Any popular dash cams out there?

I don't believe that there are any special cams for our specific vehicles, but I'm just wondering what fellow Taco drivers have had luck with. I don't plan on hard-wiring the camera. I'd also prefer not to spend more than $200. Based of the YouTube research I've done, you can pick two of the three:
Battery life
Overall quality (AV and material/hardware)
User interface and functionality

So I figured I'd ask you guys and see what ya'll seem to like.

 

Check out the

$170 Vantrue N2 Pro Uber Dual Dash Cam Infrared Night Vision, Dual Channel 1080P Front and Inside, 2.5K Single Front Car Accident Dash Camera, 24hr Motion Sensor Parking Mode, Support 256GB max

Vantrue N2 Pro. I personally hard wired mine. It’s got a great front camera and the inside camera has an excellent picture at night. I’d say it’s got “quality” and “functionality”....its doesn’t have a battery so that one doesn’t count haha

Plenty of good reviews on Amazon. I personally found it through the 3rd gen forum.

Good luck

 

You’re right about the battery. I have heard of some that remain on after being disconnected for a certain amount of time, but maybe “battery life” isnt the correct term. I suppose that’s More of a function. Thanks for the suggestion

 

Yeah I think that one stays on for like 10s afterwords powered by a capacitor

 

I honestly been uding my gopro5 with the mount lately till I find a better solution. Works good since I have the loop function and I delete the data once a day

 

I have a DoD 1080p camera -works great, but the USB connector is already going bad after 18 months, and sometimes causes loss of power during expansion and contraction times. It’s on 99% of the time, and can be corrected by disconnecting and reconnecting. Never overheated though, image quality is great.

Wire it to the rear window power and it will turn on when the truck turns on.

 

I use this one. A drunk person ripped it off once and threw it on the floor, but it still works.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078B56BYJ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I use the Rexing V1P. It's got a front and rear camera with an optional GPS receiver and can be hard wired pretty easily.

I'm really happy with the quality of the front camera, especially at night. There are several youtube videos that show examples of it.

The rear camera is a little less than stellar but overall it's not bad. If I was more concerned with the rear I would just buy another 'front' camera to put in the rear.

Overall, i've used this camera for about 6 months on two different vehicles and in both extreme cold/snow and heat. So far I would definitely purchase it again.

Camera:

$160 Rexing V1P 4K Car Dash Cam 2.4" LCD 2160p Front + 1080p Rear Wi-Fi 170° Wide Angle Dual Channel with Rear Cam, G-Sensor, WDR, Loop Recording Mobile App Supercapacitor

https://www.amazon.com/V1P-Dashboar...ie=UTF8&qid=1526741287&sr=8-7&keywords=rexing

 

There's actually a thread on dash cams in the product reviews section.

 

I like these for low prices ones with great quality.

Viofo A119 http://bit.ly/2kPDpXx

VicoVation Opia2 http://bit.ly/2BnWUkZ

My favorite with loop , park mode is the think ware F800 but those are around 250 or more.

 

@USDashCamera You are needed.

 

I appreciate all the suggestions

 

I bought a Vantrue X1. Got it with Amazon deals for $80 and bought a 32gb card. Spent a little over $100 total. Great quality

 

I’ve been running the Thinkware f800 pro for a while now and I love it

 

I have the A119 and very satisfied. Easy to use, good night quality, etc

 

I was summoned here and would love to give advice. I have lived and breathed dash cams for over 3 years now.

One of the first things I typically ask people is, do you want to also be able to record while your vehicle is off? Personally I think some sort of "parking mode" that can record parking lot hit and runs is very important. Recently more and more cheaper affordable cams have been offering cheaper solutions then the high end cams from companies like blackvue and thinkware. they all operate a bit different though. I personally prefer the high end models. I use a thinkware f800 pro in my tacoma, but its an expensive setup so i can understand many people wont want to spend that much.

