A Car DVR with a wired rear camera
Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 4:27PM ;)
My Car DVR reviews seem to be quite popular, so I thought it was time to do another one. It takes something a bit different to get my attention with so many similar car cams available. This model does have the interesting feature of an additional wired rearview camera. The fact that the camera is compact and pretty cheap also counts in its favour.
I hijack the beginning of the video review to explain why it’s really not possible for me to answer the (hundreds) of email requests I receive asking me to recommend a specific ‘best’ car camera. This will also apply in relation to the similar requests I often get regarding action cams.
I really can’t tell people what camera to buy, any more than a car magazine would try and tell you what car you should drive. These reviews are produced only to help people to formulate a decision based upon their own very specific personal requirements. Please also bear in mind that everything I test is only used for a short period of time, I have no idea about the long term reliability of any of the products I review.
Overall though, this seems to me like a pretty decent camera for the price, despite one or two relatively minor niggles. I paid approximately £50 for mine from this seller on eBay who despatched from the UK. If you want an up-to-date list of auctions, you can click This Link which will perform a search on eBay UK for you.
Some of the other eBay sellers stock a grey coloured model and some also come with a different style of adjustable rear camera.
I have also found it for sale on DX.COM where it seems to be supplied with an additional suction cup mount
As always there seem to be a few variations of this camera around - so take a close look at any example screenshots shown in any adverts. The menus in mine appear as a bar along the bottom of the screen. Here's an example of one where the OSD looks completely different, and I have no idea how this one performs (It also comes without the rear camera).
UPDATE - 22 SEPTEMBER
Download four clips in one zip file here - Front & Back, Day & Night.
Reader Comments (273)
I think the 80cm piece of string might have been as a helper tool for fishing the various wires through places in the car.
Thank for another great review. I think what I'd like to know as a comparative is how you found this camera to be in relation to the others you've reviewed. Where does this on excel vs. the others. But your feature's to look for summary at the beginning was very helpful.
I think it's the one that's closest to what I'm looking for. There should be no reason from now on, why all the manufacturers can't produce a camera with video performance to match the high standards of this one. So at this point it just comes down to design and features. So if someone can make a flat screenless model that sticks behind my rear view mirror with a thin power wire and I'm sold. Before anyone says it....yes I know that you can buy models that clip over the rear view mirror, but I don't want to do this. I like my mirror, it was designed to fit the car and it has a nice auto-dimming function.
I've looked at a few of this car DVR on eBay/USA and none of them mentioned recording in H.264.
This model also doesn't seem to have a GPS Logger which I think could come in handy. They are
available in Black, though. So, your right, this probably isn't THE car DVR we should buy though
I think the Chinese are getting close. It must be the selling price point they'er going for that causes
them to not give us all the features that would make for a truly great car DVR. I mean this isn't
Rocket Science. Another GREAT Review, BTW!!!
What do the 'Open' and 'Close' do. They are embossed into the plastic, just under the screen. Another great review, have you ever considered the 'Blackvue HD' Cameras?
They just show the direction to slide the camera to remove it from the adhesive bracket. Open = remove.
Another great review as usual. I can't tell from your footage but is the front video of sufficient quality to read car number plates? Thanks
At certain distances I can read reg numbers, yes.
Went to check the ebay the price went up :)
Prices may have gone up due to this positive review. Thanks Techmoan. :)
But something else to be aware of if you're looking for one of these is that it seems the cheapest versions of this cam only record in AVI.
Another great review :) thanks for putting in the time and effort
Things get confusing when shopping for this camera. As I mention at the bottom of the post, it seems from looking at the On Screen Displays shown in various adverts that there are a few models out there.
I was concerned when I ordered mine as the seller stated it was h.264 .mov but the box showed AVI recording. My heart sank when it turned up. The only way for me to tell whether I was going to go ahead and do a proper review, or just a make quick warning video and then bin it....was to record a clip and look at it on my computer.
Luckily it really did record in .mov h.264.....but it so easily could have one the other way.
