Since late 2022, I’ve used several smart bird feeders and this review will compare two premium choices, Bird Buddy and the new Birdfy Bamboo.
After the crowdfunded launch of the Bird Buddy a few years ago, many similar products have popped up to compete. Netvue’s Birdfy Bamboo smart bird feeder is the first product I’ve found that feels premium and without design compromises.
Disclaimer: Netvue provided a review unit of this bird feeder for me to review. The feedback expressed in this review is genuine and I’m approaching it from a holistic perspective from what’s available in the market.
Review highlights
- The tech specs of the Birdfy Bamboo best Bird Buddy nearly in every category, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
- Birdfy Bamboo captured WAY more photos but they are lower quality and tiresome to sift through to find the gems.
- Bird Buddy’s app is more polished, accurate, and pleasant to use.
Contents
Bird feeder housing
Birdfy Bamboo
As the name suggests, the Birdfy Bamboo smart bird feeder is made of bamboo, a natural and renewable material that is resistant to weather and insects. The feeder has minimalist, boxy design, with a with hinging roof that opens so you can fill its two large 1.5L seed chambers. The bird feeder looks attractive and feels premium. It’s BIG, practically 1ft in every direction. Included is an extended perch and external solar panel to keep it charged.
I found it easy to clean and refill. Due to the huge seed capacity I had to fill it far less frequently than the Bird Buddy.
Bird Buddy
Crafted from recycled plastic, the Bird Buddy sports a two-toned design with a speckled blue housing and a bright red perch. While the feeder feels sturdy and well-built overall, one particular component has emerged as a potential weak spot.
Replenishing the seeds is achieved through a hinged door on the back of the feeder. This handy feature allows for easy monitoring of seed levels through the translucent front and back panels. However, a recurring concern within the Bird Buddy community revolves around the hinge on this refilling door. Several users have reported instances of the hinge breaking, rendering the door inoperable.
The Bird Buddy is much smaller, holding 1L of seeds (a third of the Birdfy Bamboo’s 3L capacity). This results more frequently refills.
| Birdfy Bamboo | Bird Buddy | |
| Seed capacity | 3 liters | 1 liter |
| Refilling method | Hinged roof | Hinged door |
| Build quality | Excellent | Moderate |
| Extended Perch option | Included | Add-on purchase |
Mounting options
Birdfy Bamboo
The Birdfy Bamboo feeder comes with accessories to mount it on a wall/fence, pole, or tree trunk. When mounted to a pole, it is very secure and has remained stable over the past few months.
Bird Buddy
Included with the Bird Buddy are a pole mount and a hanging cord. I’ve used both and they work great. A wall mount is available as an add-on if desired.
Smart feeder camera module
The brains of any smart bird feeder, the removable camera module is what detects and photographs or records birds as they visit your feeder. These modules sit inside the bird feeder and recharge via solar making them both self-sufficient. Neither of the bird feeders required manual charging once set up.
Both the Birdfy Bamboo and Bird Buddy automatically capture and identify birds automatically.
The Birdfy Bamboo has a much wider field of view. This sounds great on paper but felt like a problem as it often captured the sun in pictures and reduced photo quality.
| Specifications | Birdfy Bamboo | Bird Buddy |
|---|---|---|
| Photo quality | 2.1 megapixel | 5 megapixel |
| Field of view | 155° | 120° |
| Audio | Yes | Yes |
| Power source | USB-C and 1-panel external solar panel | USB-C and optional 1-panel solar roof |
| Storage | Micro SD card (not included) + 30-day cloud | Unlimited cloud |
| Capture method | Automatic | Automatic |
Setup and pairing
Birdfy Bamboo
The Birdfy Bamboo was quick to set up with the Birdfy app. My iPhone 15 Pro was unable to share the wifi details with the camera using the app, so I needed to use an iPad and it worked fine. A minor annoyance.
Bird Buddy
The Bird Buddy app directs you to hold a button on the camera module to initiate the pairing process and I was able to then connect to my guest network successfully through the app’s onboarding flow.
