522GW - A bit disappointing so far!

woodbar

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I have been using a 412GW @ 1080p for quite a while with generally satisfactory results combined with a Mobius as a rear camera (stunning quality footage). The main snag being I end up with 2 separate SD cards and unlinked footage so it is a total pain to try and synchronize anything - especially if I have forgotten to alter the spring/fall time setting on the Mobius!

So when I saw the new 522GW plus rear camera combo I thought I would give it a try so I bought the 522GW and the "soap on a rope" rear window cam a couple of days ago. I decided to check it all out on the desk before it even went anywhere near the car as I like to confirm things are all working before making any alterations to the existing setup.

Having charged the unit until the blue LED extinguished I set it all up, plugged the rear camera in and left it running for an hour or two.

First problem - it gets blooming hot! Remember this was not with not with the sun streaming through a windscreen but sitting in the shade on my desk at around 21 deg ambient.

I also noticed that the battery was not actually charging and was in fact being totally depleted during the test? I spoke to Nextbase Support (as always very helpful) and we decided the camera was probably faulty so I went and exchanged it at Halfrauds.

Setup and tested the new camera in exactly the same way and got exactly the same result - very hot camera and depleted battery! Hmmmm, not good methinks. Then the penny dropped - I was powering this using the supplied USB cable (designed for charging and PC sync etc. according to the documentation) and it probably will not support the combined current requirement or front cam, rear cam and battery charging (My USB PSU is capable of 2.4 Amps so that was not the problem)! I have now confirmed that using the car adapter lead the battery does stay charged when the unit is in use. So apologies to Nextbase - I probably returned a camera which was not actually faulty. It might be an idea for them to include somewhere in the documentation a note of warning saying that the supplied USB cable will NOT power the combination of main and rear cams as well as charging the battery. Alternatively of course, they could supply a higher quality cable that would?

So, yesterday I did a temporary fit in the car and tried it all out - seemed pretty good although a couple of times when I switched the ignition off I noticed the camera shut-down immediately? The G sensor seemed to work, the snapshot and switch to rear view function is well thought out as well as the nicely accessible protect button (which you can access by feel and without looking) that also bleeps and flashes red to let you know it has succeeded is all very good indeed and works irrespective of whether the screen is on or off - unlike certain other cameras.

Even better the Android app lets you alter the camera settings and format the SD card easily from your phone - although it does flatly refuse to alter the "Auto Power Off" setting - you have to do that from the camera? Even better it seems to reliably connect (unlike the 412GW) and allows you to view the files or "Live View" (unlike the 412GW) as well as actually download files quickly compared to the 412GW, albeit actually rather slowly.

Alexa even works some of the time although it took a few tries to get it to connect and the PC MyNextbase Player actually seems to be very functional and allows you to edit your videos to extract any required sections or even join them together (have not tried that yet) and is a huge improvement on the old, slow and unreliable Replay 3 offering. Just wish they could make the import a bit faster because it takes a while even when using the SD card plugged straight into the PC - it is definitely much quicker than the Replay 3 though, so that is something.

OK, things are looking good - then last night I reviewed the footage, oh dear! The first file (cold camera) was not bad although it seemed that very close objects were reasonably sharp but got progressively soft and blurred as the distance increased. The footage from about 25 minutes later was abysmal - basically nothing was in focus. After a rest and partial cool down (whilst I was shopping for 25 min) the footage was partially improved however 10 minutes later it was all way out again! It would seem that the focus had been set too close in production and when the camera gets hot this is throwing it even more out of specification. Did I mention, when you have a rear camera attached the main unit gets very hot especially adjacent to the magnetic mount right next to the lens!

So another phone call to Tech Support who agreed it sounded like a production fault - so, off to Halfrauds again today to get another replacement! Outside the shop I plugged that into a power bank to give it a charge whilst I did some errands - connected from the app and did all the setup in seconds (brilliant!), except for the Auto Power Off of course, stuck it on the windscreen, adjusted the Polarising filter, plugged the rear camera in and let it do it's thing for the journey home.

I have now reviewed the footage and the good news is that the focus seems to be reasonable whether the camera is cold or red hot - the bad news is that personally I don't think it is particularly good quality? I was running it at 1080p front and rear and the results seem inferior to the 412GW, which I always used at 1080p (although that is at 60fps). So, to my way of thinking I have bought a newer more expensive & better specified device that gives inferior results to my old device?