Techmoan, another great review, but perhaps too good! As stated above, the price of these going up coincides exactly with your review being released. Can you do a follow up review and slate it so the prices come down again?! LOL! This camera is exactly what I've been waiting for, so thankyou for showing it to me.
Looks good, as you say there are waaay too many cameras out there but your videos help give some idea of what you're getting (which most eBay ads don't), with a sensible review of the features and output quality.
Can you expand on what the emergency button does - does it START saving video from when you push the button, does it move the current 1/2/5min clip to the protected folder, or what? Reason for asking is if something happens and you push the button it would be nice if it saved the last few minutes leading up to it as well as the next few minutes.
I know I don't have to use the secondary camera on this unit, but seems like a waste to buy it and then just toss it into the trash bin. Do you have any recommendation on a single camera unit that has as good video quality and a similar mounting scheme? (I also hate the amount of vertical room a suction cup mount takes up.)
Techmoan, has that rear camera mount got any adjustment in it? Or is it a case of once it's stuck on, that's where it stays. Looks like the mount could be bent to a slightly different angle but can you confirm? Many thanks.
Yes the metal bracket can be bent by hand I had to do this to use it in my car. You will also see that some of the sellers of this camera include a different rear camera that can be rotated.
Yes the metal bracket can be bent by hand I had to do this to use it in my car. You will also see that some of the sellers of this camera include a different rear camera that can be rotated.
Thanks for the quick reply, I have seen those different rear cameras. I really want a black one rather than the bronze one and it seems they are only sold in the uk with the upgraded rear cameras that have a price of about £85. I have seen the black ones with the basic cameras from sellers in China but dont know whether to risk it.
I bought this then found your excellent review, I normally do it the other way round.
Mine didn't come with the remote control, but I found that the emergency button (the one with the triangle on it) cycles between front and rear views and PIP. The record lock function operates with the same button when pressed for a couple of seconds.
I'd be delighted if anyone has worked out how to stop the dreadful noise emitted from the device when it powers on and off.
Mine was the other way round. No matter what I did, it wouldn't beep.
Hi Techmoan, I sent you an email on Thursday evening through the contact form on this site but not sure if it went through or not.
If you could take a look and see if that arrived, that would be good thanks.
Lee
Hi again, I need a little guidance. What would you recommend?
A Dash Cam that is 3MP with 1920x1080 (1080P) MOV?
Or would you prefer a 5MP Camera that records in 1280x720 (720P) MOV?
Whats better, low Megapixels with high Resolution or high Megapixels with a lower Resolution?
I'm not finding Dash Cams with both 5MP and 1080P MOV.
Not sure why, Must be how fast the cameras can write to a file.
Another thing you've exposed is when many (all?) of these Dash Cam Cameras
use their 1080P setting it simply chops off the top and bottom of the frame
so it isn't any wider or bigger. It creates an illusion of being wider but you actually lose image.
You lose the top and bottom.
So, how important is 5MP over 3MP and 1080P (real if possible) over 720P?
I'm leaning toward a Dash Cam that specs out to have 5MP/720P
as opposed to 3MP/1080P.
Your thoughts?
THANK YOU!
As far as I can tell the 3MP and 5MP numbers mean very little.
720p is approx 1MP and 1080p is approx 2MP so the large MP numbers just relate to the stills capabilities. I don't think that the stills abilities are important and the numbers are usually made-up or exaggerated as well. I'm only guessing, but I'd imagine that most of these cameras will have a sensor that matches the video resolution and then will upscale this with interpolation to a higher resolution for the stills.
So I'd suggest that you ignore the MP number and just look for a camera with h.264 mov or mp4 video at either 720p or 1080p. I think that 720p should be adequate for a car camera...you are not shooting a big budget movie, so there's no need to pay more for 1080p. Also, I think that you are more likely to get an accurately specified camera if the seller states it's 720p. 1080p could just be someone faking the highest available resolution to get the buyers attention.
Techmoan, the string in the box was not an error! If you see here: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Dual-Lens-car-dvr-the-second-lens-can-be-separated/629879628.html
it is used for removing the mounting plate from the windscreen. Still completely pointless though!
