Best of the best and best of budget sold within EU?

cormie

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Hey folks,
I run a small removal business in Ireland and have been a dash cam user for a while. Have had the DRS1100 and the iTronics ITB100HD.

One of my iTronics ITB100HD cameras is acting up on me, I bought it from an eBay seller, it was shipped from Korea and I think I've feck all chance of returning it so am in the market for a new one. It was one of the best on the market at the time of purchase and looking for something of equal or better high quality, cheaper if possible and shipped with a warranty within the EU.


My requirements I guess are simple enough, the essentials are:

*1080 recording at least
*Great night quality
*Great frame rate for number plate recognition
*I guess a wide view lens for the same reason (although I'm not sure if the wider the lens = the more distorted things like plates can be?)
*G sensor
*GPS with separate speed reading (i.e, not embedded into the video itself, but read via software)
*Emergency button or shock files which can't be overwritten
*Adjustable Sensitivity (I don't think vans are renowned for suspension)
*High quality build, sold and warranty returnable within the EU (no customs etc)
*Discreet but good range of viewing if I need to manually turn it (suction mount ads too much bulk)
*Highly revered and quite popular camera with a strong enough user base. This is more to signify reliability than to have anything to do with firmare upgrades etc as I just like to plug, play and forget about it and to know it's always likely to work and the only time I'll need to touch it is if something important is recorded.

I'd be willing to pay extra for:
*24/7 surveillance (I tried to set this up in some vans with a secondary battery that would be charged by the primary battery only when the ignition was live and then the dash camera would be powered by the secondary battery, immediately after ignition and would continue to be powered until the secondary battery was drained and once drained, it wouldn't then feed off the primary so the primary would always have enough juice to start the vans and wouldn't be affected by the dash cam - however, I ended up spending a lot of money and being let down by auto electricians who did a both job and caused a huge fire hazard in 4 vans - I'm now sadly not willing to invest any more time or money into achieving this which is a pity as I'd love to have the surveillance (have had a few graffiti attacks on the van as it's parked in a dark enough place). If this is an easy to implement feature it would be great.
*Built in rechargeable battery (charged when vehicle in use, uses its own battery while parking so not to interfere with and drain the vehicle battery)
*Dual cam
*Motion sensor
*Internal storage
*UV Filter
*Low discharge cut off for car battery.
*Bluetooth/WiFi (sync video files and watch on phone if at the scene of an accident)

Existing technology but probably not in any dash cams?:

*GPS tracking (I can view where my vans are remotely)
*Video feed (I can see what my vans see remotely!)
*Mirror attachment sold separately (custom shape rear view designed specifically so camera can slot into it and be completely hidden from view)

Things that would make things easier for me:
*Regular SD card as I already have them for my cams
*Some way of switching the head of the current power cable to be suitable to the new camera as I paid to get the power connection for the DRS1100/iTronics ITB100HD hardwired to the ignition live of the radio and would prefer not to have to pay to redo the job just for a new connection type of the new camera.


A lot of the "willing to pay extra for" features I mention are influenced by the Lukas 7900 Ace which looks like an awesome camera but I don't want to buy from outside of Europe.

- The Lukas 7900 appears to give shadows a slight bright outline as you can see at around 27 seconds as the SUV drives by. Also, the DODLS430W "DAY TOWN" clips by Techmoan have a thick white stroke on car lights (and the ambulance)?

One thing also is the recording method used. The DRS1100 method was better than the iTronics I think. It recorded and kept "shock/emergency" clips and never recorded over these until you deleted them from the PC. The iTronics splits the clips by shock/parked/driving and records over each as new footage happens. Because it's so sensitive, the old shock clips easily get recorded over and because it senses so much while parked, this happened too so in a way it'd be good if the motion clips were shared with the general clip allocation, rather than having to change the allocation % every time you park it up. This would then create more space for motion detection recording and would just be recording over the old driving files you had, which 99% of the time will be absolutely fine as if you recorded anything important while driving, you would have already taken the footage to your pc.

I'd ideally want one with a good review history and reputation and looking for the best choice that matches as much as the above for:
a) No budget
b) €100 budget

I'm VAT registered in Ireland and could either claim back Irish VAT or get a reputable seller to sell to me EX VAT from within Europe. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated :)
 
Thanks for the reply. I've changed the Title so as not to narrow it down to Ireland anymore, but sold within the EU, might get a little more interest :)
 
The VicoVation TF2 has great day and night quality, wide angle lens. Dunno if sold in the EU. Also, a lot of the features you're looking for are either in progress or don't exist yet.
 
Most good stuff is "abroad". Unfort within EU there are no dash-cams that could meet your requirements ( EU seller, VAT invoice etc ).
The only two I can see from EU sellers with VAT invoice etc, are VicoVation TF2 as @Xybone mentioned, - this would be from higher price-range, bust still not perfectly matches for requirements you listed. From budget range I would recommend Mobius ( my personal favourite choice from under 100 euro dash-cams ).
 
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If you have the ITB-100HD, the most recent cameras are not that much further ahead. Some have better video quality due to higher bit rate and WDR and some now have WiFi but there are not many more improvements yet.

