It's been 6 months since I bought a Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder, and in that time,
it's become one of my favorite tech products I've ever bought. I'm going to take you through
why that is, the best features, downsides, and ultimately who I think should buy a Bird Buddy.
Now, the first feature to talk about is this feeder's design and the setup
experience. Setup was pretty easy. The main feeder comes in two parts:
the feeder housing and then the camera module, which you'll need to charge up before using.
I found everything to be well-designed from the flap at the back where you pour in your
bird seed. Typically, I've had to replace my bird seed about every month or two,
and that really depends on the season and how many birds visit your feeder.
The tapered scoop is nice and ergonomic, making it easy to pour bird seed into the feeder. The
perch is easy to remove for cleaning, and the camera module magnetically attaches to
the Bird Buddy housing. Both the housing and camera module are weatherproof and can operate
from -5°F or -20°C and up to 50°C or 120°F. You will need to make sure you have good Wi-Fi signal
where you place your Bird Buddy, which uses the 2.4 GHz band of your Wi-Fi router. This
is because the photos and videos it takes are not stored locally but to the cloud.
Now, before you can start using your Bird Buddy, you'll likely need to update its software via the
iOS and Android app. When I did this for the first time, it did take a while. Another thing that was
a bit weird was that, at the time when I set mine up, the assembly instructions were included in
the app, but the app didn't actually guide me through them during the setup process. Though
the Bird Buddy app has changed quite a bit since I got it, so this might have already been fixed.
Now, once you've got the Bird Buddy's camera module all charged up and the
feeder is full of bird seed, you're pretty much good to go. All you have to do now is
wait for the birds to appear. In my case, this did not take long. After installation,
the main way you'll interact with the Bird Buddy is through the Bird Buddy app,
which is available for iOS and Android devices, as well as iPad and Android tablets. Though
the Bird Buddy app hasn't been optimized for tablets just yet, on Android tablets,
you can force it to run in full screen, which looks way better than the alternative.
When the Bird Buddy alerts you to a new bird visit, you'll get what's called a postcard.
It uses AI to determine the best shots to send you throughout the day and is optimized to only
send you a few postcards every day. So your phone shouldn't get bombarded with a bunch of
notifications. In the 6 months I've had mine, it's captured so many great shots of birds,
and yes, bird butts as well, which, 6 months later, are still just hilarious.
The photos you can download from the Bird Buddy are in 1944 by 2592 resolution and
show some detail in the birds. You can even pick up on the eyelashes of this titmouse,
for example. But these photos are not DSLR quality or even modern phone camera quality,
and I would love to see Bird Buddy release an upgraded Pro Camera module
at some point for those of us nerds who want higher-res photos and videos.
The Bird Buddy will also automatically recognize the bird in the photos and videos that it
captures, which you can see at the bottom of your postcard. After swiping through all the photos and
videos of a postcard, you can then decide to save them all, download them to your device,
discard the postcard, or select edit, which will allow you to save certain photos and
videos to your collections. The edit option is also where you can reclassify the bird if the
Bird Buddy misclassified it. It's been pretty accurate, though, in my experience so far. I
find I only need to reclassify a bird if I got a blurry photo or there was some situation with
multiple birds in the photo that were really close to the camera. The edit flow, I think,
could still use a bit of UX tweaking, but overall, the flow of going through
the postcards has been streamlined in the 6 months I've had my Bird Buddy.
Now, while you can monitor the live feed of your Bird Buddy, this will lead into your battery life,
and the Bird Buddy does take a bit to wake up as well. So unless you hardwire your
Bird Buddy into power, I wouldn't recommend using that live feed feature all of the time.
Postcards are a much better way to enjoy your birds, in my experience. The best part about
saving postcards is, at the time of recording, they're saved to Bird Buddy's cloud for free.
I haven't run into any cap on the amount of photos and videos I can save, though do note,
postcards are automatically discarded after 7 days if you take no action on them.
Moving on to the rest of the Bird Buddy app, the next tab over from the inbox tab,
where postcards are kept, is called Collections. This is where you can see all of your saved photos
and videos from your different birds and learn more about them, like what type of
food they like and what they even sound like. The next tab is called Bird Buddy Explore,
where you can add new bird species to your collections as you travel around the world
with Bird Buddy's network of public feeders. I played around with this feature a bit and have
really liked seeing all the different types of birds from around the world, especially the feeder
I've been following in Hawaii. But I do wish there was a way to separate those postcards from
the postcards I get from my local Bird Buddy feeder. Same thing with the Collections tab;
I wish you could split out your local birds from the birds you collected via Bird Buddy Explore.
The next tab is what I call Bird TikTok, which is pretty self-explanatory and better than actual
TikTok because it's just full of awesome birds and occasionally some squirrels. The
next tab over is the Community tab, which is exactly like your inbox feed but made
up of posts from around the world from the Bird Buddy Community, which is pretty cool.
