Any regrets selecting dash cam models without GPS? (All my dashcams up to know have GPS)

[fieldofview]

Question about necessity of having GPS in a dash cam. All my dash cams up to now have/had GPS. Now another of my Mini 0805 (or related models) dashcams is failing, it's not recording video reliably. I've had about five Mini 0805's (or earlier models) over the years in my wife's and my car. All the Mini's had GPS. I see in Dash Cam Talk that the Mini's are no longer highly rated and for a budget dash cam to consider something like the BlueSkySea B1W. The B1W does not have GPS. I always thought km/hr speed would be important information in case of an incident. Anybody have regrets in using a dash cam that does not record speed? (I'm not worried about location because that will be evident from the video from buildings, intersections, landscape features, etc.). In the event police or the insurance company reviewed the video, did lack of speed as recorded by GPS ever become an issue in a claim? I'm leaning towards the BlueSkySea BW1. My criteria are reliable recording and decent life, maybe better than 3-4 years of daily use, and under $100 Canadian$.

 

[Dashmellow]

I enjoy having GPS on a dash cam and do find it useful, but at the end of the day it is entirely unnecessary. I also know many people (including me sometimes) enjoy the ability to watch one's cameras location moving on a live Google map on one's computer, along with other data using a GPS capable viewer, but this is in the "bells & whistles" category as far as its practical usefulness as legally actionable evidence is concerned. It's basically a toy.

As to your statement that, "I always thought km/hr speed would be important information in case of an incident.", this "may" be true, but it could also be used against you if it turns out you were driving over the speed limit without realizing it (or perhaps knowingly), as we all have been known to do on occasion.

 

[kamkar]

I prefer having GPS, but it is not a must have pr say.
I would gladly trade in GPS for better IQ, cuz in a pinch your speed can always be determined from the footage as a result of distance in time between 2 thigs in your video.
So if it take you 9.37 seconds to travel the distance between X lamp lost and Y sign in the footage, then you can go measure the distance between those and from there deduct your exact speed.
No court will ever accept the consumer grade GPS in a dashcam anyway, but time and video footage they will have to accept, and from that you can deduct exact speed.

 

[joe384]

Yeah, GPS is nice to have but apparently here in the UK, GPS speed from a dashcam would not be accepted in court.
I've seen on police chase programs where the officer would look at the footage and use this to find out how quick someone was going (eg. the time between 2 junctions or markers on the road)
I'm much more concerned with other having other features over GPS.

One nice thing with GPS is that many cams with it use it to set the time.
With the B1W you'd have to make sure you check the time every now and then in case it's drifted off a bit (you can sync with your phone though)

 

[DAP]

I have now had 5 different dash cams. The first two I bought together. At that time, I bought a mini-803 with gps, and some no name 1080p camera with super capacitor for the back without gps. The mini-803 died when its battery wore out, I replaced it with an A119 with gps. The A119 died by randomly locking up. I replaced them both with A129 Pros (not duo's, I wanted the redundancy of dual cameras, higher resolution for the rear, and more recording time per memory card) with GPS. While the no-name camera was still working, it tended to loose track of time. I like the GPS versions because the timestamp is always correct.

 

[fieldofview]

Thanks for all the input. Good points that GPS is really for my own interest and that anyone using video from a dash cam would calculate velocity by distance over time interval. I am however surprised at how accurate the velocity from GPS is on the Mini dash cam, when I go past a radar board that displays speed, the speed on the roadside display is the same as the velocity from the GPS when I review the video later.

 

[DT MI]

I prefer GPS for two reasons:

1) As mentioned the time in the camera gets reset with every power cycle so the time stamps are always correct.

2) If I want to find a specific video for some reason I'm more likely to remember where I was when the event happened versus when it happened. Makes it a lot easier to find.

 

[2000rpm]

I usually prefer not to have GPS.
It means that I don't have to worry if I occasionally drift a few mph over the limit.
If I'm a few mph over and my speed is printed on the video it will draw attention if the video is used as evidence for something that happened - and sometimes the GPS speed can briefly be inaccurate due to disruption of the signal (trees, buildings etc or even just less than optimal position of satellites).
If no speed/GPS is printed then it's much less likely to have someone question my driving unless I'm travelling significantly above the speed limit.

I'm surprised that many people would want GPS here in the UK because speeding is the norm for the majority of drivers, especially in 20-30mph zones where almost every vehicle will be travelling fast enough for a speeding ticket.

 

[jokiin]

you can have GPS and the benefits it offers without having to embed your speed in the video

 

[Fabio.he]

with one more important function is certainly better, even you could choose "disable" this function if you don't like it, but meanwhile, there is a fact that a challenge for all manufacturers to make GPS's user experience wonderful, electromagnetic interference, shielding, size, cost, product certification. etc.