Panorama X2 (1.02.04) vs Lukas LK-7950 WD (Fi07) - Day - Rear Camera

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The Lukas is gathering lots of interest at the moment and rightly so as it is a very high featured dual camera.

The X2 has been available since October 2014 and the Lukas has just hit the market this month (March 2015).

Both cameras are high end Korean models featuring parking modes and builtin battery discharge prevention.

The Panorama has a touch screen display, whereas the Lukas goes for the minimal approach with just an old school LCD text display like the old clocks you saw in cars or on the front of a VHS player.

To balance things out, the Lukas has Wi-Fi connectivity and connects to your smart phone.

The Panorama runs at 15Mbps on both channels so 30Mbps total, and the Lukas runs at 7Mbps on the front channel and 5Mbps on the rear channel so uses just 12Mbps total for both channels - less than half the data.

The Panorama uses seperate microSD cards for front and rear video, whereas the Lukas uses one full size SD for normal driving video for both channels.

For these comparisons the X2 was running firmware 1.02.04 and the Lukas Fi07 - both the latest version available for each camera at the time of writing this.

Please note I have the VW factory privacy glass which causes the green tint in all the X2 images as it cannot correct for this - the Lukas has a setting to cope with the privacy glass and that is enabled. I've never seen any other dashcam with a setting for that before.

So how much difference in picture quality is there?

Let's find out.
 
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You can see from the example screenshots that the Lukas has a noisier image due to extra sharpening and the lower bitrate (5Mbps vs the 15Mbps of the X2). If anything it has potentially too much sharpening on Fi07.

I think it's very fair to say that the X2 image is not three times better than the LK image at all.

I'd say this one is a toss up - the Lukas has the ability to colour correct for the green privacy glass I have in my car, whereas the X2 cannot. Focus wise at first glance the Lukas looks sharper but I think that is due to a heavy sharpening filter being applied in post processing.

The X2 has the produces cleaner footage during the daytime, but at the same time is using more than three times the amount of storage that the Lukas does so it is a trade off there. To say the Lukas is using just 5Mbps for the rear channel it's doing a great job.

In terms of numberplates towards you they both handle them fine.

On the flipside the Lukas is handling my privacy glass much better than any camera I've seen to date and is handling AE through the back camera better.

Both cameras are using the same Sony Exmor IMX322 sensor.

Picking between these two is going to be a choice between all out image quality or bells and whistles type features - for all out image quality the X2 is better, but for features such as Wi-Fi the Lukas is better so it will all come down to your specific requirements. I've got to admit after seeing this side by side I may have to tweak the focus on the X2 as the Lukas makes it look slightly out due to the extra processing of the image.

Both cameras do the job of a dashcam well but firmware improvements will improve both.

I would love to see what the Lukas could do at 12 or 15Mbps with the sharpening turned down a bit.
 
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gee that Lukas is doing a good job all things considered, even a modest bump in the bitrate might do wonders
 
Lukas seem to do the colors better.
 
Yeah it has an explicit setting for dealing with tinted windows mate:

upload_2015-3-12_16-38-39-png.11691


It's the first time I've seen that option in one of these and it's really useful for me as I have the factory privacy glass which has caused colour change in every camera I've ever tried in the back window.

I did mean to go out and get some test footage of evening and night last night but I was too tired so maybe another night - I'm working away for a month as of next week so I'll be going quiet for a bit :)

It also has that reverse rear option that some people seem to want for use as a reversing camera - I'm not really sure of the point of that as for a dashcam you want it recording everything as it does already so numberplates aren't reversed - I'll have to try it and see if it affects the recorded video.
 
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