Affordable Dash Cam--B1W? A119?

JayAy1

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Hey noobie here.

Looking for something affordable (prefer under $100). It looks like the B1W is good option (parking mode but no GPS) and A119 (GPS, but no parking mode).
  • Anything else to consider?
  • Is it a big deal to DIY install?

Currently have cheap Aukey dash cam on two cars plugged into cig adapter. Recently, someone was kind enough to clip off mirror and drove off...:mad:

Thanks!
 
Not a big deal if you are a little handy and have basic tools available.
I am inclined to think that you are thinking about hard wire for parking mode, you will find several videos on youtube about how to do this, maybe not with the exact same dashcam model but they are all much the same in this regard.
 
The A119 is a superior cam compared to the B1W but if it doesn't have the features you need you'll have to compromise. The B1W is quite good for it's price, and it seems the beta parking mode is doing well.

You should research "parking mode" operation as there are different ways of doing this, and range from great to worthless. The B1W does "time lapse" which is like a series of still photos taken at intervals. The time is expressed as FPS, or Frames per second, and at higher road speeds it may not capture more than a distant pic of the offender. A higher FPS rate, such as 5FPS, seems adequate to me. The best parking mode uses pre-buffering where the cam records continuous video but does not write to the card until an event occurs. Only a few more expensive cams have this function. You can also use any cam to record continuously, but this has several drawbacks. First is that it will void the warranty. Second is that you may have to review hours of video to find an event, and unless you see the damage before the card overwrites that file you may not have video of it. Third is that in summer heat, most cams will die an early death using them this way which limits your choices. Forth is that this will limit you to at best 6-8 hours of recording time before you car battery begins to suffer so you'll want a BDP to turn the cam off before it's voltage drops that far. I've been using the B1W in this fashion through the summer and it has performed admirably. The original Mobius is also known to handle this kind of abuse very well whenm you upgrade it to super-caps. The other parking modes which rely on G-sensor or motion detection usually lag a few seconds from detection of the event to the beginning or recording as the cam has to boot-up first which may nopt be fast enough, and the event may not even be detected at all. The B1W does have a very good G-sensor (at least mine does) but it's about 2 1/2 to 3 seconds until recording begins.

So for parking protection neither of these two cams is all that good but using the B1W continuously or with a hardwire kit and G-sensor activation might be enough for you.

Phil
 
Goluk T3. It has parking mode but not GPS. The parking mode on this camera is prebuffered and is excellent. There are only 3 cams that have this feature. Blackvue, thinkware & Goluk.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
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