With the ridiculous price of lithium’s now, I just purchased more solar panels for my Browning cell cams. It was hard to convince myself that $55-$60 each was the right decision. My thinking was that after 2-3 sets of batteries and potentially a tank of gas to go down and fool with batteries if I got worried about them being low, I was in break even territory. These panels can also be used on other camera going forward once current cameras crap out or become obsolete.

Anyone else thought through the topic and come to an opinion?

I use the Tactacam panels on Tactacam cameras and they work great. I just use regular batteries not lithiums. They will last all year if I put it on a power line where it gets a lot of full sun. These panels are a battery pack as well so it charges the batteries in the panel, not the ones in your camera. In the woods the batteries will last about 3 months. I do set it to where it sends pics once a day though. Not immediately unless I need otherwise.

Thank you Pwyse. Yes, these Browning panels use rechargeable lithium's inside the panel pack (comes with the purchase). They say to go ahead and put batteries in the camera too in case the solar setup doesn't work right (I guess if the user doesn't set it up with enough light). I've done like you and just put standard batteries in the camera itself. The two spots I put the Browning panel last season were both wooded with decent canopy (leaves on). I aimed it generally south and toward the area of the canopy I judged might catch some direct sunlight during the day. The panels never seemed to get much below 100% which really surprised me. Once the leaves fell it was pretty much 100% battery. Based on that past performance, I'm going to just put plain decent quality alkaline batteries in the camera body itself this season along with the panel hooked up.

My Spypoint have the solar panel built in
I have one that has been deployed for over a year and I haven’t touched it
Battery always stays 85-99%

I use these also. Same experience as Pwyse.

Thanks fellows. It occurred to me that what really ought to happen here is Browning build the panels into their cams as well.

No solar yet. $20 external battery runs 7-8 months. takes thousands of pictures.

Same here. Solar on the camera is compact and not useless by any means but setting it where it gets good sun and having it pointed where you want it are many times two different things. The 7, 10 or 12AH battery in an ammo box doesn't care where I put the camera.