Thank you again 2000rpm. Which pics were taken with which model Cobra? You only list an 840 in your sig.
Pics could be either two Cobra 840 or a 840 and 820 because at one time I had a Cobra 840 and a Cobra 820 (extremely small cam, ideal for stealthiness).
The Cobra 820 was very unreliable due to random shutdowns (about half of all journeys would have a shutdown at some point). I politely emailed Cobra customer service for advice on the erratic 820, detailing everything I had tried to make it work. They sent me out a free 'upgrade' to the Cobra 840 and let me keep the 820 which I never managed to get to work consistently so it ended up in the bin. So now I have two Cobra 840. Video quality and all available settings appeared to be identical between the two cams, except the 840 has GPS.
I have a few other duplicates too, because until several months ago we were running four cars with front+rear cams - often 2x front and 1x rear. Now we have three cars and I have a handful of spare cams.
.....To paraphrase you said "60fps better with high speeds in good light, 30fps better with slow speeds and in poor light" which makes so much sense that I wonder if any mfrs have considered if they could AUTOMATICALLY alter res & fps according to e.g. a night detection photocell sensor....
@JooVuu's X-cam has a menu option for two different recording modes, with the cam switching at a pre-set time. The X can do 2560*1080p/30fps and 1920*1080p/60fps which could make good night/day recordings but I haven't tried the timed mode on my X so can't comment on whether it's functional yet. The downside to the 60fps option on most cams is that the field of view narrows by (e.g. 1920p instead of 2560p or 1280p instead of 1920p).
...The cross-country trips that I like a dash cam for are mostly at (very) high speeds i.e. 70-80mph, though of course sometimes going through cities, or slowing/stopping for gas/food/rest every few hours causes slowdowns.
I suppose there are truckers' forums where these things are discussed. I am not especially thrilled with my Blacksys CF-100 but neither am I all that impressed by other video I've seen, most of which tends to be at slower speeds.
It would be nice if this board had a "best" thread where posters could argue which dash cam got the best results for them. For me this is a "money is no object" thing but the hundreds of models on the market these days are just too much to research....
I've been working on my own version of a rough-and-ready scoring system for cams (based on currently available cams) where they are graded on what I consider to be the main factors:
1. Ability to capture details/long-range plate reading.
2. Field of view.
3. Night image brightness.
Unfortunately, improving one of the above tends to worsen one or more of the others.
As you have a CF-100, I'll tell you that I score mine as about 4/10 for details, 9/10 for field of view and 9/10 for low light.
The Cobra (on 1080p30) mentioned above is almost the opposite, with about 10/10 for details (I haven't found anything able to surpass the Cobra's long-sightedness in daylight), 5/10 for field of view (on sharp corners some things can slip past unseen by the cam!) and 6/10 for low light.
