Moultrie A-30 Review: Full Long Term Test

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Rob Johnston

Editor & Article Writer for Outdoor Wilds

Moultire A-30 Review

I managed to get my hands on this trail cam a while ago, so I thought I’d now write a full review on the camera.

The first thing to mention is, the A-30 is a sub $100 trail camera, so don’t expect a fully featured trail cam with all the bells and whistles. What it is though, is a solid trail cam that delivers great results for the price.

If you’re looking for a budget trail camera the Moultrie A-30 or the updated version, the A-40 are definitely worth considering.

I’ve taken a close look at further Moultrie trail cameras in this article which includes some of their M Series cameras.

This review details my experience with the A-30 trail cam, highlighting what I found to be, both good and not so good. I hope you enjoy this full hands on review.

Moultrie A-30 Hands On Review

The Moultrie A-30 is the “Low Glow” or “Red Glow” version. There is the A-30i, the “i” denoting that fact that it has “No Glow” or invisible infrared LEDs. This review is based on the A-30 “Low Glow” version.

Build quality and durability

On first impressions it’s quite a small trail camera, the dimensions being 5.5″ x 3.5″ x 2.5″.

There’s no camo design on the case, just an all over olive green colour that does blend in well into a deciduous forest. In fact when I first set the camera up and turned back to get a view of the cam from around 70 feet away, it took me a few seconds to locate it amongst the trees.

The plastic case feels pretty robust and solid to hand. It’s similar to other Moultrie trail cameras in their range and is a credit to Moultrie that they have kept up the standard of build quality for this trail camera under $100.

A the rear of the trail cam case are 2 sets of brackets, one set at the top, the other at the base of the rear.

You can use a python lock or similar to lock the A30 trail camera to a tree, and using the brackets at the base also locks access the the SD card and control panel.

Control panel

The control panel consists of a sliding on/off/setup switch on the left hand side.

An eject button for the battery tray which is located at the base of the trail cam.

Also 3 buttons to select and change the settings on the LCD display.

The LCD display itself is fairly small and only displays the few settings the camera has. There’s no viewing screen on this trail camera. The LCD display is easy to read and well illuminated, so no complaints there.

The buttons also have a fairly robust feel to them so I can’t see any problems occuring with them even with prolonged use.

My only slight criticism is that the hinged door didn’t fold back far enough for comfortable operation of the control panel, although this is a very minor gripe.

Battery life

The battery tray is easy to load / unload and takes 8 x AA batteries.

As mentioned earlier, the tray is located at the base of the camera, which is accessed using the large eject button.

It was a little stiff to remove at first but after a number of times it became less so.

As with all trail cameras the battery life varies between still picture mode and video mode. Video mode always being the most hungry for power.

The battery life is indicated when you first set power to “On” with a simple message saying “BL 99”on the LCD screen, the number denoting the percentage left. I found this to be fairly accurate in my time spent operating the camera.

Lithium Batteries

I always use lithium batteries with all my trail cameras, although Moultrie don’t exactly say that you must use lithium, I have heard of bad experiences with alkaline batteries being used in Moultrie trail cameras. So avoid using them if possible.

The battery life in picture mode stood up well and I’d say the A-30 would last many months in picture mode alone. Video mode is somewhat disappointing in comparison and according to leading battery life testing companies for trail cameras, don’t expect more than a month on average use in video mode.

Detection circuit

One of the main strengths for this budget trail camera is the detection circuit.

Picture trigger speed 0.7 seconds
Video trigger speed 1.5 seconds
Picture & video recovery rate 1 second
Detection range 70 feet

The video and picture trigger speeds are 1.5 & 0.7 seconds respectively, which won’t set the world alight, especially with the latest trail cameras getting down to as low as 0.1 seconds, all be it for more expensive trail cam models.

However the recovery rate for both the picture and video mode is a very impressive 0.7 seconds. This is especially good when you consider this to be a trail camera at this price point.

A 70 feet detection range is fairly standard for a modern trail camera. I did find this to be on the slightly optimistic side in my experience, and would say it’s a bit closer to 60 feet in real world environments.

The 24 red glow LEDs did provide excellent illumination that easily matched the detection range at night.

This aspect of the camera I was very impressed with.

Setting up the Moultrie A-30 trail camera

The A-30 is not a complicated trail camera to set up. The manual provided comes in the usual host of foreign languages, the English section only being a few pages long.

After 5 minutes or less of reading the manual with the trail camera to hand your fully versed in all the features and functions the A-30 has to offer.

All the settings are made via the LCD screen and the 3 buttons underneath to set and change the desired setting. I found it to work with no real problems.

The first thing to do is to insert an SD card into the slot which is easily accessed to the right side of the camera once the hinged door is released.

Mode Switch

Slide the mode switch to the “setup” position and you’re presented with setting up the time and date. Followed by the detection delay, which you can set from zero to 5 minutes at various increments.

The detection delay allows you to tell the camera how long to take a picture after the initial trigger when the animal is still in range.

The real meat of the settings is the capture mode. There are 6 settings:

1 photo, Low resolution
1 photo, High resolution
3 photos, Low resolution

3 photos, High resolution
High resolution video
Low resolution video

The on screen icons of either a still picture camera or a video camera tell you which mode is selected along with a Lo/Hi, plus a 1 or a 3. It’s very basic stuff but does the job in a simple and efficient manner.

Lastly, you can set the camera ID numerically, which is always useful and reset the picture count / format the SD card.

SD memory card

NOTE: The A-30 will not work with high speed SD cards. I placed an 80 Mbps SD card into the camera and it wouldn’t function. I had to swap the card for a lower speed SD card of 45 Mbps to get the setup menu to operate.

A 16 gigabyte SD card will store just over 600 10 second video clips and well over 70,000 still pictures.

The maximum size SD card the A-30 will take is 32 gigabytes.

Picture quality

The Moultrie A-30 records HD video at 1280 x 720p resolution using a 12MP sensor. Although as with almost all trail cameras the megapixels quoted by the manufacturer do include interpolation during the recording of the images.So the real size of the sensor is less than the 12MP advertised.

The video quality overall I found to be very good, although a little oversaturated in colour, but I can think of other trail cameras that cost a lot more that are guilty of this. The videos are limited to 15 seconds in duration and have no sound which is worth pointing out.

It’s the night pictures that are very good. In fact I’d say that is the best aspect of the A-30. For a sub $100 trail camera they really are excellent.

Summary

Overall the A-30 doesn’t try be be anything other than what it is and that is a budget trail camera.

It does most of the things you would expect a trail camera to do, well. The battery life is not great in video mode and that’s being kind. The videos in daylight are a little too colorful, but it’s not a DSLR camera so it can be forgiven in this area. It does the job of scouting at the end of the day.

Would I recommend the Moultrie A-30 to anyone looking for a budget trail camera, the short answer is yes I would. Coupled with the fact Moultrie have excellent customer service and warranty then there’s not a lot to worry about.

If you can’t get your hands on an A-30, the Moultrie A-40 is the updated version. The only difference I can see from the specification is the larger 14MP sensor.

Moultrie [1]are a well established trail camera brand offering quality trail cameras, so you can’t really go wrong with one of their trail cameras.

Good luck out there and happy scouting!