In car recording....

Lynton

Lynton

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With the ever increasing number of "dodgy" claims from slam on's etc, I was looking at purchasing an in car dash mounted / screen mounted recorder that records on a loop. Had a look on amazon and ebay.

Not looking to spend £100's though - full on HD at however many pixels is not necessary as the sole purpose would be to provide evidence in the case of an incident..

Menu in English is essential!
Need it portable to swap between 2/3 cars...
12v power supply is fine pref from USB connection so can charge phone at same time.
GPS tracking would be a bonus so could say at this junction etc etc...

Recommendations please.
 
Vicovation WF-1

Cowon aw-1

Blackvue dr500gw

They are the best ones I've tested so far. You say you don't want HD, but non HD cameras footage is pretty darned poor. In the event of an accident, you need to be able to read the numberplate of the other vehicle ideally. A non HD camera won't be able to do this on most occasions.
 
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ok Tom, sorry thought I didn't need HD (not didn't want it) but if the diff is that different, HD it is.
 
If you've got an android phone there are some good apps that'll do the job well.....

I sent this clip to the silver focus' insurance company


2 things to note.....

This was the first time I'd used the app and the focus mode was continuous rather than infinity (which makes it look a little trippy) and I've now got a better phone holder so it's more stable.

You allocate a folder size on your phone, it automatically stores clips every 2 mins and overwrites when the folder's full. You have the option of tapping the screen to retain a clip or if impact is detected it'll retain

Here's some "general" footage

 
The Nextbase camera looks ideal, £99 in Amazon and the image quality is very good


The 402G looks even better but not sure if it's £50 better.
 
The only thing to note about the Nextbase is that supplied software (for overlaying the route on a map) is PC only.
 
My cheapo E-Prance has arrived. Full HD for 23.99. It's not got GPS but it does have a small screen.
 
Steep said:
The Nextbase camera looks ideal, £99 in Amazon and the image quality is very good

The 402G looks even better but not sure if it's £50 better.
Click to expand...


That looks terrible to me. Very jerky, and pixelated.
For a little more, you could get the Vico Marcus3 with Extreme HD recording, and much, much better video quality.

 
With three near misses in London a little while ago, I've invested in one of these cameras as well....I looked at a lot of footage, combined with wanting a very neat installation, both in wiring, and generally hidden away, and have GPS integrated, and software that is also MAC compatible....I decided on the Roadhawk HD....

This is some sample footage

It has been perfect in its operation, and the quality of the images is brilliant. So good that it was able to read the fine print on a street sign which helped me get out of a parking ticket situation :)

I can highly recommend it....Slightly above the £150 budget but very good and nice small and tidy installation...
 
andy0306 said:
Have a look at the http://www.techmoan.com/ website, he does some decent reviews.

I'm looking to change mine very soon and will probably go for one of the ones below.

G1W - http://www.carcamerashop.co.uk/g1w-dvr.html

Mini 0801 (GPS) - http://www.carcamerashop.co.uk/mini-0801.html

Mobius ActionCamera - http://www.carcamerashop.co.uk/mobius-a ... rsion.html
Click to expand...

Good post, I've been into these cameras a while now.
His favourite is probably the SJ4000 right now and it can be used as a car camera but he doesn't recommend it for that.
I have it too and for an inexpensive (£70) camera it is good.

Longer term it needs to come on with the ignition and continuously overwrite your card with no attention.
These days you can get full HD at 1080p well under £100.
My first camera of this genre was a roadhawk and really the 720p from it is not that good, you struggle to read number plates and low light performance is poor.

The really cheap ones on offer at Aldi for under £50 are a mostly a waste of money IMO.
A good one is the Drift Ghost at around £200.
You could use that for other things too which helps to justify the cost.
 
The cheapo e-prince has loop recording and is 1080p so it does fulfil those basic needs. It does switch on automatically with the ignition coming on. Powers off when it goes off too and you can set the power down time so you'd hope it does a tidy shutdown.

One thing that concerns me is how often video files are corrupted with loop recording or not loop recording and how devastating an unexpected loss of power is while it is recording. I don't know how bright they are either so if you don't loop will they just stop recording when the card is full or just overwrite the oldest non locked files? Is one loop into the next seamless or does it miss a chunk?

I can't decide whether having a 10 minute loop is less likely to lead to a corrupted card than just starting it off or letting it start with motion detect and just letting it switch off at the end of a journey either.

None of this is really considered in reviews and the eprince user manual is useless on these technical details. Sod's law said it decides to not work on the most critical journey...
 
The blackvues, vicovations and cowons all do seamless loop recording, and also create "events" which are then never overwritten.
I've never had any corrupt files in any of the cameras over a few years of use.
Also all of the above cameras have soft shutdown capacitors, so in the event of power loss, they have power reserve for about 30 seconds to save the clip recording.

Most of them have the option not to loop record, or you can change how they loop record.
Certainly in all the cameras I've used, they overwrite the oldest files first, so you just let it get on with it knowing you have at least the last few hours of driving recorded.
I personally use 1-3 minute clips, as its easier to manage when you want to use a certain clip for uploading to the net or whatever.
The latest camera I reviewed, the marcus3 had a fixed 5 minute clip length which annoyed me somewhat.

I can't comment on the cheaper ones, but most of the well known brands are very stable, I've not had any issues with any of the 10 or so different cameras I've used.
 
I'm just using 1 minute files and it will only start to overwrite once the car is full....If there is an event, either automatically or manually set, then those files are automatically locked and prevented from overwriting...

Got to admit that I'm very content with the sensitive nature of the Roadhawk HD in automatically detecting events since my Golf R is not that softly springed yet doesn't cause many false alarms at all...

Another thing many reviews overlook is the mounting bracket....Some people like to constantly take their cards out and don't mind unsightly big things dangling on their dashboard. I had that, I prefer flush, discrete mounting in such away you wouldn't know it is there until you need it....I think recording your own speed, direction of travel, and the road you were on are very useful facilities....
 
The mounting bracket on the eprince is naff. A standard tripod mount would be so much better then you can at least choose to use something better. I was going to mount it the other way up ie stuck to the dashboard but the display remains upside down, even if the video flips to show the right way up, as you view it.

The rearview mirror system e-prince one is probably the one I'd go for next if this cheap one proves itself as reliable. That has a much wider angle of view with the multiple cameras.
 
srichards said:
One thing that concerns me is how often video files are corrupted with loop recording or not loop recording and how devastating an unexpected loss of power is while it is recording. I don't know how bright they are either so if you don't loop will they just stop recording when the card is full or just overwrite the oldest non locked files? Is one loop into the next seamless or does it miss a chunk?
Click to expand...


My e-Prance has a battery built in which is good for about 5 minutes use, if the power cuts the camera runs for a few seconds and then switches off as normal. As for loop recording, take a few minutes to set the camera up the way you want and this won't be an issue.
 
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