Welcome to the forum ChrissyMcD and rev16 and AMS
It is not uncommon for people to be discouraged by image quality of their dashcam. most often i think this is CUZ people compare to what they know, so this could be their kick ass phone camera or action camera, but those two are different beasts.
There is the saying that no dashcam is better than no dashcam, and it is largely true, a poor dashcam will still be able to document that when you drove into that intersection the light was green, so that guy that hit you was clearly the one running a red light.
The saying only get challenged when it come to little things, that can indeed some times be very important, one of these little things are the ability to capture a license plate, CUZ that is very good to have if the other part run away.
It is still a good thing if you can, to see the plate yourself and then call it out for the microphone to record, CUZ plate capture are not a for sure thing even with the best of dashcams in the best of lighting conditions.
A dashcam is a accident recording / evidence devise, it is not a video camera for cinematic use, for instance if there was a dashcam that was much better in capturing license plates in low light at night, CUZ it was changing to black & withe mode and some secret sauce parried with that, i would be inclined to want to buy that and forego color footage at night.
Sadly there are no such system, they are all much alike but some brands manage to get more out of the hardware, where as others even if they have the same hardware do not manage to reign it in for optimal performance.
It have also some times been seen that dedicated dashcam users have been able to modify the parameters the system work under with a modified firmware, and that actually making things better then the factory stuff, even if that in itself are quite good.
Plate capture at distance are limited with dashcams too, not least lesser resolution, modern 4K can do a lot further than a 1080p system can, it is a normal thing as a result of the wide angle lenses dashcams use, so things will appear further away then they actually are.
Many of us old dogs have modified a second system with new lens with more zoom in it, this could be a 6 - 8 or 12 mm lens, these give a more natural looking footage in regard to how far you can read a plate VS your young eyes with 20 / 20 vision.
The down side is these lenses then have much less field of view, so for instance a MAX recommended 12 mm lens, when you look at its footage, it is like looking thru a pipe so when you make a turn 90 degrees you dont see / feel the turn like you will with a wide angle lens but rater its like you are getting ripped sideways as things just pass like that in the field of view of a 12 mm lens.
But the + side is you can capture readable plates 4-5-6 car lengths away, and you do also get readable plates on oncoming cars, just further away due to the smaller field of view of a "zoom" lens.
But the normal wide angle lens, the sweet spor for capturing a plate on a on coming car, it is only the last 5 - 10 frames before it disappear out of view, so indeed very close.
drivevision.com.au
