Coolfly Aura review: More angles, fewer advantages

Assembly is quick and tool-free, requiring only a handful of included knob screws. I also like that it includes fence and pole mounting options, the latter of which is great for Prevent squirrel damage.

screenshotCoolfly App by Kat Merck

Smart feeder company continues to upgrade camera quality every new modelbut the overall range still seems to be 1080p photos and low-end 2K videos (vs. Birdfy Lite), all the way up to 32 MP photos and 4K videos (with Camojojo’s new Hibird Pro). The Aura sits in the middle of the range, with 4-MP photos and respectable 2.5K Ultra HD video.

The camera’s 150-degree field of view is wider than a typical bird feeder camera, which helps capture all angles of the Aura’s truly signature feature – a wrap-around perch with small platforms on the left and right sides that allow you to position the camera upright (in horizontal “landscape mode” to display photos) at any angle you like. If you want the camera to sit on its side (vertical “portrait mode”), there’s a small adapter that attaches to the back and screws into the platform. But note that while some marketing photos show the Aura with two cameras, it only comes with one, and it can only be mounted on the right side of the perch when it’s laid on its side.

Portrait mode (where the camera is mounted on its side) can provide more detail in photos, but it doesn’t always succeed in capturing all the action, depending on where the bird is standing. The biggest problem with this camera orientation, however, is that the app’s AI recognition doesn’t work with it. I asked Coolfly if this was a bug, but it turns out that’s just the way the camera is designed.

“In order to provide users with ‘limited free artificial intelligence’ without having to pay a monthly fee, our bird ID algorithm is hard-coded directly into the device’s hardware,” a Coolfly representative told me. “Because the neural network on this device is specifically trained on horizontal datasets, physically flipping the camera… would disrupt the spatial mapping of the native algorithm.”

What’s the solution? “If our users shoot vertically and spot an unknown bird, they can simply take a screenshot and send it to our in-app ChirpChat feature. Our interactive AI assistant will perfectly identify it from the image,” a Coolfly representative said.

Although this step was cumbersome, it did correctly identify almost all the birds I provided (as did the built-in AI ID). I liked seeing the birds a little closer with the side camera orientation, but there wasn’t a significant difference between the fields of view. Of course, that’s not enough to justify the hassle of losing your AI ID or having to go out and fiddle with the little camera mount to switch modes. Therefore, for most of my testing, I kept the camera in its preset upright position.

birds in movies

The Aura uses the Coolfly app, which isn’t as intuitive as some of the big brand apps (such as Birdbuddy’s app), but it’s very usable. There’s ChirpChat, Bird Hunt, and a Facebook-style “social feed” where you can follow other Coolfly feeder users and see the videos and images they post. (Note that there were only about 10 users total when I tested.)

What I love most about this app is that it instantly identifies all the birds captured in the album with a little bird head icon of that species. It helps me visually categorize at a glance which of the day’s visitors are new and noteworthy, and clicking on the icon takes you to a page of information about the bird, along with a sound clip of the species’ typical call so you know if you’ve heard it. However, what I dislike the most is the number of marketing push notifications the app sends about sales and other unrelated topics. In fact, it became so annoying that I ended up turning off notifications entirely, meaning I was only aware of bird activity when I was in the app.