4K Ultra HD Cams

Fairynuff

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Thinkware Q800 Pro
I've read the post on the 'fake' 4K cams which (for the layman (me)) sounds a bit purist e.g. it can't b 4K because it doesn't have xyz chipset. There are two types of member of this forum, 1. The enthusiasts 2. The ordinary end user. We (category2) might have fewer posts on here but probably outnumber the enthusiast 10/1 and for us (IMO) a more useful topic would be a topic that listed genuine 4K cameras or better still a list of cameras that produced a image which was as clear as 4K whether or not it had xyz chipset.

Trawling through the mountain of information on the net I came across a (positive) review of the Rexing V1 3rd Generation cam calling it a 4K cam yet I see that is on the list of 'fakes.' To my untrained eye it looks 'nice' and seems to talk the talk but does it walk the walk?
 
a more useful topic would be a topic that listed genuine 4K cameras or better still a list of cameras that produced a image which was as clear as 4K whether or not it had xyz chipset.
Currently that list appears to be of zero length, and the there are also none in the Best Dash Cams of 2019 4K category.

There are some real 4K dashcams, it is the "clear as 4K" part that they fail on.

Hopefully the list will start to grow soon...
 
You can find dozens of cams doing 1080P. Some have great images while others just suck. So my advice is to not focus on the name, but the images instead ;) 4k is just a name and means nothing if it is not used with a good enough lens and a processor/firmware capable of handling the workload. And unless you're viewing it on a 4K capable monitor system you won't see the difference anyway.

So yes, lets have better images whatever name they're called, remembering it's the images we look at, not the names!

Phil
 
So yes, lets have better images whatever name they're called, remembering it's the images we look at, not the names!
That's the point I was trying to get to - I don't care if it's called 4K or 40K what I want is a cam that delivers something better than 1080p and I want it for a fair price (I refuse to Blackvue prices). The Rexing cam appears to talk the talk but does it walk the walk OR is there something better for the same money.
 
The best performing sensors now are all 1080p and from Sony.
There are a few cameras that do give you true 4K footage and in the daytime that is of course really nice, but the same camera are bad in low light, so the 2 cancel each other out and you just have a normal camera at a higher price. the OV 4689 sensor are aging now but good things can be done with it, i just changed from a OV4689 camera for my 12 mm lens to something lesser ( Aptina sensor i think )
To this day i would not mind buying a dashcam with the OV sensor in it if it was done right, it do lag in low light performance, but that's not that big a deal for me personally as it seem to be for other persons.
I feel i will have no problem documenting what i do with a OV4689 camera, and that's my main concern.
 
My N2 Pro uses the OV4689 sensor and at least in my old workvan with it's sealed-beam halogen lighting, I'm getting good night-time performance. Not like the IMX291 but as good as the IMX323 with better details up close. With lower lighting levels the 323 wins. I was pleasantly surprised by this as I'd expected something similar to what I get with the AR0330 cams. In studying night-time driving vids in general one thing I've noticed is that cars with bright tightly-focused headlights (as is the norm with todays cars) do not show much beyond the illuminated areas because the cam is adjusting it's exposure to the intense lighting, thus darkening all the rest. I want to see everything possible, not just the brightly illuminated things, and here I am with a 1080P old-tech cam which for me does amazingly good low-light vids which the average person isn't going to get from it because of their headlights.

But back on topic, at this point in time true 4K as is used in dashcams is inferior to some lower-spec cams using 1296P or 1440P. Which illustrates my point that these "names" are meaningless except in a general way. So if you limit yourself to researching only 4K dashcams, you're going to miss the best videos, thus nullifying your own efforts.

Things tend to change slowly in the dashcam world, and they tend to lag behind similar technology being used in other devices. In action cams you can see a difference between 4K an 1080P in almost every example because these are used almost exclusively in daytime, so there the "name" has meaning. Dashcams will advance to 4K in time, with the low-light problem perhaps being solved with a larger sensor and pixel-binning, but until then, 4K may not hold the gains most folks think it does.

Phil
 
There are quite a few cameras using the OV4689 sensor to record at 1440p. I owned an A119 for a while and can recommend it as a good value, high resolution camera.
 
And unless you're viewing it on a 4K capable monitor system you won't see the difference anyway.

I think you miss the point on this one.

You ARE correct if you are just watching videos back but the "idea" behind 4K vs 1080p is when you come to zoom in to identify say a car number plate. "In theory" a proper 4k video would allow you to zoom in much more yet still pick out the detail.

As you say however this is not just the chipset so for that concept to work you would also need good quality optics, low compression codecs and so on
 
The best performing sensors now are all 1080p and from Sony.

That's interesting because I just bought some Amcrest security cameras. Two of them have Sony sensors, one is 1920x1080 and the other 2304x1296. The 1080p one generates a much sharper image regardless of what bitrate option you use
 
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