Spypoint IR-7 Camera Review

2012 SpyPoint IR-7 Red flash 46 count 7 MP (fixed) digital camera review

The very familiar IR-6 and 7 that many found appealing last year is now upgraded for this year. Those features that were deemed negative in the previous models has been attended to and we will see just how well they work this year.

The big issue was of course the delay having a minimum of one minute. This is still the case for normal operation but they have added a method of lowering it to 10 seconds. This is done by turning the camera off and holding down the up button and then turning the camera back on. This will change the minimum one minute down to ten seconds. They have also added sound recording (be sure to open the rubber plug for this) in the video mode. They still use the same camera in the box design and upgraded the latch that holds the camera in, to prevent the inside unit from falling when the box is opened. This kind of year to year upgrade keeps their cameras out front of many because of the attention to detail. Both Moultrie and Stealth seem to have slipped somewhat in this category. A good example is last years Moultrie mini cameras had a very good high grade image sensor but they seemed to have dropped down to a lesser quality this year and that is reflected in the poor picture quality.

If you just go through the programming procedure (switch), you can see that sensing, burst, video length, and resolution are all adjustable. Selling for what we understand of about $160 is hard to beat when coupled with what has been reported as first class customer service. The array grill that breaks up the array pattern has the same camouflage as the case and this is a big plus. The blacked out PIR lens is also a nice touch. Unlike the black IR model the white emitters do show up. The PIR sensitivity is adjustable with a wheel next to the SD card (32 gig) slot. The hardest thing to do in the set up is setting the date/time. Which is a real piece of cake to do.

05-10-2012 update: We have been asked to maybe go back over the trigger times of this camera because of the difference presented by the other three cameras we are in progress with. We will pull them out of the woods soon and try to re evaluate the trigger times and we will show that test as being “a retest” and if there is a change we will report on that. No significant change was noted in the retest.

05-12-2012 update: Very strange that the night flash range tests came out real good but the sample pictures were very bad. This will have to be looked at again very close to determine what happened. The day pictures came out very good as I expected because of what I had seen during my initial tests. There may have been some moisture on the lens during those night pictures due to rain. Flash range was out past 50 feet. We will have to re do the night pictures on the high setting to see if the picture quality remains the same. My initial tests with flash were very sharp and clear so there is something very wrong.

06-02-2012 update: We had a long back and fourth about this camera with the factory folks and the main issue was out trigger times that we recorded. Even though we repeated the tests many times and the results remained the same they just did not want to accept those findings. We received yet another camera to do a comparison and there was a very big difference. This time the trigger times came out at 1.62 seconds for both day and night. This told us that the original camera does in fact have a defect.

08-18-2012 update: What a wild ride this camera gave us. For 80 days of battery life this camera managed 3223 pictures and 39 videos. This replacement camera has served us well without issue. This review is now closed.

Trigger Tests
( without flash 1.98s)

Test with replacement camera 06/02/2012