A229 Pro Disappointment

[dawilso9]

So I finally got around to installing my unit after the V1.0_231123 FW was released and updated my unit. It replaced my old A129 Pro. I have to say even with the latest firmware I am really disappointed. I expected a significant jump in low light and image performance from my previous unit and I when I put the videos side by side it was hard to tell any real improvement. Sure the A229 is less grainy, but it just looks smoothed out with no real improvement on detail. Plates are no longer a grainy mess, but just a smeared mess. The STAVIS 2 sensors had so much hype about being a total game changer for low light, but they just seem like an iterative improvement. If you pixel peep then sure it is better, but when you look at the actual footage it seems like a marginal improvement at best. Especially when the street light glare is so bad you cannot read the street signs next to them. I cannot believe I wasted $300+ on this thing...

 

[Vortex Radar]

Yeah the improved sensor’s sensitivity helps with reduced noise, but unless they crank up shutter speeds, you’re still going to see motion blur. There’s no avoiding that part.

IIRC, the A129 Pro only had WDR, right? With the A229 Pro’s HDR, that should help with capturing license plates in some additional situations.

 

[Panzer Platform]

I cannot believe I wasted $300+ on this thing

Would you be so kind to upload some test footage to YouTube, and some screenshots?
I was thinking about putting the A129 Pro on my windshield to compare with the A229 Pro.
But I ran out of room, and i am just comparing it with the A139 Pro, A229 Plus, A119 Mini 2.

Actually don’t bother with the test footage.
Bottom line the A229 Pro was released too early, and the firmware is unfinished.
The good news is the hardware is complete, so it’s just a waiting game until the firmware is 100%.

 

[dawilso9]

IIRC, the A129 Pro only had WDR, right? With the A229 Pro’s HDR, that should help with capturing license plates in some additional situations.

Yes it "only" had WDR, but when I compare footage there is no huge improvement at night.

Actually don’t bother with the test footage.
Bottom line the A229 Pro was released too early, and the firmware is unfinished.
The good news is the hardware is complete, so it’s just a waiting game until the firmware is 100%.

What really gets me is that I paid $200 over three years ago for my A129 Pro which replaced my A119 V2. That was a nice upgrade at the time and could really tell the difference. I was kinda expecting a similar improvement after spending over $300 on this one. For me it was no where worth the extra $300 to upgrade to the new unit, I would of kept my A129 Pro. If it would not be such a huge pain in the butt to remove the rear camera cable and reinstall the old one I would really consider just sending this one back.

 

[Panzer Platform]

What really gets me is that I paid $200 over three years ago for my A129 Pro which replaced my A119 V2. That was a nice upgrade at the time and could really tell the difference. I was kinda expecting a similar improvement after spending over $300 on this one. For me it was no where worth the extra $300 to upgrade to the new unit, I would of kept my A129 Pro. If it would not be such a huge pain in the butt to remove the rear camera cable and reinstall the old one I would really consider just sending this one back.

You are correct.
During daytime the A129 Pro & A229 Pro will be like splitting hairs.
Once the A229 Pro firmware gets fine tuned the same way they did with the A139 Pro you will be able to see a big improvement during NIGHT TIME.

 

[Vortex Radar]

I'm going back through some videos at the moment while preparing for something and just came across this comparison with the WDR-only A129 Pro and some Starvis models with HDR.



This is a from a clip where I'm stopped at a red light, not an example with motion involved, but it does illustrate one of the situations where you should see an improvement over your A129 Pro.

 

[kamkar]

No starvis 2 are not a game changer, as it have been in the past +10 years it is just baby steps ahead, though i will call the starvis 2 a slightly larger baby step this time.
There have never been a radical shift in dashcam image quality or low light performance, no brand have a secret sauce they deploy.

You could probably make the kick ass dashcam and do that and with current hardware too, but you would end up with a 2 - 3000 dollar dashcam, and they will not sell many of those, so no one make that system.

 

[Dashmellow]

You could probably make the kick ass dashcam and do that and with current hardware too, but you would end up with a 2 - 3000 dollar dashcam, and they will not sell many of those, so no one make that system.

I don't know what the final cost would be, certainly more than we pay now, but I don't believe it would have to cost 2-3 thousand dollars. What we do need to really boost dash cam performance is a much larger sensor (Starvis 2?) with an appropriate lens, probably a C-mount pancake lens of some kind. A camera like that could conceivably be very similar in appearance to an A229 only with a larger lens module.