If you are ok more just about recording while driving, I still think hands down the A119 is the best bang for your buck. It also has a parking mode thats not as "advanced" as thinkware or blackvue but it will offer a great level of protection from hit and runs. For parking mode it would require an additional hardwiring kit though, it cant operate off the 12v socket.

If you really dont care about parking mode, I still think the A119 (or the new A119 pro which comes with a lot of accessories) is still the best option. along side my F800 pro in my tacoma i run an a119 because its great for redundancy incase one cam stops working when i dont notice, and the A119 has better video quality.

most of the high end dash cams have lower quality video then many of the decent quality single channel cams that just record while driving. it takes extra processing power for a little camera to offer other advanced features so often times the best quality video comes from simple cams.

on the flip side (which is going to be out of your budget i am sure more than twice what you want to spend), the new 4k blackvue dr900s-2ch/1ch from what i have seen so far (supposed to get a review unit from blackvue and been tapping my foot so anxious for it) has very good quality video for a high end 2ch cam with buffered automatic parking mode. buffered automatic parking mode means when your car is off, it goes into stand by. once it detects motion (or you can set it to just impact detection) it starts recording. but it doesnt just start recording after the impact or motion, say you have only impact detection on, since it is "Buffered" it has 10 seconds leading up the impact buffered on internal memory, and when it detects that hit, it saves 10 prior seconds plus an additional 10-20 (varies by cameras and companies). thinkware also has this buffered feature.

Be wary of any cheap 4k cams, so far from what i have seen they are all using 4 MP image sensors which are in no way capable of capturing true 4k footage. a camera needs an 8 MP image sensor to capture true 4k footage, anything less than 8 MP means they are just upscaling lower res to 4k.

But for under $200, if you are just ok with a front camera, the A119 series, or Anker

$21 C1 Pro 2, Samsung S23/S22/S21

C1 Pro are my favs. The C1 Pro has comparable video quality. some people think it looks worse but what i really care about is whether or not you can read license plates better or not and it seems like they are on par. often times you can get the C1 Pro with a memory card too for a good deal, and the anker c1 pro has audio alerts which are nice.

if you are looking for a 2 channel cam, I have not used it myself but have heard good things of the aukey dr02d. 1080p front and rear for around $130 last i checked.

if you are willing to spend $200-300, the blackvue dr590 series is my fav and what i use in my prius currently. it starts at $200 but thats just the base bundle, id suggest a 128 gb card (buy a samsung evo card separately, dont over pay for the 128 gb blackvue bundle!!!) and the power magic pro to hardwire it to get the parking mode.

i know you said you didn't want to hardwire it but i would highly suggest watching some vids to do it, its totally worth hardwiring and not too hard.

check my link in my signature for my top 5 dash cams, im pretty sure it still stands today for me personally.

 

Alot of info in here. I think I found my next mod!

 

F800 pro in mine, and I really like it.

 

If anyone is interested in higher end cams ($250+) I started a second group buy here:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...und-2-blackboxmycar-com.547377/#post-17858819

The first one had some hiccups but had a lot of support. started this one recently had very little support, i think the first one was just good timing with peoples tax returns lol.

 

Sweet Jeebus that’s a lot of valuable info. I knew there was a dash cam guru out their who’d gimme all the answers.

What brought this thread about was that my mother collided with a cyclist the other day in a crosswalk. (She was stopping, the cyclist was hurrying to make it through before the little stick man on the screen disappeared.) and the NEXT day an elderly driver cut through 4 lanes of traffic, merged into her, and then ran.

I live in an urban area so there’s a lot of BS during my commute. I care mostly about the actual driving part. I’m not a tech savvy guy but have no trouble wiring lighting and other accessories, I’m just not sure what goes into hardwiring a camera. Is there anything that tells the camera to stop drawing power if the voltage hits a certain point? If I don’t have to worry about draining my battery, then I suppose I could hardwire the A119 or Aukey.

Do you know of a front/rear camera that has 2 channels that function during “parking mode”? It sounds like I’m going to pick between 1 channel and parking mode or 2 channels for front and rear.