This is a quick review of the Crenova 12MP 1080P HD Infrared Game & Trail Camera with 120°Wide Angle Night Vision and a 2.4 inch LCD Display. I was lucky enough to get one of these as an early birthday present (thanks Addz and family) and I’ve had it set up in the back garden pretty much every night for a month now.

The basic plan with trail cameras is to catch either photos or video (or both) for you when you’re not around. This is often used by hunters to scope out where the best wildlife is or nature enthusiasts like myself to spy on the garden critters after dark.

The Crenova Trail Camera is pretty compact and a subtle camouflage leaf print. It’s designed to be mounted on trees, fence posts or walls as you choose. It comes with a little green strap to attach the camera to posts or trees which you can see in the photos and a wall mount which I haven’t tried using yet.

I’ve tried it on trees, fence posts, a large plant pot, drain pipe and its been fine on all of them with just the one little strap.

The camera can be to be left running for weeks or months at a time, its water proof and take 2x 4 AA batteries so it can last a fair while outside alone. The motions sense is wide-angle and detects movement up to 20m away, when there’s nothing happening the camera turns to stand-by to save battery.

I was concerned that trees and bushes moving in the wind would activate it but so far that has only been a problem in REALLY windy weather.

During the day the camera records colour photos, videos or both depending on your preferences. After dark the images are infra-red and appear in grey scale. The camera does record sound but there’s often an irritating background noise so I usually turn the volume down during editing.

The camera is ‘low glow’ which means that the LEDs don’t actually give off light, at night it records without giving away its position or lighting up the area. The only was you can tell is the quiet click when it turns on and a very subtle red colour to the LEDs themselves.

The camera settings aren’t especially hard to work out and the instructions are fairly clear. Opening up the camera gives you access to the batteries, display screen, buttons and underneath the buttons is a memory card slot. You can change the intervals between recordings, start time lapses, turn the time stamp on and off and choose the quality of video/photos you want.

The full specs are available on Amazon but I think I’ve covered the basics.

I did have a slight issue with my first camera, I ordered and started using it without issue but after a week or so the camera developed a loose connection and had to be returned, the company (bizarrely) doesn’t offer an exchange option so to get a new camera I basically had to return the faulty one and buy a new one! I did email the company hoping for a simpler solution but never heard back.

Anyway I did eventually get it sorted and have used the new one with no issues at all.

Onto the important stuff, what wildlife did I actually get? Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find that we actually have a family of foxes visiting the garden pretty much every night. We also have a pair of hedgehogs who visit a few times a week.  

Hedgehogs have been in serious decline throughout the UK so I was really pleased to see not one but two hanging out on the lawn. As for the foxes I knew there were a few in the local area but didn’t have any idea they were jumping our fence to eat the peanuts I leave out for birds! Since then I’ve put out a handful of peanuts every night since both the hedgehogs and foxes seem to really like them.

For more videos please check out my YouTube channel.. it’s pretty much all wildlife at the moment but as soon as I have a home office I might add some OT and disability stuff.

*** Updated*** Unfortunately less than a month after I posted this, my second Crenova Cam broke down. It simply stopped recording then stopped turning on at all. Hopefully once I’ve sorted a replacement camera (from a different company) i’ll be able to continue with the garden wildlife videos.

I’ll leave you with a video of our garden visitors.

JBOT