 

[kamkar]

Indeed.
I might be a little high on the price, a nice lens for a nice big sensor, well thats not going to be cheap, but doable as Insta 360 prove with their now Ace pro camera, sweet Leica lens and will handle 8K too.
but i was also thinking amped bitrate, it would be a shame to suffocate / gimp nice hardware with current dashcam bitrates.

The insta ace pro do 48 mpic pictures, and as i understand same sensor as the osmo action 4 touted to have 2.4μm pixels, but ill be damned if i can find the sensor name / model
4 in 1 pixel binning for nice 4K low light footage ( not sure if that is what the insta ace pro do though ) but its low light footage look nice as far as i can tell with no direct comparison to any 4K dashcam

The insta ace pro are still a 550 USD camera, then again some dashcams hit that too.

I really think insta 360 should make a dashcam.

 

[Panzer Platform]

This is a from a clip where I'm stopped at a red light, not an example with motion involved, but it does illustrate one of the situations where you should see an improvement over your A129 Pro.

"Nobody" ever notices the night time improvement until they see a dramatic example like this.

 

[dawilso9]

Nowadays it is not all about the sensor hardware and pixel size. Of course the larger the pixel the more light you will get, but the real improvements have come on the software processing side. With iPhone and Pixels they take such great videos because of the powerful post-processing. The IMX678 has a 2 µm pixel size, while the iPhone 15 ultra-wide is only 1.4 µm. If they can get that done in a $800 iPhone then I have to imagine they could strip out all of the smartphone parts and get it done cheaper.

 

[Panzer Platform]

If they can get that done in a $800 iPhone then I have to imagine they could strip out all of the smartphone parts and get it done cheaper.

That’s so funny.
The fidget spinner / ASMR generation spend $1,000 on a cell phone to take selfies, and photos of their brunch.
I wish we had 10% of the investment / infrastructure of cell phones in our dash cams. Lol

 

[Dashmellow]

If they can get that done in a $800 iPhone then I have to imagine they could strip out all of the smartphone parts and get it done cheaper.

One of the reasons Apple can do that with an iPhone is because of the enormous volume of phones they sell. The economics of manufacturing and selling dash cams at a profit is a different animal and really quite different in large part due to slimmer margins they can make on a far lower volume of products. Dash cams are really still and will probably remain a niche industry for quite some time to come. It certainly would be cool to have smart phone level processing power in a dash cam as you could not only up the performance but also the ability to add all kinds of interesting new features but I don't see it happening any time soon in dash cams as the manufacturers of the SoCs are highly unlikely to invest the enormous sums involved for such a comparatively low volume market.

 

[Vortex Radar]

Yeah dashcams, like radar detectors, are niche products made by small companies with limited R&D budgets. It's a totally different world compared to your Apples, Googles, Sonys, etc. who employ tons and tons of highly paid and skilled engineers. It's such a stark difference when you listen to conversations from Microsoft or Facebook employees about what they're working on, the speed and depth of updates, and so on. So many times I've dreamed of having a huge company produce some stuff for us too. I think it would be such a big difference in terms of UI, functionality, updates, etc.

 

[ogzogz]

I haven't had the chance to try the a229 pro yet.

The a129 pro is pretty good during the day. It is exposed to streaky colored effects only when exposed to direct sunlight from above.
At night, street lamps create a starry effect.
WDR at night unfortunately did not fix it. wdr comes on and comes off instantly or vice versa..

Due to various problems, I made long trials and problem detection to ensure that the working principle was stable, and we got results. But its effect on WDR and night image quality could not be resolved.

HDR makes a big difference.

I currently have to use 2 cameras in my vehicle.

a129 pro duo and a119 mini 2.
The reason is that a129 pro has a good image during the day. A119 mini 2 for license plate readability at night thanks to HDR.

A single device can give good performance with more testing and better software.

Do not forget that the image is different at night with the moon overhead and in pitch darkness.

Since the angle of incidence of the sun in winter months is different from the angle of incidence of the sun in summer months,
Contrast increases as shading increases in visible areas in winter,
We also get a bright view in summer.

We can achieve positive results by examining and adapting such fine details.

Whenever the latest cameras are delivered to me, you can be sure that I will provide my experience and solution suggestions quickly.

Have a pleasant drive.