Photo quality
Many factors affect photo quality: weather, time of day, the distance of the bird, and more. But, there is a key difference in how the two bird feeders capture pictures and it makes all the difference.
Bird Buddy captures high-quality 5 megapixel photos and HD video clips. Birdfy Bamboo only captures 2.1 megapixel photos by taking screenshots from the HD video clips. This means that the Bird Buddy’s photo quality blows Birdfy Bamboo out of the water.
The picture quality of the Birdfy Bamboo was subpar regardless of time of day or which direction I pointed the bird feeder. Its pictures looked pixelated with artifacts most of the time.
The Birdfy Bamboo took tons of photos every day and it is laborious to find the good ones amongst all the noise.
Here are some examples of photos taken automatically by both feeders.
Birdfy Bamboo
Bird Buddy
Bird detections and accuracy
Detections
Birdfy Bamboo
The Birdfy Bamboo captures an overwhelming amount of photos each day. I’m talking hundreds of photos every day, with a notification for each batch. This means I get over 100 notifications on my phone every day from this app. I quickly disabled all notifications and instead look at the bird visitors at the end of the day. Trying to process this many photos is time consuming and wasn’t enjoyable for me.
More isn’t necessarily better.
Bird Buddy
Bird Buddy is more conservative in the bird visitors (postcards) it selects to save and send to you. After using it for over a year, it seems to prioritize photos that are in focus and contain the full bird. I get far less postcard with Bird Buddy than Birdfy Bamboo, but I feel more motivated to look at them.
Much less time and effort is required to view and save bird photos from Bird Buddy. One drawback is I have occasionally seen good birds visit the feeder and end up with zero photos of them.
Accuracy
Birdfy Bamboo
Birdfy Bamboo’s AI species identification works adequately enough. It could tag multiple species in a single photo and guess correctly most of the time. It did occasionally misidentify species and curiously tags some birds as species that don’t even occur in this part of the world.
I’m unsure of Birdfy’s data sources, but it’s definitely missing local species. I get Inca Doves to my feeders (love them!) and that species isn’t even an option when manually selecting an identification.
Bird Buddy
The accuracy of Bird Buddy’s AI identification is more tight than Birdfy Bamboo’s. I seldom get misidentifications and never IDs from incorrect parts of the world.
App experience
A smart bird feeder app can make or break your experience of viewing feathered visitors.
Birdfy Bamboo
Birdfy Bamboo’s app is the best non-Bird Buddy app I’ve tried so far. But that’s not a very high bar to clear. Smart bird feeders are often marred by a subpar app experience. Often apps don’t prioritize the triage flow of new photos or are clunky and unpleasant to use.
Birdfy’s app does the job. It provides a feed of recent “Moments” from your feeder tagged with species. Each Moment includes a video and a handful of photos. With a few clicks you can add bird photos to your growing collection of species.
The app is lacking in personalization of notifications and filtering of the Moments feed. It would be nice to mute species and only see Moments of new birds, rather than everything.
Bird Buddy
Over the past few years, the Bird Buddy app has received significant updates and improvements based on community feedback. The app is very polished and pleasant to use. It contains tabs to view your inbox of new visitors, collection of species, and tabs to follow other feeders or view a TikTok style feed of bird videos.
The app provides fun stats about the number of visits and information about each species.
Notifications are much less relentless with Bird Buddy. Unfortunately, they lock the ability to mute certain species behind the “Bird Buddy Pro” subscription.
Birds now appear on the inbox tab in a list at the top. It’s easy to scan see who’s new, and discard birds you’re not interested in.
Comparison conclusion
Price
Both the Birdfy Bamboo and Bird Buddy have a $299 listing price but the price on Amazon can vary depending on configuration and promotions.
Value
The Birdfy Bamboo excels in physical design and seed capacity, while the Bird Buddy’s strength lies in photo and app quality.
Birds will love both of these smart feeders look great and you can’t go wrong with either choice.
Final thoughts
Because I’m fortunate to have both feeders, I’m tempted to put the Bird Buddy camera module inside the Birdfy Bamboo feeder. This way I will get the best of both worlds.
Have you used either of these feeders? What has your experience been?
