I've read so many reviews and turned so many different ways I'm dizzy................
First I thought 2ch but every one of those units seems to have some sort of achilles heel, so now I'm probably looking at 1ch and adding a rear camera later as technology advances in the UK.
Basically I'm looking for the latest technology believing that it must surely be the best solution but every where I turn I find that the device's, in one form or another, have been released 12, 18 or even 24 months previously. I'm restricting myself to the "quality" brands as I believe it's preferable to.....................buy best, buy once.
Of the Brands I've been looking at :-
-Street Guardian..........either discreet but no buffered parking, sometimes form factor............ I like the remote one but don't like the bulky control unit...where would I put it.
-Panorama .......I keep reading of firmware problems, form factor !!
-Lukas..... I believe very good but Oh! the form factor looks so dated.
-FineVu..... Brilliant camera and functions but may be unreliable and form factor, the dated single channel 500 has a lithium battery....
-Blackvue... Good form factor but..........some good reviews and some terrible reviews....
and maybe..... -Think ware........
Now leaning towards the 1ch. Lukas 7900 and to hell with the form factor, or the remote Street Guardian and to hell with the large control unit.............
Can anyone advise better in terms of ..............quality, functions and reliability ?
Just started testing the CR2000 Omega this week, the rear camera is so much better and to be honest I think it's as good as some of the Blackvue 1CH cameras.
It's even smaller than Blackvue's 2CH rear camera too and offers Sony EXMOR sensor recording in a variable bit rate hovering around 10-12 mbps.
We carried the CR2000G for more than a year and although we didn't sell too many of them they were very reliable devices, more so than the CR500HD.
Mounted it next to the DR650GW-2CH for perspective, I'm very tempted to black out the orange ring and the silver frame though. If I mount it higher up and off to the side a bit it'll make it a bit more discreet but I put it smack dab in the middle to make some sample videos with it.
First impressions
Good:
- Video quality especially in the rear is impressive for a parking mode device, recording at up to 12 + 12 mbps total
- I was actually able to make this work as a backup cam, you can set it so that the home/default screen is the rear camera and if you point the camera down a tad it works pretty nicely as a backup cam on a hatchback/suv/van
- GPS (external now) connects very quickly and the speed is very accurate according to my car's speedometer. Blackvue's GPS has a slower refresh rate and tends to be less accurate.
- Startup time is very fast
- I thought the touchscreen would generate a lot of heat but the device actually doesn't run particularly hot (by dashcam standards), definitely seems cooler than DR750
- Design; I think this is the best looking two piece 2CH touchscreen dashcam, Lukas and Blackvue's options are so tacky and plasticky in my opinion and these feels like a high quality product in your hands.
My only complaints so far:
- switched to direct hardwire kit, cleaner install but it switches to parking mode right away when you turn off the car and there isn't anything you can do to change that. When it does so you can't access any of the settings on the screen.
- Because I turned off the orange LED ring there's no way to know it's recording in parking mode, there's no other LED indicator on the device so unless you click the screen you can't tell whether it's running
- No way to change the screen brightness, I wouldn't mind being able to reduce the screen brightness a bit
Happy to answer any questions you may have about this device