RECONYX ULTRAFIRE XR6

Why Reconyx?

If you appreciate American engineering and manufacturing as much as we do, the XR6 delivers unmatched reliability, incredible video quality, an internal picture/video viewer, and easy programming. In today's news cycle, everyone is complaining about the lack of American-made products. Well, here is your chance to buy one of the top-rated video trail cameras on the market and a product that is proudly made in the U.S.A.

Pros

• Best video quality on the market
• Excellent daytime pictures
• Incredible resting current draw (battery life)

Cons

• Slow trigger speed
• Batteries can be tricky to load

Trailcampro Analysis 

Reconyx trail cameras (like MOULTRIE PANORAMIC 150I ) have been the gold standard for the trail camera industry for more than 10 years now. Reconyx manufactures their cameras on American soil and produce the quickest and most reliable cameras on the market.

How durable have Reconyx cameras been? We still have an old Reconyx RM45 on a farm in Northern Missouri that has been there over 10 years. It is still as fast and reliable as the day we unwrapped it.

Through the years, Reconyx has produced the Rapidfire Series, the Hyperfire Series and now, the long awaited Ultrafire Series. In the past, the only features Reconyx has lacked are the abilities to take videos and/or have an internal viewer. The new Reconyx XR6 can check both those items off the list. The XR6 is designed to hang its hat on the video quality. Billed as the best in the business, you can bet we were eager to find out if it was going to live up to the hype.

Daytime pictures offer robust color, excellent clarity, and beautiful depth. We did have a few daytime pictures that had slight blur, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The XR6 is a no glow trail camera (no visible light emitted while taking a photo at night) and this usually means a sacrifice in nighttime photos. We can't really say that is the case here. The pictures are clear, offer good contrast and lack the "white noise" that you find in many other no glow trail cameras.

The flash range is pretty shallow and hovers around 50 ft., depending on ambient lighting (moon phase, street lights, etc.

The resting current draw is ridiculous.  0.18 mW is almost nothing at all.  At the time of this writing, 0.18 mW is 4X better than the next closest camera.  The day and night draws are both high, but the resting power makes the battery life incredible.

Our star rating in this category is misleading.  We judge the cameras on resting power, daytime power consumption, and nighttime power consumption.  This camera is an anomaly because the resting power is so incredibly low, that it overcomes the other two categories.  In fact, the resting power is so low that if this camera were to take 35-day pictures and 35-night pictures every 24 hours, this camera could last 11.9 months in the field (with lithiums).The camera operates on 12 AA batteries and it is recommended you use either NiMH rechargeable or lithium batteries only.  No alkaline batteries.

The battery compartment stacks the batteries in there pretty tight and they can be tough to load.  Be sure to look at which battery post is positive and which is negative before loading as they are easy to confuse.