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.
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.