GardePro X66 Pro cellular trail camera review

REVIEW – We seem to have developed a skunk problem in my neighborhood.  I say that because my dog has been sprayed no less than five times this summer (three times in one very smelly week) and has had multiple “encounters.”  Now, that might seem odd since I live within the city of Los Angeles and not out in the sticks, but if you’ve ever visited LA you know it’s spread out and it’s got a LOT of wild parkland spread around.  In my relatively urban area, there are coyotes, opossums, raccoons, about a jillion squirrels, and apparently skunks. We haven’t spotted any mountain lions here, but half a mile away residents capture them on doorbell cameras.   It’s pretty nuts.  Anyway, one of my neighbors thought that my yard might have a skunk nest  hiding somewhere since my dog was killing them right and left, but the only place I could think that they might be living is behind the garage.  I leave things alone back there.  It’s a graveyard of old gardening stuff and about a billion oak leaves that I’m pretty sure are hiding angry little black widow spiders.   I decided I needed something that would capture the vibrant food chain that calls my backyard home.  So about 4 weeks ago, our family deployed the GardePro X66 Pro cellular trail camera.  This thing is perfect for back behind the garage because it doesn’t need my wifi signal to work. It’s got LTE service that lets me monitor the backyard from anywhere.

⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $89.99 and up
Where to buy: GardePro and Amazon

What is it?

The GardePro X66 Pro is a cellular trail camera designed for spotting and recording wildlife.

What’s included?

• Camera, battery and housing
• Antenna
• USB-C to A adapter
• USB C cable
• Webbed strap
• Instructions

In addition, they sent the solar panel which comes with a variety of cords and mounting kit.

Tech specs

Design and features

The GardePro X66 Pro camera is designed for hunters who want to monitor an area and see what’s active, but they can’t live out in the woods to see for themselves.  It has a number of cool features that make it perfect for such an endeavor. For a little extra money you can buy GardePro’s compatible solar panel, which, along with its 7800 mAh battery, means you can keep it hanging out in the woods for weeks (perhaps months) at a time. Worried about losing it? You won’t, because the camera has GPS location sync with the GardePro app. You can see where you left it (generally). It will connect to the strongest LTE signal it finds, but you do need to subscribe to their data plan for that functionality. According to the product website, it has full North American coverage. Finally, it has HD night vision.36 IR LEDs promise up to 100 feet of visibility.

I was on an extended vacation when my camera arrived, so my son put up the GardePro X66 Pro in our backyard. He attached it to a mid-sized palm tree and put the solar panel up as well. The view encompassed a large area of the backyard, and I know that I get a lot of small game popping around back there because I’ve seen it. Raccoons on the top of the fence, an occasional opossum, and a myriad of squirrels all call my backyard their ‘hood. I haven’t ever seen a skunk back there, but they seem the most active after dark and I’ve been in bed whenever my dog was sprayed.  Now, I know that the wildlife camera probably isn’t designed to capture such tiny creatures at a distance, so the fact that I didn’t really ever see any game in any of the photos it took wasn’t a surprise to me. However, my dog is a fairly good-sized animal. She’s 44 lbs and very much resembles a coyote. The camera only occasionally spotted her, and she is outside the majority of the time.  I really think there should have been a lot more shots of her in the back, yet there weren’t.

When I returned home from vacation, I relocated the GardePro X66 Pro to take in a large portion of the wildlife refuge behind the garage. This area is covered in a deep layer of leaves, and I know it attracts all kinds of critters, but I doubted my neighbor’s claim that I had a skunk nest.  My dog hangs out back there so much that I’m sure she would sniff them out. It’s not a particularly big area, and I had trouble setting up the GardePro X66 Pro where it could see the entire width because I have a small fence blocking the view. I wound up wrapping the camera around a fencepost, and the camera could “see” about 2/3 of the space. Once again, the camera failed to capture my dog most of the time. I never saw a single smaller creature either.

Part of the draw of the GardePro X66 Pro is the LTE functionality. When you first set up the camera, the app leads you through the setup mode and requires you to subscribe to a GardePro LTE data plan. These plans range from $7 to $15 per month, but if you are deploying several cameras, there are shared plans that cost between $12 and $26 per month.  There are also discounts available for paying annually. You are given 30 days free to start. This is a bit of a bummer if you are setting this up within range of your wifi, but again, this is meant for hunters who want functionality in remote areas. I was able to monitor my backyard from my vacation, so that was kind of neat. You can livestream on the data plan for up to 10 minutes a month, but if you want more, you can purchase add-ons that don’t expire.

One other note about setup:  you must provide your own SD card.  I think most wildlife cameras and many home security cameras also demand you provide an SD card, but it deserves a mention.

There is a setting where you can opt to have the GardePro X66 Pro record a small video clip rather than just a photo. This could help you see what made the camera record, so I enabled that once I discovered it. It didn’t help me.  I still don’t always know what it thinks it’s recording.  It did record a bird, and that tells me that it can spot small creatures.  I don’t know why it doesn’t capture the eight billion squirrels that are out there, though.

As for the GPS functionality, I didn’t find it to be super accurate, but I guess if you were looking for it in the woods, it would give you the general area of where it should be. When I looked at the map to see where it thought my GardePro X66 Pro was, it assured me it was next to the neighbor’s pool. In fact, it was about 20 feet away from that.

My son set up the GardePro X66 Pro with the solar panel.I didn’t move it when I relocated the camera because my entire backyard is covered in very deep shade. The amount of solar energy generated is negligible. However, I might set the camera up in the front yard, and if I do that, I will definitely deploy the solar panel.  The solar panel comes with separate instructions and mounting hardware.

It’s difficult for me to say how the battery life is.  My camera was hooked up to the solar panel but it was in the shade, and it ran for about 3 weeks.  However, it also didn’t capture a whole lot.  I imagine if it was capturing a whole bunch of things the battery wouldn’t last as long.

Final thoughts

I guess if you want to capture large game, the Gardepro X66 Pro trail camera might do the trick. For small game, I think it’s a long shot. Even large game is a question mark for me since it only occasionally captured my son when he went outside . The LTE functionality is cool, but what is the point if the camera doesn’t catch the animal on camera.

What I like about Gardepro X66 Pro trail camera

• LTE functionality
• Big battery

What needs to be improved?

• Better capture of game.  That’s the point of this thing, after all!

Price: $89.99 and up
Where to buy: GardePro and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by GardePro. GardePro did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.

Check out these other trail camera reviews!

• Tactacam Reveal Ultra cellular trail camera review – The best cellular trail camera ever!
• Tactacam Reveal X-Pro cellular trail camera review – Critters will smile and say cheese!