, but more than once it took photos too late (see the sample image above).

It also doesn’t have a hybrid video and photo mode, so unlike our top pick or runner-up, it can’t record video after taking a series of pictures.

But its photo quality is almost as good as our top pick, and it has good nighttime illumination.

The Moultrie A700i is, on paper, almost indistinguishable from our budget pick, and its two-year warranty is twice as long. But its photos and videos were oversaturated and not as crisp as we’d like—especially with faraway objects.

All of our picks can be powered by rechargeable batteries. Our favorite rechargeables last just as long on a single charge as the best single-use batteries, but at a fraction of the cost over time.

If your camera doesn’t come with an SD card for storage, consider our recommendations, all of which have at least 64 GB capacity, which is plenty of space.

You might also consider an SD card reader that plugs into your phone. During testing, I used one, which allowed me to download and see photos on my phone in the field, rather than wait until I got home.

If you’re worried about your trail camera getting stolen, several companies sell enclosures and locks to keep them secure. We also recommend writing down the location of your trail cameras if you place them in a remote location. The best trail camera is the one you don’t lose!

Bushnell sells a solar panel for its cameras, which we haven’t had the chance to test. But it could be handy if you’d like to power our top pick beyond its battery life.

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Cellular trail cameras send photos to your phone shortly after they are taken (and as a result, you don’t have to hike out to your camera to retrieve photos). They tend to be more expensive and require a separate data plan with a wireless provider, but we’d like to expand this guide to include them in the future.

Somewhere in between cellular trail cameras and the SD-card models we recommend Bluetooth- or Wi-Fi–enabled cameras. You still have to go out to the camera to get its photos, but you don’t have to remove an SD card and instead can transfer images wirelessly. I almost lost a few SD cards in deep snow during testing, so I’m looking forward to trying these.

I also plan to test the popular Tasco 12MP Trail Camera against our budget pick.

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Disposable batteries maintain a more constant voltage before dying (usually 1.5 volts), while rechargeables keep running at a lower voltage (dipping down from 1.5 to 1.2 volts) before cutting out.

Some trail cameras (like the Moultrie A700i) will stop working when the total power drops below about 1.3 volts per battery, so you should always check which batteries the user manual recommends.

And no matter what kind you use, make sure all four batteries are fully charged when you put them in, and don’t use a mix of battery types and brands.

A lot of factors affect battery life.

After a few weeks outside, your trail camera might accumulate cobwebs, bird feces, and other detritus. We recommend wiping it down with a damp cloth every so often to keep it clean.

Placing it out of direct sunlight, if possible, also helps slow down the rate at which the plastic exterior degrades.

This article was edited by Christine Ryan and Ben Frumin.

Kyle Fitzgerald

Kyle Fitzgerald is an associate staff writer covering outdoors and travel gear. He grew up hiking and skiing in Vermont, and he has camped and backpacked throughout the West Coast and South America. He has also driven across the country seven times.

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