I have done a brief test this afternoon using the 1440p setting and that did seem to improve the quality significantly but that was not in the car so I will test it out properly over the weekend. The major downside of this is if that is the only way to get decent quality footage it means that the rear cam will only be running at 720 which may mean that the rear images may then be inferior. My intention was to run both cameras at 1080p which is plainly advertised as being an available setup with no mention of any degradation in video quality. It maybe the downsizing algorithm needs some tweaking in firmware or maybe it is hardware based and not adjustable?

So that's going to be some more testing and fiddling about - I have spent hours and hours on this "upgrade" so far this week! To put it all in perspective I like the design and apparent quality of construction as well as the new facilities (most of which actually work for a change) although I think they went OTT with the strength of the magnetic mount - alright if you have a tame Gorilla you can train but I managed to pull the suction mount (which I am using temporarily until I prove the 522GW is a keeper) off the screen twice while trying to unclip the camera even though I was holding it firmly against the screen with my other hand - and this seems to be a pretty good suction mount at that!

Bottom line, whilst the ease of use, set-up and frills and facilities are very nice, when I buy an expensive Dashcam I also expect top quality recorded video and I don't seem to be getting that at the moment. More, when I have done some more testing.
 
Hi, thanks for the reply but I think you did not actually read my post completely - I know it was rather long.

In fact I WAS running them both at 1080p BUT I was disappointed with the quality of the front video at that setting!

I am just about to go out and try 1440/720 to see what results I get with that - I know the front footage will be improved but have yet to see what the "downgraded" rear @ 720 will look like.

All as in my first post.
 
Ok, for anyone that's interested I have done all my different tests and my results as follows.

1) 1440F/720R - Main footage looks quite reasonable but you are a bit fooled by the excess saturation and sharpening - still quite fuzzy in places - number plates reasonably legible. Rear footage is very soft with little detail and looks "washed out" - number plates illegible.

2) 1080F/1080R - how I had actually intended to use the combo - front footage is quite poor (again over saturated) - quite "mushy", a bit "blocky" and poor detail - some number plates legible. Rear footage better than above but still very soft and almost hazy and washed out - some number plates legible BUT if the vehicle is directly behind you this is only readable when they get very close as there seems to be an extreme soft focus bubble in the middle of the frame (yes, the window was spotless).

I compared this to some 412GW footage at both settings and in both cases, although the 412GW frames were far less saturated and "softer" they were much more evenly exposed, focused and smoother! As expected the footage from the Mobius I have in the rear window beat the socks off any of the others - detailed, sharp, NO mush, good exposure, good colours and good focus near and far!

3) The magnetic mount for the rear camera will not allow enough downward adjustment of the camera as I would like as the cable grommet fouls on the mount (MB C Class saloon) - would be better if the cable exited on the side of the camera pod instead of the back?

4) Whilst testing the 1440/720 mode I got several error bleeps with a brief message regarding SD card and something about speed (I think) - it was only on screen for a fleeting moment so I did not actually get to read it - after all I was driving! Could do with an error log setting I think - or leave the message on screen longer. I did not get any error when testing the 1080/1080 mode. Card is a Samsung Pro 64Gb U3 and takes 4k video in another device no problem.

5) I did find I had to set the exposure to +1 to get an acceptable picture - does this apply the setting to only the front camera or both? If it does both could that be the reason for the washed out looking frames from the rear pod? Really needs a setting for both cams as obviously the 522 has the CPL built in (possibly needing the exposure tweak) and the rear does not.

To remove the camera from the mount I found it much less hassle to unclip the GPS unit (still attached to the camera) from the mounting pad rather than trying to apply the extreme brute force the magnetic mount requires to get it to release! This is absolutely ridiculous - at best you pull the suction mount from the screen and I would think after a few goes even the self adhesive mount might give up - worst case is you might eventually break the ball socket/arm - totally unnecessary level of grip. By comparison the magnetic mount for the rear window camera is pretty feeble and can be easily nudged from alignment or even dislodged. Perhaps they used all the magnets up in the front mounts!

I think I am going to have to return this kit because whilst the phone app for setting and viewing files works very well (most of the time) and the touch screen, front/rear screen switching and ergonomics (except the magnetic mounts) are all very good the quality of the video leaves a lot to be desired. If it was possible to use a 1440P/1080P setting front/rear then it might just be acceptable as both sensors would be working at their native resolution - unfortunately at either of the 2 available settings one or other of the frames (front or rear) is downsized and of appreciably less quality.

In any case the frames might have all the recorded pixels necessary to be authentic 1440P/1080P BUT they are not of a sufficient quality by way of exposure, focus and stability to be considered true HD in my opinion.

