Coolfly Aura Review: More Angles, Fewer Advantages

Assembly was quick and tool-free, requiring only a few included button screws. I also like that it includes both fence and post mounting options, the latter of which is essential for preventing squirrel damage.

ScreenshotCoolfly app via Kat Merck

Smart power companies continue to improve the quality of their cameras with each new model, but the general range still seems to range from low-end 1080p photos and 2K videos (as with the Birdfy Lite), up to 32 MP photos and 4K videos (as with Camojojo’s new Hibird Pro). The Aura falls somewhere in the middle of this range, with 4MP photos and respectable 2.5K Ultra HD video.

The camera’s 150-degree field of view is wider than a typical bird feeder camera, and it captures all angles of what is truly the Aura’s signature feature: a wraparound perch with small platforms on the left and right sides, where you can position the camera vertically (which displays images in horizontal “landscape mode”) at any angle you prefer. If you want the camera on its side (“vertical” portrait mode), there is a small adapter that connects to the back and screws into the rig. Note though that despite some marketing photos showing the Aura with dual cameras, it only comes with one camera, and when on its side it can only be mounted on the right side of the perch.

Portrait mode (the side-mounted camera) helps get more detail in photos, but it didn’t always do a good job of capturing all the action, depending on where the bird was. The biggest problem with this camera orientation, however, is that the app’s AI identification doesn’t work with it. I asked Coolfly if this was an error, but it turns out that’s how the camera was designed.

“To offer users ‘limited free AI’ without monthly subscription fees, our bird identification algorithm is hard-coded directly into the device hardware,” the Coolfly representative told me. “As this on-device neural network was trained exclusively on horizontal datasets, physically flipping the camera…disrupts the spatial mapping of the local algorithm.”

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

Although this step was cumbersome, it correctly identified almost all of the birds I came up with (as did the built-in ID AI). I liked seeing the birds a little closer with the camera’s side-on orientation, but there wasn’t a dramatic difference between the views. Certainly not dramatic enough to warrant losing the AI ​​ID or having to get out and fiddle with the camera to put the camera in and out of its little holder to change modes. So, during the majority of testing, I kept the camera in its default vertical position.

Birds at the cinema

The Aura uses the Coolfly app, which isn’t as intuitive as some big-brand apps, like Birdbuddy’s, but it was perfectly usable. There’s ChirpChat, a bird search, and a Facebook-style “social feed” where you can follow other Coolfly feeder users and see their posted videos and images. (Note that there were only about ten users total at the time of my testing.)

What I liked most about the app is that it immediately identifies all captured birds in the album with a small icon in the shape of a bird’s head of that species. This helped me sort visually at a glance which visitors were new and notable that day, and clicking the icon takes you to a page of information about the bird, as well as a sound clip of the species’ typical call, so you can see if you heard it. What I liked least, however, was the number of marketing push notifications the app would send, for sales and other irrelevant topics. In fact, it became so irritating that I ended up turning off notifications altogether, which meant I was only aware of bird activity if I entered the app.