Alright, and the next feature to talk about is actually battery life. Now,
my unit came pre-installed with the solar roof, which you'll need to plug the Bird
Buddy camera module into using the attached USB-C cord. Overall, it's worked really well,
and you can see when your Bird Buddy is charging in the settings page of the Bird Buddy app. I've
only had to charge my Bird Buddy's 3,800 mAh lithium-ion battery once in a 3-month period
during the summer. Now that it's fall, going into winter here in the northern hemisphere,
I'm finding I need to charge my Bird Buddy about every 4 to 6 weeks. But that, of course,
will depend on your local temperature as well as how much sun you get during the day. But in
my experience so far, the solar roof does work and does actually make a difference.
One day, I noticed my battery went down to 20%,
but then went back up to 50% after we got two full days of sunshine.
Now, another thing I mentioned earlier in the video is you can directly power the Bird Buddy
via its USB-C app. And when you do that, you can view its live stream continuously without taking a
hit on battery, obviously. And if that's something you're interested in pursuing, I'll leave a link
in the description below to some really long USB-C cords that should be perfect for that purpose.
Alright, so that's everything I've liked about the Bird Buddy over the past 6 months. Now
let's talk about some other issues I've had with it. One slightly annoying thing about the Bird
Buddy's design is it allows the birds to get too close to the camera when they hop in the
feeder. Even with the larger rail attachment which Bird Buddy released during the 6 months
I've had my Bird Buddy, birds still have a habit of sitting in the feeder. Though with the suet
ball feeder attachment, I have attracted more types of birds than I was expecting. The only
issue I have with that attachment though is it sort of blocks part of your view a bit.
Alright, now there are a few more features that Bird Buddy has added to their app and overall
experience, but you will need to pay for them with their Bird Buddy Pro subscription, which costs $30
a year or $2.99 a month here in the US. With Bird Buddy Pro, you can ignore a selected species of
birds. You'll get 10 guest slots so you can add even more friends and family members to be able
to view your Bird Buddy. You'll be able to unlock all of the remote feeders in Bird Buddy Explore.
Bird Buddy Pro also unlocks Frenzy mode where, in exchange for a bit worse battery life, your
Bird Buddy will send you more postcards throughout the day. And lastly, with Bird Buddy Pro, you'll
get high-res 1080p video of your birds. Now, I haven't upgraded to Bird Buddy Pro yet, though
I probably will just given the amount of family member interest in seeing my Bird Buddy feed.
Bird Buddy is also set to launch a bird feed subscription with different feeds designed to
attract different birds. The feed subscription hasn't launched yet at the time of recording,
but you can sign up on their website to be notified when it starts shipping.
So those are all the downsides and a bit more about Bird Buddy Pro. But now let's
talk recommendations. So, do I recommend getting a Bird Buddy? Well, 100% yes. I have loved using
this product. It's one of those rare tech products that makes you feel great while
using it without any negative side effects like you have with smartphones, for example.
I've had so much fun collecting all of the postcards for my bird visitors. It feels a
lot like Pokémon; you really do want to catch them all. And every time you get a new bird species,
I promise you, you're going to light up with excitement. So if you want a smart bird feeder,
I do think the Bird Buddy is someone to get. Not only because its AI captures great photos
and videos, but because of its great app, which will automatically categorize all
your bird stuff and give you access to some pretty great Bird Buddy Community features.
Plus, Bird Buddy is a company dedicated to just this experience and this product. They're not
some security camera company that just decided to slap one of their cameras into a bird feeder,
and it shows with their excellent-designed app, great add-ons, and their dedication to birds,
like with their Heartbeat project. You can access it by going to live.mybirdbuddy.com
to see a live look at the global Bird Buddy Feeder Network. It has tens of
thousands of active feeders and well over 300 species spotted worldwide.
The company hopes it's one of its first steps towards aiding bird conservation by giving
scientists access to reliable and plentiful data captured from everybody's Bird Buddy. The company
also plans to expand to a smart hummingbird feeder early next year, which I cannot wait for.
The Bird Buddy comes in two colors: speckled blue and matte yellow. The Bird Buddy also
comes in several packages, and the one I'd recommend getting is the package with the
solar roof. It's really made a difference in my experience. I've only had to charge my Bird
Buddy three times in 6 months because of it. Though depending on your weather and location,
your experience with it will vary. I haven't tested all of Bird Buddy's add-ons yet,
but I do think the perch extender and suet ball feeder have been worth it. I finally attracted my
local Downy woodpeckers with the suet ball and perch extender, as well as larger birds like
this red-bellied woodpecker, a bird I've been trying to attract with a Bird Buddy for months.
So those are all of my thoughts on the Bird Buddy. And if you'd like to pick one up,
I've left purchase links in the description below. If you think I got my review right
or if you think I got something wrong, let me know down in the comments and
consider giving this video a thumbs up if you liked it and subscribe for
more 6 Months Later reviews. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.