Is Cuddelink a good choice for me?

Is Cuddelink a good choice for me?

When looking into any piece of hunting gear, this is always the best question to ask first.

I’m sure we’ve all jumped onto the internet (maybe like you’re doing now), and searched Google, posted in a hunting gear forum or a Facebook group and asked a question like “what’s the best trail camera or cell cam?”.

And then…you get suggested every trail camera known to man.

One guy suggests brand X is the best thing since sliced bread (oh, and here’s a discount code for my unbiased opinion) and the next guy says that brand X is complete junk.

One hour later…and you’re more confused than before you started your search…

The truth of the matter is, no trail camera brand is perfect for every situation.

So when I got a call from Brad, who was referred to me by his friend (a customer of mine) to ask about Cuddelink, I didn’t jump into a spiel about how great they were and how there weren't any drawbacks.

No, first I asked some questions to see if they were even a good fit for what he wanted to do.

Because if it wasn’t, I could point him to another camera that would be.

And we would all be better off.

The first thing I asked Brad was “what cell cams are you currently using”?

He told me about the 2 brands he currently had (both of which I had used) and another brand or 2 that he had used but no longer did (some of which I also had used). I’m not going to name or bash any other brands here, and that wasn’t the point of the question. What I was looking for was what features and quality of cameras he was already used to using.

I then asked “why are you looking to switch and what don’t you like about them”?

One of the main reasons he was considering Cuddelink was the cell plans from the other brands were killing him. Not only were the cameras themselves over 2 times the price but the monthly cell plan bill for 20 of those cameras was more than a maxed out system of 23 Cuddelink cams would cost him for an entire year of unlimited data!

Now, at least at this time Brad wasn’t going to sell his other brands, he did really like his top tier cams. But with the addition of a couple more farms to hunt he was looking for something more economical to get inventory of the deer on each farm. Something that Cuddelink does well.

Knowing the picture quality and video capability of his 2 other camera brands, I asked “how important are HD pictures or video”?

Although we all would love crystal clear HD pictures and videos all the time, they do come at a cost. If either of these were a top priority then Cuddelink might not be the right system for him. The radio frequency of the Cuddelink system just isn’t capable of sending large files like video and HD pictures consistently or quickly, so although there is a limited capability for higher resolution pictures with the New Gen 3 firmware, the bulk of the images will still be low resolution thumbnails.

How would I describe pictures from the Cuddelink System? I typically refer to them as “good enough”. You can see the details you need to in order to plan out your hunting strategy, and that’s what is most important to me. Luckily Brad had already seen his friend's Cuddelink pictures and agreed with my “good enough” assessment.

Another topic we talked about was “how is the cell service on your property”? For Brad, cell service wasn’t a limiting factor. So he was pretty much wide open to use any brand of cell camera he wanted. But for some of us (myself included) cell service can be a problem, this is where Cuddelink shines.

You see, with the link system you only need to have 1 location with 1-2 bars of LTE cell service. That’s where you’ll place your Cellular Home Base, the cameras will then send their images to the Home and the Home will send them to your phone. Another nice thing about Cuddelink is that the cameras can “relay” images from other cameras too far away to reach the Home Base directly. With good camera positioning you can put cameras in dead zones with zero cell service and still get pictures sent to you.

“What if you don’t have any cell service”? Or maybe you live on the property and you’d love to eliminate that cell plan altogether? With Cuddelink you can set one of your cameras as the “Home Base” and then simply swap the SD card on that one Home Cam to view all the pictures from all your cameras. The SD card will have a separate folder for each camera in your system along with a status report for each camera. With the advent of cell cams this benefit often gets overlooked but if you’re patient and live near the property this is an awesome way to use it and save money.

“How fast can you get the pictures”? In this instant gratification world this is a pretty big question, and if you need lots of instant gratification then Cuddelink might not be for you. Due to the nature of the system it’s better setup to send pictures in “batches” rather than instantly one by one. In fact, if you try to send one by one you’ll back the system up. My personal favorite sending batch is 1 hour, essentially the Home will send me the pictures it has every hour. This makes it timely enough to know what’s going on, but it’s certainly not instant.

A big question Brad had was “how is the battery life on these cameras”? That’s definitely an important question, especially with power hungry cell cameras. And like almost all cell cams (I do know of one that does have amazing battery life) they consume lots of power, much more than non cellular cameras. Cuddelink is really no different, with its constant radio frequency connection (think 2 way radios) the system has a continual power draw. I highly recommend using external power options like Cuddebacks 6 or 12 D battery packs, external 12v battery (note that Cuddeback uses 9v, we’re testing a 12v battery setup to hopefully offer in 2026), or Cuddebacks PW-3600 or PW-003 solar panels. With these external power options you can get 5+ months of run time, without them the 4D batteries in the cameras themselves will get you 1 ½ to 2 months of run time.

Having used multiple cell camera brands, Brad’s next logical question was “how is the app”? To be honest, in the past it wasn’t very good, and because of that I didn’t use it much. However, in the summer of 2025 they released a brand New App! This is much improved over the old one, and I have to say I think they did a good job with it. Now how is it compared to some of the “better” cell cam apps out there? I wouldn’t say it’s the best, in fact I know some of the other competitor apps are a bit better but it’s not bad. It does everything I need it to do like view pics, save favorites pics, view camera reports, and adjust settings. It might not have the bells and whistles of other apps but it does the job and I anticipate it only getting better from here on out.

So is Cuddelink a good choice for you?

Hopefully some of these questions and answers help you navigate that a bit more.

What did Brad do? He decided to give a 7 camera Cuddelink system a try.

But like I mentioned earlier, not every camera is perfect for every application or situation. Brad decided to order 4 of another (completely new to him) brand of cell camera that we carry to try against his current brands of “traditional cell cameras”.

Cuddelink is a completely different animal when compared to other “traditional cell cameras”. And that needs to be taken into account when comparing them.

If you ever need help or have questions about Cuddelink cameras, feel free to reach out to us.

We’re more than happy to help.