I've been using other makes and models for years as well and also have a basis for comparison. However, I've never paid over $150 for a camera.
Just to be clear, my comments about
"for years" was meant here regarding only cell cams,
none of which have been available for $150 or less until fairly recently
But in the sub $150 camera comparison I've seen nothing that beats the XB.
At least on
initial price point, you may very well be correct,
but that has not been my personal experience with Tactacam's $100 cell cam,
once the total cost of using x 2 years became disappointingly apparent.
Cost becomes a very different story when you look at the total costs of operation over say a 2 to 3 year time horizon. Of course, total costs include periodic battery replacements & monthly plan fees, but total costs also include any special trips solely just to check on or service a cam, for whatever reason it stopped working.
The true cost comparison between a more reliable & a less reliable cell cam becomes even more dramatic if you divide the total money spent by the total number of pics transmitted.
For cell cams in particular, absolute reliability x how long before
you have to "service" the cams needs to be factored. A
single extra trip annually for just the purpose of changing batteries or an SD card
can totally negate even a substantial initial price discount. This is where longer battery life and higher SD card capacity becomes worth its weight in gold!
One thing commonly overlooked is a cell cam's programming features & reliability to actually get pictures of game that walks in front of it, then transmit those pics back to you. When this doesn't happen, you're paying for something you're not getting, and it's hard to put a "price" on that loss, as you don't know what you don't know.
I found the Tactacams to have an unacceptable "recovery" rate between triggering "events". This basically means there is a timeframe of so many seconds after the cam is triggered before it again becomes capable of being triggered again. And to compound that problem, the Tactacams would only transmit the 2nd pic of any pic volley (such as when you set your cam to take 2 or 3 pics per triggering event).
There are many times I want to see
ALL the pics from a triggering event, and I don't want the cell cam to be unable to trigger a minute later just because it had triggered a minute earlier. This is how you totally miss older bucks following younger bucks.
I'm trying not to write a book here, so I'll just close by saying I've got numerous $200 cell cams that overall "do more", are much more reliable, less costly to operate over the their first 2 years of operation, and have provided important to me pics totally missed by the $100 Tactacams.
That's right, not only have the $200 cell cams provided a lot of pics missed by the $100 Tactacams, but total operational costs for the $200 cell cams has actually been less than for the $100 Tactacams in only 2 years.
Just to be clear, my Tactacam use has been limited to two units, their original $100 models.
Of course, Tactacam's subsequent models have been improved.
But then so have most competitors' subsequent models.
Just saying, there's more to the total costs than the initial price of the cam.