 

[ozguy]

Yeah dashcams, like radar detectors, are niche products made by small companies with limited R&D budgets. It's a totally different world compared to your Apples, Googles, Sonys, etc. who employ tons and tons of highly paid and skilled engineers. It's such a stark difference when you listen to conversations from Microsoft or Facebook employees about what they're working on, the speed and depth of updates, and so on. So many times I've dreamed of having a huge company produce some stuff for us too. I think it would be such a big difference in terms of UI, functionality, updates, etc.

hmmm, imagine a few of these skilled engineers, started their OWN side hustle for dash cams..

 

[Dashmellow]

hmmm, imagine a few of these skilled engineers, started their OWN side hustle for dash cams..

Side hustle?

There is a bit of a fly in that ointment. Aside from the actual manufacturing of the dash cam itself, designing a smart phone level dash cam would require designing and manufacturing highly specialized components that don't currently exist, like a dash cam processor SoC that could operate at that level, plus other associated components. That would require an investment that no group of side hustling rogue engineers could ever make or source. PLUS, although the engineers that design and program our dash cams are often highly skilled they would have to be on a whole different level to design a smart phone level dash cam from scratch. Dash cam engineers from different dash companies basically just put together and program the same readily available outsourced, off shelf components every other manufacturer is using but they don't design and manufacture those components.

Even if engineers from huge companies like Apple or Sony wanted to build their own dash cams they too would not have the financial resources to building the components from scratch. (BTW- An engineer from Apple already tried to start a dash cam company which quickly went out of business but was eventually resurrected up by another outfit- The Owl Cam. )

All dash cams operate on specialized SoCs that provide the functionalities that we have in our dash cams and these are provided to dash cam developers with SDKs they can use to customize those chips to some degree but dash cam developers source these processors from chip manufacturers such as Novatek, Amabarella, iCatch and others. No small dash cam developer/manufacturer or group of independent engineers could ever afford to design and build their own processors and other key components and no venture capital firm would ever be likely to make such an investment.

The reason corporations like Apple or Samsung can engineer and produce highly sophisticated smartphones for the prices they do is that that they have enormous financial resources. They even design and manufacture their own processors and other esoteric components. Apple currently has a cash hoard of $162.1 billion dollars on hand, for example.

 

[kamkar]

There are image processing chips in some phones, that would easy handle even the most outrageous dashcam specs you can think off, parried with a nice 8 - 10 - 12 core processor a lot of stuff would be possible.
The insta ace pro i keep rambling about, it also seem to apply the de noise stuff after a clip is stopped, so i am not sure it would be able to handle a new clip getting initiated as soon as one end, and then do that processing in the background.

But maybe have something like that de- noise stuff in a dashcam, but then that only run when you turn off the car, then all your recordings are processed before the camera turn off.
Or maybe that could be a part of the brands player ( PC ) and APP ( phone )

I been looking at a new Arken digital scope it need your phone connected with BT to be able to calculate your hold ( over / under ) as you range with the laser different distances to targets.
That BTW is also starvis 2 camera, and since it have 5 X digital zoom, that do not look terrible when fully zoomed in, i would assume is the 4K sensor even if the recorded output are just 1080p footage ( which i find fine for a scope )
A nice looking 600 USD " toy " i like to get my hands on too.

 

[ozguy]

(BTW- An engineer from Apple already tried to start a dash cam company which quickly went out of business but was eventually resurrected up by another outfit- The Owl Cam. )

Apple currently has a cash hoard of $162.1 billion dollars on hand, for example.

Interesting about apple engineer and imagine if apple or samsung, spent a few mill of that 1.62 billion developing there own dash cam.. I wonder how many dash cam owners are in the world..lol

 

[Dashmellow]

Interesting about apple engineer and imagine if apple or samsung, spent a few mill of that 1.62 billion developing there own dash cam.. I wonder how many dash cam owners are in the world..lol

It would be pretty cool if Apple or Sony would design and produce dash cams but I think that is unlikely because the dash cam market is just too small for it to be worth the investment to them. Unlike smartphones, laptops, tablets and smartwatches, dash cams are still a niche market even though they've become much more popular in recent years.

In 2022, 1749.7 million smartphone units were sold worldwide, which means 21.9% of the global population (8 billion people) purchased a mobile phone in 2022.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global dash camera market size was .35 billion USD in 2022 projected to grow from $0.40 billion in 2023 to $1.93 billion by 2030 which is a tiny fraction of the sales of smartphones sold globally. According to The Business Research Company the global market for dash cams was 3.1 billion USD globally in 2022, so go figure, but either way it is a fraction of the size of the smartphone market.

I couldn't find any info about how many dash cam owners there are in the world.