I don't know why it is actually necessary to push beyond 1080P for a dashcam - I suppose we will have 4K or even 8K before long? I thought the requirement was to record any incident as clearly and reliably as possible (including number plates, time & date, location and speed) and 1080P seems more than adequate as I have proved with my ancient Mobius - you need quality pixels NOT necessarily more of them!
 
I'm going to have to get some footage off my camera at some point, but so far from watching on my phone, it seems acceptable at 1080-30/1080-30, on both.
The only points so far, are battery life, and as I haven't downloaded and watched any footage on my pc, is point "3".
God only knows how they thought that mount would work on a saloon car(Insignia), as you, as you rightly say, doesn't allow much downward movement, thus I get too much sky, and it all seems a bit dark, for the remaining portion of the video, but still seems decent, on my phone at least.
The front, I have about 30% sky and the rest is road and bonnet/dash, and seems ok.
The rear seems to be about a 50/50 mix, and obviously the bottom half of the image is a bit dark, and the reflection off my rear windscreen is mad, they should have polarised the rear camera.
I did try a polarised lens on the rear, but it seemed to make it far too dark, so that idea got binned.
I'll pull some of it off my camera tomorrow, and check it out.
Might have a gripe or 2 by then.! :)
 
I'm glad it's not just me then!

Yes they tell you not to have too much sky in the picture then produce a mount that forces you to do just that.

The footage probably does look good on your phone - mine does as well - but when you display the 1440P clips on my 1440P 32" monitor (or the 1080P on the 1080P 42" TV) so they are at their native resolution, so you can start reading number plates etc. - they are not good by any means.

Look forward to your results.
 
Oh, my 412 had the same problem with showing too much sky on max adjustment, Honda Civic.

I filed a notch into the stalk to give it more adjustment.
 
God only knows how they thought that mount would work on a saloon car(Insignia)

Yes they tell you not to have too much sky in the picture then produce a mount that forces you to do just that.

They can't test mounts on every car I suppose... Dashcam makers like as not have no way of knowing angles on windscreens on vehicles. Maybe it's the windscreen's fault for their slope.

Mount is perfectly fine on my Ford Focus.

Paul.
 
A lot of windscreens, my Civic included, now blend into the roofline which is nearer to horizontal than vertical (Austin 7 anyone).

My 402 mount was OK (third party 3M mount from Dod) but the 412 3M windscreen mount was more angled, so needed 'work'.

In my case Nextbase just needed to remove the angle so the ball joint was 90 degrees to the sticky pad.
 
Noted all the comments on the mounts - I agree there is a huge variance in rake between almost horizontal to almost vertical. I know that, you know that, why don't Nextbase design team understand that? It's not as if the rear mount in itself would not adjust adequately, it would IF they had put the cable entry to the pod on the side. Apart from anything else it would look better as you would not have the cable sticking out perpendicular from the screen with a big loop up up to the trim?

OK, had enough, returned it all to Halfrauds for a refund. Ironically whilst in the queue the lady in front of me was booking her car in to have 522GW plus rear window cam fitted - ouch, loadsa money. Probably based their choice on Honest John review or similar which basically said it was wonderful because of the Bluetooth, WiFi, app, magnetic mount (?????) etc. They did not even try it with a rear camera it seems. Hmmmm.

All the facilities sounded good but it was starting to play up especially on the app - only sometimes giving me live view - only showing some of the files recorded in the camera then locking up so you could not even choose what you wanted to download etc. etc. Also had the SD card warning multiple times again and that "super" magnetic mount - grrrrrrrrrr!

However, bottom line, I just did not consider the footage to be acceptable - the rear camera (could also do with a CPL) video was either poor in 1080p or atrocious in 720p so to get ANY sort of usability from the rear camera you HAD to run the front @ 1080p which also meant the front footage was very mediocre!

I need the dash cam to be a fit and forget unit, until required, and although all the extras and frills are nice to have the video quality is the main requirement and this device just does not meet the expectation.

I will probably try a Viofo A119 for the front as I now see there is custom firmware available to improve the video even more - I did try one a long while back which turned out to be badly focused so I ended up sending that back as well! If a new one proves successful I might even buy another for use as a rear cam - at the moment I can buy 2 for £140 both with GPS mounts and CPL and that would mean the rear footage would be leaps and bounds better than most of the duo cams I have seen reviews for (without spending serious amounts of cash). OK, no app, WiFi bla bla and the video will be on separate SD cards BUT I hope the video would be much better, especially from the back and the files should be reasonably easy to sort out as they will both start together and have the same GPS time / location info.

