- High-definition, high -definition video
- HOLD function
- Supports high capacity TF card
- Motion Detection
- support auto ignition boot, turn off shutdown
Pros:
Very low price.
Has just the right set of features. Auto-power starts it recording, does automatic file rotation, visible timestamp, etc.
Reliably records without driver needing to worry about it. (Using it for a week now.)
Power cord is thin and long enough to make installation easy. The cord is 150 inches long. Thin is also important so it slides under car's interior trim. I installed without needing to remove any trim.
Fits *securely* behind mirror on my Mini Cooper using included suction cup. Driving a Mini in SF can be very jarring because of the roads and firm mini suspension; however, it hasn't fallen off.
"Low profile" device. Meaning it doesn't attract attention so your car gets broken into.
Customization is fairly easy and manual is close enough to native English to figure out. (First test is setting the day/time.)
Decent field-of-view without too much fisheye. See my posted video stills.
Can easily swap out microsd card without removing unit.
Timer to turn off LED screen so video doesn't show while driving.
No GPS nonsense. Why is this a feature? GPS isn't reliable without antenna AND consume more power.
Supports large, 32gb MicroSD card.
Cons:
Power plug is very large. This is the biggest issue for me. (See product photos)
It is NOT a night cam! You can see things in the car's headlights, but that's about it.
Product Improvement: I'd like it better if it was a standard USB plug and included a low profile cigarette lighter adaptor!
Slight buzz (bizt-bitz-bitz) in audio (as it writes to internal memory?) Not huge deal, might be related to MicroSD Card speed or the long power cable.
It has bright-white LED lighting option and I have no idea why. Seems useless. Just increases cost of unit.
It needs a plastic polarizing filter on the front of lens that can be rotated to remove window glare.
Power plug only fits into cigarette lighter.
Recommendations:
Buy a fast 32gb micro usb drive with this unit. Files are 1.25GB per 10min of HD footage. I purchased this one and it works:
SanDisk Ultra 32 GB microSDHC Class 10
User should increase clip size in settings so it saves 14 minutes at a time.
Pictures showing "HD" quality:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B00ABW6L5K/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_dav
[See replies to this post for more questions answered.]Firstly; this is not an HD dashcam! It's native resolution is 640x480, and it's interpolated (up-scaled) to HD.
Which means, if you look at the resulting video in a 640x480 frame, it looks great! If you look at it in full-screen (1080p), it looks quite poor.
If you want a good, basic dashcam to record everyday driving, this is it. But if you want something that can read license plates and produce true HD, then the DOD LS400 at about $150 is what you want.I got this because there seems to be NO app for Android (even the one I paid for) that can give me good video, cycle over on top of the files and basically work right.
So I bought this, and it does seem to be good. Now it does not have GPS (which is good because it can stay on and not consume a lot of power when I have left it plugged in and parked and left my truck).
It does save in either 1 min, 2 min or 3 min or continuous video. They are all .AVI, so I have a mac and just select them all and open with VLC, which will keep playing them in the order of the file name. It does seem good.
There is only like .25 of a second when it goes to the next file name.
This is a lot for the little bit of money. Now don't EVER thing that a dash cam, with "infrared" LED lights could EVER show the outside in a good picture. It is impossible. You would need to have the IR LED's outside and way more than 2 or 4 or even 10 of them. Inside they would reflect of the windshield anyway.
This is a good deal for the money. Now at night, it will do so-so, not nearly as much resolution and very limited to what's in front of your vehicle by the head lights (say 20-30 feet), but on lighted streets the picture is ok. NOT crystal clear, as I could not make out my face when I got out of my truck and left it recording and it was night time. Think VGA 1M pixel resolution.
Daytime, as you can see, was ok. It is just as a 3rd party witness if anything (accident) was to happen.This is a standard Chinese made dash cam. My first impressions when taking it out of the box was how light it was but I was expecting this considering the price. It works as expected, daytime quality is fine and so far after using it for about a month it still works.
A couple of cons however,
1) the battery out of the box I charged it until the little red charging indicator turned off indicating a full charge. I unplug it from the USB charge plug and turn on the camera. The little battery icon shows full charge at 3 bars. After 30 seconds, it suddenly goes to 1 bar and 30 seconds after that to 0 bars. Shortly afterwards, "Low battery" flashes across the screen and thats it. I got about 2 minutes of runtime off of the battery. Its probably faulty, but since this will be in my car plugged in all the time, its not a dealbreaker for me.
2) construction this thing feels cheap, but i'm able to forgive it if it does what its supposed to do. However after about 2 weeks of usage, the black front panel comes off. Turns out that the panel is glued on to the body of the camera and possibly it being warm in the car loosened the glue. My car is garaged and not left to bake in the sun so to me this is slightly unacceptable. However, the camera still works, for now.
Overall, for what I paid and compared to the nicer cameras out there, it's ok. No way am I expecting it to last for the lifetime of the car but If this thing gives me a year or two of service then I'll be satisfied. In this case you get what you pay for.
No comments:
Post a Comment