Great camera - bad data plan structure as advertised image per plan is not even close to accurate - Bushnell Impulse Trail Camera

I've owned Bushnell wireless cameras since 2015 so I'm no stranger to how they work and what plan works for me. A few months ago my Bushnell Trophy HD Wireless model started failing so I decided to upgrade to the Impulse. This model has a lot of features that were well thought out, and I am satisfied with the camera itself, but there is a huge issue with their data plans, and this may make some people think twice before buying this model.

Since I have been using cellular cameras non-stop for the past four years, I'll list the pros and cons of the Bushnell Impulse.

PROS - The Impulse has excellent response time and takes excellent images. This is a huge factor if you decide to use this camera in situations where you are monitoring an area for security reasons. Most of the time my cell would get notification in 30-90 seconds of the camera being activated. The drop down front makes it much easier to access the screen than other models and the display is simplified for basic menu commands. It's a text only monochrome LCD screen so you can't see what has been captured, but that is not an issue as these can be viewed on your cell phone with the Bushnell app.

Speaking of the app - Bushnell recently fixed their application so it is now more functional. It's a bit cumbersome to delete images but, overall, they took care of most of the complaints over the years.

I'm not sure how long the battery life will be, but I did notice that having the tracking mode on at all times decreased the battery life by several percentage a day, so I ended up turning it off. Another nice feature is you can request an instant shot. So, if you are needing to see what is going on at your camera's location you can choose to do so at any time. In addition, the camera can be remotely software locked so no one can change things if it gets stolen. It can also be tracked via GPS and Bushnell’s map is pretty accurate (within 50’).

The camera has several options for many features, including sensitivity. I’ll end the “pros” on that note because this is also a problem.

CONS – The camera is sensitive – to the point where it can be a problem. In normal settings it was constantly sending thumbnails of my location even though there was no movement, critters, or even wind. Setting this to the lowest setting appears to have fixed this. I’m using this to monitor my driveway and the lowest setting would still trigger an image if a squirrel walked 20’ in front of the camera. No big deal but I wanted to mention this. The night vision LEDs are not as good as Bushnell’s previous models either.

The by-far biggest problem is the advertised data plans. As I mentioned, I have been using their plans for four years now so I know exactly how much I use. The earlier Bushnell wireless cams sent a thumbnail which averaged a pretty steady 15kb (plus or minus 1kb). I never had to use any plan higher than the $9.95 a month because this would cover up to 1500 images a month, as advertised. Bushnell plans are structured by data usage along with a “approximate images” per plan. Unfortunately, this is no longer even close to being accurate. The Impulse has a very inconsistent in thumbnail file size, with daylight images being the worst. When I set up my camera on my driveway I worked with it for two days to get the optimal position and took a total of 489 thumbnails. The Impulse thumbnails ended up being as high as 177kb per image and most daylight ones being 100k or more. What this means is that even though they are advertising the 9.95 data-plan as handling approx. 1500 images, in reality you would be lucky if you got 400 thumbnails. Those 489 thumbnails the Impulse sent used over 40mb of data. This means that a plan that easily lasted a month was exhausted in one day with the Impulse model. The next higher plan claims 2500 images for 65mb, which is also hugely inaccurate as it will likely work out to around 600-700 images. There is no need for a thumbnail size to be so big but they are using a 640x480 format rather than the older models which use a 320x240 image size.

Now 400 images may seem like a lot if you have never used a wireless trail camera before but keep in mind that cameras typically trigger 3 to 5 times per movement and if you had corn or feed in the area you could expect at least 10 visitors a day to where your camera is set up, and since this camera is overly sensitive on movement you can expect a lot of false triggers if there are any branches within image view, even if they are 20-30’ away with a breeze of 5-10mph. Bushnell needs to either decrease the thumbnail to 320x240 or fix their data-plan webpage to advertise a more accurate image count of about one-third of what they are currently claiming.

I would recommend this camera if they corrected their data plan problem as their "1500 image" claim is actually only around 400 images. Had I known this I would have not bought this camera.