Love to have this one Can anyone suggest where to buy and ship to Canada? ty
An excellent review of this DVR. I too have been casually looking for one as I drive a van a lot and the number of idiots on the road has made me consider one many times.
what made be decide to purchase this is the ability to have a rear view camera. I have a van with no rear visibility so im hoping that I will be able to rig up the rear camera somehow so when im reversing I can watch the 'dead spot'.
Looking forward to it coming and keep up the brilliant reviews.
Just got mine and the quality of the video is good for the price.
The latest one seems to have a newer firmware on it which allows you to disable the g sensor and changes the time stamp to something readable.
The one problem I have with it is that the charging cable for the car seems to keep cutting out, meaning it uses the battery.
going to try it with my tomtom cable on the way back from work and see what happens.
I assume it's the same problem you had with another dvr, where the cable wasn't wired up correctly.
But apart from that problem, its all hooked up in the car and working well.
Well, i tried it with the tomtom power supply, and it worked.
Turns out the 1A of current the supplied PSU gives isn't enough, but the 2A tomtom PSU is.
Got some video as well which i need to play with and ill add it as a video response to your review.
Good news on the power supply. Before you go to any trouble to create a video response I thought I'd mention that I'll only authorise my own videos as responses to my other videos because I like to keep everything neat on youtube. You can however post a link to your video here.
Fair enough :)
Techmoan,
Another excellent review...this little camera's exactly what I was looking for to use during my daily commute just in case of a bump ( peoples driving standards are appalling ), I looked around and found this version of it in black with a different style of rear camera - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/120977762751?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_4226wt_1393 - I offered $70 (£45) for it which was accepted.
Today two weeks later it arrived and looks very good indeed everything seems to work OK so now to install it in the car.
And this one records in MOV format.
Not sure if this has been posted.
The link for DX points to a sold out item, which usually means that its no longer sold, but I did find something similar.
http://dx.com/p/2-0-tft-5-0mp-cmos-separated-style-dual-lens-wide-angle-car-dvd-camcorder-w-8-ir-night-vision-149441
There is another on deal extreme which is not sold out. It is exactly the same as reviewed here, but in black. Just one little hint, buy it in $ and let paypal do the currency conversion. If you buy it from DX in £ it's £55 ish. If you buy it in $, at the point of sale, paypal converts that to £52. However, I was going to buy that until klippie posted that link which might be worth a punt.
Here is the link for the other on DX
http://dx.com/p/x6-2-0-lcd-3-0mp-cmos-wide-angle-car-dvr-camcorder-w-rearview-camera-tf-av-out-black-141488
Can anyone - Techmoan or anyone who's bought one of these - confirm what the behaviour of the emergency button really is? Does it save video from when you pushed the button, does it save a few minutes either side, does it just move everything to the protected folder until the card fills up?
When the emergency button is pressed (or the shock sensor is activated) the current clip that is currently being recorded gets moved to the folder on the camera that doesn't get overwritten. The next clip carries on as normal. The length of these segments is determined in the settings.
Really glad I found this Blog and Techmoan, excellent that's all I can say.
I was about to buy the this camera after a recent 'incident' and was a bit hesitant until I saw this. The particular camera, coincidentally was the one Klippie above has just bought and from that site, so have now ordered it and wait with baited breath to receive it and take it for a spin...
What I did find in my searches is that all the models seem to be made by NEI Shenzhen Ming Heng Chang Electronic Co, Ltd. and no that's not in Wolverhampton.... China I believe....
So like the others on here, once received and fitted I'll report back.
Really glad I found this Blog and Techmoan, excellent that's all I can say.
I was about to buy the this camera after a recent 'incident' and was a bit hesitant until I saw this. The particular camera, coincidentally was the one Klippie above has just bought and from that site, so have now ordered it and wait with baited breath to receive it and take it for a spin...
What I did find in my searches is that all the models seem to be made by NEI Shenzhen Ming Heng Chang Electronic Co, Ltd. and no that's not in Wolverhampton.... China I believe....