Watch this space (or at least the A119 forum)
 
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The rake on my rear screen is about 20 degrees from the horizontal. I guess I might have problems than.
 
I've found my measurement from my 412 angle issue and at the point where the mount needed to attach was 108 degrees so 18 degrees from horizontal, which is close to your 20 degrees.
 
I curious whether the limit which prevents you from running both front and rear camera at their maximum resolution is a software limit or a hardware bottleneck.

If the former, then it might be because Nextbase couldn't find any existing sdxc which had the required performance *and* durability for a dashcam (whilst there might be a few sdxc's with the required performance they probably explicitly exclude dashcams etc from their warranty which would place Nextbase in a bit of a quandry if the only sdxc's on the market capable of accepting both at full resolution explicitly excluded dashcams in their guidance) so disabled this option in software. If, this is the case, then as newer sdxcs get released (e.g. U5 class perhaps) we might see new options enabled in future firmware updates.

If this is a hardware bottleneck it is disappointing to have such built in obsolesence from launch!

If there are issues with sdcxs handling dual video at 1440 + 1080, it may explain the delays on the proposed 622GW.

Matthew
 
It'll more than likely be a card limitation, as you summise.

As resolutions get higher, card write speeds need to be higher. QuadHD @1440 prefers a card with a write speed of 50Mbps+. Once you have that, trying to write from a 1080 feed consecutively is going to be almost impossible.

My guess is that you're right in that a 'U5' or whatever card would probably be followed with a firmware change.
 
It'll more than likely be a card limitation, as you summise.

As resolutions get higher, card write speeds need to be higher. QuadHD @1440 prefers a card with a write speed of 50Mbps+. Once you have that, trying to write from a 1080 feed consecutively is going to be almost impossible.

My guess is that you're right in that a 'U5' or whatever card would probably be followed with a firmware change.
bits v bytes, cards are rated in MB/s, any U3 card is capable, most U1 cards also
 
Just checked the bitrate for the Blackvue 900S. Its best (extreme) is 4KUHD x 30fps + FullHD x 30 fps. this produces a Blackvue published bitrate of 25Mbps +10Mbps. Total = 35Mbps. That's 35 Mbits/second which = 4.3 MBytes/sec.
They do not specify exactly what resolutions their 4K or FullHD are, but the difference between bitrate and Bytes per second changes from what looks like quite a high rate into something far more modest when you analyse the figures and understand the difference.
So Kremmen is correct in saying 50Mb/sec for higher resolution cameras, but the actual MB/sec as published by SD card makers is one eighth of that = 6.25MB/sec so a Class 10 or U1 with a write speed of 10MB/sec would be well fast enough.

But having rambled on about that at length, my bet would be that the confusion between Mbps and MBps will continue for quite a while due to ignorance of the difference or just plain old keyboard laziness. (What rate is 10mbps = 1 bit every 16min 40 seconds).
 
I had a look at the file sizes on my sd card - the largest forward camera file was about 220MBytes (which was a 1440P recording), and the largest rear camera was about 90MBytes (which was a 1080P recording) - there is of course variation due to the variable compression algorithm. As these are 60 second files, that a total bandwidth requirement of (220+90)/60 = 5.1 MBytes/second which is well within the performance of a U1 card. There are in addition the low quality recordings but the largest of these is about 20MBytes (both for front and rear cameras), so that is only an additional (20+20)/60 = 0.7 MBytes/second.

So this seems odd - outputing both cameras at their highest quality seems well within the capability of a U1 class card - indeed if we assume doubling the front camera frame rate would double the size of the full and low quality files running the cameras at 1440P 60frames (front) + 1080P 30 frames (rear) would still only be 9.8Mbytes/second so just within the ability of a U1 card.

However, the 552GW requires a U3 card just to use the rear camera at all, and doesn't support running both at max resolution.

All I can think is that the 552GW writes a lot of (not well compressed) scratch files during the recording? Or Nextbase are allowing for a very pessmistic worst case compression ratio?
 
It just occured to me that my calculations above were for average bandwidth rather than peak bandwidth.
 
But given that most pixels will change from frame to frame (I guess) the average is probably fairly close to the peak anyway. Does the bit-rate decrease dramatically (at all) when the car is parked?
 
Abviously there is some variation - but typically a parked video is about 1/3 of the size of a "moving" video.
 
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