If you are looking for local vendors, I have rearranged the vendor forums by country. There are some vendors in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands for consideration.
http://dashcamtalk.com/forum/categories/dash-cam-vendors.4/
 
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Hey everyone, thanks a lot for the very helpful replies. I was thinking that the iTronics ITB100HD is still probably up there with the higher end models out now alright. It's just a pain when you order something from across the globe and then something goes wrong and you're not sure if the seller still operates even. I was having some other issues with the vans which didn't allow me to fully check the cameras so it's too late now to do anything about the dodgy ITB100hd.

I guess the Lukas 7900 appears to be the most feature rich out there and I love the small size of it too, I'm just not prepared to spend that much money on a few minor upgrades and would rather go for a budget one for the time being.

Have seen the mobius reviewed, but is this not more an "action cam" as opposed to a dash cam? No GPS, no g-sensor etc?
 
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Hey everyone, thanks a lot for the very helpful replies. I was thinking that the iTronics ITB100HD is still probably up there with the higher end models out now alright. It's just a pain when you order something from across the globe and then something goes wrong and you're not sure if the seller still operates even. I was having some other issues with the vans which didn't allow me to fully check the cameras so it's too late now to do anything about the dodgy ITB100hd.

I guess the Lukas 7900 appears to be the most feature rich out there and I love the small size of it too, I'm just not prepared to spend that much money on a few minor upgrades and would rather go for a budget one for the time being.

Have seen the mobius reviewed, but is this not more an "action cam" as opposed to a dash cam? No GPS, no g-sensor etc?

With latest FW upgrades on Mobius, - you will be surprised on how powerful it is with truly good day and night video rec. And for use in car I recommend upgrade it to capacitors, this way it will be more like from high-end dash-cams category . You will find all from www.joovuu.com. He is also here @JooVuu. Very quick and reliable UK seller.
I recommend you to buy one set with OTG cable and play with it ( if you have Android smartph ). I am sure you not going to regret. If you like, - after you can buy more of them for your vans.
 
With latest FW upgrades on Mobius, - you will be surprised on how powerful it is with truly good day and night video rec. And for use in car I recommend upgrade it to capacitors, this way it will be more like from high-end dash-cams category . You will find all from www.joovuu.com. He is also here @JooVuu. Very quick and reliable UK seller.
I recommend you to buy one set with OTG cable and play with it ( if you have Android smartph ). I am sure you not going to regret. If you like, - after you can buy more of them for your vans.

Thank you for the kind recommendation Niko. We are always glad to help where ever we can and if anyone has any questions we will always do our best.

Cheers,

JooVuu
 
But unfortunately the link does not working: "Link to database cannot be established: SQLSTATE[42000] [1044] Access denied for user ''@'localhost' to database 'joovuuco_store'"

regards
 
But unfortunately the link does not working: "Link to database cannot be established: SQLSTATE[42000] [1044] Access denied for user ''@'localhost' to database 'joovuuco_store'"

regards

Earlier today it gave me a message to the effect that the website is down for maintenance. Try again later.
 
Thanks again for the replies folks. The mobius does look like a great little camera for the price alright, but once you've bought all the add ons and accessories, it's getting into the same price bracket as the regular dash cams, and given that I want it for a dash cam solely, would I not just be better off getting a dash specific cam which would include the GPS logging, G sensor and these things too?

I'm pretty disappointed to hear the 0801 comes in both GPS and non GPS models, I thought it was just a case of buying the GPS mount and this would enable it automatically. Unless a camera was going to have a lot on my wish list above, I don't think I'd be willing to spend a high a mount or get it from outside the EU so probably would prefer to go for a cheaper well revered model.
 
Above all else you want the best video quality so I'd concentrate my search on that.

I have the Lukas 7900 and it is excellent in all regards except that too many have bad focus from the factory or focus not glued properly or for some other reason it looses focus over time. I'm sure they could easily fix their production process and it would be excellent in all regards then. Most people's camera's are probably fine. But it can be a bigger issue than it is because often you have to buy one from Korea so it's a hassle to sort.

The Lukas battery based power cut off device is excellent too.

As I said above, above all else you want the best video quality. I'm not sure what that is. The Mobius is probably better in that regard than most dashcams. I'm leaning towards replacing my Lukas with one or having a Mobius for the rear camera as my Lukas should get replaced for me. I need to read the forums some more to see what else has been released in the last 6 months.

The other good point about the Mobius is it's cheap[ish] and available in the UK.
 
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Thanks for the reply. I did a comparison of the Mini 0801 and the iTronics ITB 100HD on my blog here: http://www.vantasks.ie/blog/mini-0801-vs-itronics-itb100hd-dash-cam-compare there's quite a big difference in night performance, although the Mini is better in other aspects such as boot up and shut down recording. I wonder how the mobius would compare on both of these regards? I like the way Techmoan states in his review of the mobius that the company approached him specifically to see what recommendations he would suggest for the cam, so great to see a company listening like that. If it only had G-Sensor and GPS...

I hear also there is a new amarella A7 chip which will be recording in 1440?
 
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