Dash Cam recommendations ?

[Rug]

As per title ...

Anyone have one ? How did you choose it ? How do you rate it ? What would you choose if buying now ?

That sort of stuff.

Can anyone help ? Sub £100 would be great, but can stretch if there really is a benefit. It would have to be very good to tempt me past £200 though!

Thanks in advance.

Matt

[greypanther]

Hi, we have two in our car, one forward facing and one almost rear facing, both decent, one better than the other. The forward facing one is cheap but good: Yi It seems to be working well, but it does have flaws. ( I put up with them though because I am a cheapskate!

The other one is discontinued now, but is better in many ways, but was still sub £80. There is no point linking to it, but it is about two years old and still going strong. I think the make was: Vantrue? I will look it up if you like?

One website I found useful in making my choice is: Techmoan He has a You Tube channel too and he is very thorough.

Hope that helps...

[Ezarkal]

Thank you for that. It is a question I will have to ask myself in the near future, and this info will come in useful.

[Tycow]

Hi, we have two in our car, one forward facing and one almost rear facing, both decent, one better than the other. The forward facing one is cheap but good: Yi It seems to be working well, but it does have flaws. ( I put up with them though because I am a cheapskate!

The other one is discontinued now, but is better in many ways, but was still sub £80. There is no point linking to it, but it is about two years old and still going strong. I think the make was: Vantrue? I will look it up if you like?

One website I found useful in making my choice is: Techmoan He has a You Tube channel too and he is very thorough.

Hope that helps...

I have the Yi camera that greypanther has linked to, and can't fault it. Doesn't have night vision capability, but can see number plates and details of things lit by my headlights well enough.

[felter]

You may also may want to look at some of the action camera's, like the gopro. There are cheaper models that are just as good as a gopro. The advantage with them is that they can be removed from their mounting in the car and used for other things. I use one, I actually have one strapped to my bag so I always have a camera on me but it's not normally switched off, apart from when I'm walking outside. Freaks a lot of people out and I get approached about it all the time. But I wear it for the same reasons people have them on their cars, for personal security and it works, even when it is switched off.

[BugMeister]

- strapped to your bag..?!

- ouch..

[pjknibbs]

You may also may want to look at some of the action camera's, like the gopro. There are cheaper models that are just as good as a gopro.

Do they have the feature that most dedicated car cameras have, though, e.g. the ability to automatically save a video snapshot when the internal accelerometer detects there's likely been an accident? That's especially important if you're unable to interact with the camera yourself due to injury or what have you.

[Morkonan]

This sort of thing is rare in the US. "Backup Assist" cameras have been around for a long time, of course, but cameras designed to capture evidence during collisions/other aren't in widespread use by civilians.

I wonder why auto manufacturers haven't cashed in on this. At the very least, they could partner with a provider, like they've done with "On-Star" and the satellite radio companies. They could even offer apps to pair cameras with smartphones or on-board cells and upload footage to the web.

Besides, this is why Russia dominates the "crazy driver video" market! If the US adopted the widespread use of such devices, we could pull ahead and make great progress in that important commercial marketplace!

[Rug]

Thanks for the replies, especially Grey...

I've looked at the Techmoan stuff, then looked on amazon for the reviews there too. It seems that just about all the dash cams with more than a couple of dozen reviews are very popular with about 60%, and hated by 7%. More digging required perhaps.

It's a bit like Linux. There's too much choice !

Or just buy one purely on price and I'll probably be happy with it...

Rug