Thank you for putting that all together like that. That’s very helpful. Yeah it does indeed look like the HDR does indeed need more optimization and that it’s not solely exposure differences.
I’ve been complaining about the A229 Plus’ HDR since September 2023.
But not too loudly because I wanted Viofo to focus on fixing the A229 Pro’s HDR first.
Even the A229 Pro’s night time HDR performance is still only 90%-95% as effective as the A139 Pro.
But Viofo is heckbent on having an overall brighter image to appease the average consumer, even at the cost of degrading HDR effectiveness.
In the first month of testing Bill sent me two different firmwares to test.
One was slightly brighter, one was slightly darker, (overall image).
The darker firmware had better HDR performance for plate reading.
He told me all other testers preferred the brighter firmware.
This is when he told me my “garage testing” is not a proper way to test these cameras, and I need to get driving test footage.
Of course I agree with him.
I do my garage testing to satisfy my own curiosity, and stopped posting so much of it, in favor of driving test footage.
But wasting gasoline on new firmware versions just to find out there’s no improvement in image quality gets old real fast, (just ask rcg530). lol
Ever since then I don’t start testing daytime image quality until I have fully tested night time image quality.
Even the cheapest knockoff counterfeit camera is going to be good enough to provide usable evidence during daytime.
Night time image quality is the most important thing to fix first in my opinion.
Sorry for the rant, and going off topic.