So like the others on here, once received and fitted I'll report back.
Greetings Techmoan,
Another great review as we get used to here :-)
Three points though:
- Color of the DashCam: I believe we want those cameras to be as discrete as possible.
Plain black is probably best, especially since more drivers now have dark films on windows.
Anything goldish -or silverish like the latest SmartCam HD V2- will stand out and be counterproductive as a stealth product.
- Motion Detection testing: many of those DashCam claim to have a Motion Detection capabilty (ie. Detect a motion when on "sleep-mode" then start recording for 30-120 sec). This is most useful for us users who want to get an extra insurance against "Hit & Run" in order to track the culprit.
Could you test that again, as you once did by "dancing in front of the camera" ?
- It seems your brilliant reviews are getting noticed by the resellers and, as a result, some are upping their selling prices.
The product reviewed here is an example: the price jumped to GBP 65, vs. 50 as per your review.
I have another example with a product you reviewed a few months ago: the SmartCam HD (again ^!^) which selling price jumped from GBP 55 to 95 now.
Best regards,
EPB
Just another hopefully useful (or useless) note, 'AVI' the recording format mentioned in a few of the posts and for some of these products, means Audio Video Interleave, it is simply a multimedia container format name introduced by Microsoft in November 1992. The 'CODEC' the clever bit that compresses the video file can just as well be in an AVI as an MP4, the CODEC is the 'H.264'. Often any format that contains H.264 will be called an AVI file, whether it be MPEG or whatever, I think it just boils down to naming convention.
AVI without H.264 or similar (there are better CODECS about now) would use enormous amounts of data, Gb per few minutes.
Cheers
Thanks for clarifying. I find that .mp4 or .mov containers are more compatible with my Mac than .avi ones. Even when the codec used in the file is h.264, iMovie just ignores .avi files, so I then need to convert the format before I can import and edit the files.
I bought the camera on DX before it sold out. The menu's are in Chinese. Its very difficult to guess at the settings. Does anyone know if the language can be changed to English and how to do it?
Hey Matt. Thanks for this one. I now know the answer when someone asks, 'how long is a piece of string?'
Answering my own question: How to set the language using the button names from my manual:
In video standby mode, press the Model/menu button three times to get to the Settings menu
Press the Mic(down) button seven times to get to the language menu. Press the Emergence lock button to enter the Language Menu.
Use the Mic(down) button to find your language. Press the Emergence lock button to select it. Press Model/menu button to exit the menu.
Now all the menus should be displayed in the language of your choice.
Well I've taken a punt and ordered 2 with the uprated rear camera from a reputable ebay seller in China for £88. Fingers crossed they arrive ok.
The string is for dis attaching the part sticked on windshield. See the picture here:http://img30.360buyimg.com/popWaterMark/g9/M03/07/19/rBEHalBiiH8IAAAAAARB-ZQ07_sAABhVQMLdO0ABEIR012.jpg
Sorry for my poor English.
Hi. Nice review, I just ordered one from dealextreme because of your review.
One thing I was wondering about though: you mention the screen can be switched off. Can that be done by pressing a key or do you have to enter the menu? And does it remember that setting for the next drive?
On mine the screen can be switched off by pressing the top left button. It forgets the setting when powered down though.
hello all
been waiting for months for a good review
so at last just bought 2
help please at the moment i take the cams out of car and leave in the house
but as winter draws close if i did leave the cameras in the car would it be to cold and damp
if i left them in the car would they get damaged from Condensation ?
thanks paul
ordered this camera from SOMAX china after reading your review....the cam was posted on the 25 sept and arrived around 10.30 this morning 13th oct....apart from problems accessing the settings menu ( a mixture of me not being tech savvy and the diagrams showing instructions in wrong order) the cameras work fine.there was no micro card there is a reset button rear cam port and a G Mouse port (it used for connecting with GPS MODEL) chinese translation.Looking forward to installing in car tomorrow and trying it out on the road....will keep you updated.....