tmanz
Member
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2015
- Messages
- 76
- Reaction score
- 39
- Country
- United States
I thought I'd take some time to provide my mostly positive experience with the TCL CDV300X dashcam. I have complied two contrasting videos taken from my commutes. The first is a night time video and the second a day time video (my timestamp is incorrect, should be 2015).
Videos are not edited in anyway, quality is 1296P @ 29.97fps, and upon upload YouTube applies its standards.
Nighttime video performance
- OK to Good video quality
- Glare from light sources: traffic lights, headlights and taillights
- License plates legible only when reflected well, close or slow moving
Video sample:
The sample is comprised of 4 clips with different lighting scenarios
- Seg 1: twilight lighting
- Seg 2: nighttime with traffic and street lighting
- Seg 3: nighttime lighting using low-beams
- Seg 4: nighttime lighting using high-beams
Daytime video performance (no sound because of private conversations)
- Good to excellent video quality
- Camera is susceptible to windshield reflections
- License plates legible
Video sample:
The sample is comprised of 2 clips
- Seg 1: low speed to stop (motorbike cop)
- Seg 2: high speed highway (watch the white van)
Dascham features
Pro's
- GPS locks within a minute on average: I've seen mine lock within 30 secs, if not it seems to retry at 1 min intervals.
- Dashcam menu is simple and can easily be navigated
- Screen is just the right size and not to many blinking lights (only one to be exact) - very covert
- Housing looks factory and is inconspicuous when mounted, the easy detachability of the camera from the cradle is great and means no messing with wires.
- In my opinion, excellent daytime and good nighttime video quality
Con's
- Sounds cannot be muted from the menu, needs to be silenced at a firmware level
- It has a small battery capacity: some users have mentioned corrupted files because of this, I have not experienced any problem with the battery or corruption to date.
- Cannot change the recording stamp from the menu: i.e. typing in your license plate info (was told custom stamps will be available in the next firmware release form TCL via Foxoffer)
- Slight electrical noise in background of recordings (listen to my nighttime recordings - could be power supply related and will differ between each vehicle, i.e if you have a cleaner supply you will have less noise and vice versa)
To be improved
- Sync time with GPS
- Show speed in timestamp from GPS data
Bugs - needs more info/occurrences
- On two occasions my camera has not started recording on power-on (GPS locks and manual press of the record button starts recording as normal - very hard to reproduce, approximately 10 sessions per occurrence so far).
I purchased my unit from Foxoffer on eBay (seller: foxoffer1, @billknow). I've been monitoring it's performance for the last couple of weeks and am pleased with its performance.
As always, I'll keep updating my experience. If you have clips to share or your own experiences, positive or negative, please share!
Videos are not edited in anyway, quality is 1296P @ 29.97fps, and upon upload YouTube applies its standards.
Nighttime video performance
- OK to Good video quality
- Glare from light sources: traffic lights, headlights and taillights
- License plates legible only when reflected well, close or slow moving
Video sample:
The sample is comprised of 4 clips with different lighting scenarios
- Seg 1: twilight lighting
- Seg 2: nighttime with traffic and street lighting
- Seg 3: nighttime lighting using low-beams
- Seg 4: nighttime lighting using high-beams
Daytime video performance (no sound because of private conversations)
- Good to excellent video quality
- Camera is susceptible to windshield reflections
- License plates legible
Video sample:
The sample is comprised of 2 clips
- Seg 1: low speed to stop (motorbike cop)
- Seg 2: high speed highway (watch the white van)
Dascham features
Pro's
- GPS locks within a minute on average: I've seen mine lock within 30 secs, if not it seems to retry at 1 min intervals.
- Dashcam menu is simple and can easily be navigated
- Screen is just the right size and not to many blinking lights (only one to be exact) - very covert
- Housing looks factory and is inconspicuous when mounted, the easy detachability of the camera from the cradle is great and means no messing with wires.
- In my opinion, excellent daytime and good nighttime video quality
Con's
- Sounds cannot be muted from the menu, needs to be silenced at a firmware level
- It has a small battery capacity: some users have mentioned corrupted files because of this, I have not experienced any problem with the battery or corruption to date.
- Cannot change the recording stamp from the menu: i.e. typing in your license plate info (was told custom stamps will be available in the next firmware release form TCL via Foxoffer)
- Slight electrical noise in background of recordings (listen to my nighttime recordings - could be power supply related and will differ between each vehicle, i.e if you have a cleaner supply you will have less noise and vice versa)
To be improved
- Sync time with GPS
- Show speed in timestamp from GPS data
Bugs - needs more info/occurrences
- On two occasions my camera has not started recording on power-on (GPS locks and manual press of the record button starts recording as normal - very hard to reproduce, approximately 10 sessions per occurrence so far).
I purchased my unit from Foxoffer on eBay (seller: foxoffer1, @billknow). I've been monitoring it's performance for the last couple of weeks and am pleased with its performance.
As always, I'll keep updating my experience. If you have clips to share or your own experiences, positive or negative, please share!
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