Dome G30...

[TD-1226]

I keep reading a lot of good about these, so I'm rather confused now. Are there actually *fakes* of these cameras to watch out for, or are they actually just plain garbage?

Specs written on the box are an obvious lie, there's no "1080p", there's just uprezed 480.

12 freezes, 2 sudden powerdowns in one 1h long drive. Occasional "card error" too.

Instead of showing the usual power down screen, it once showed me a graphical "goodbye", badly corrupted, and froze.

Built full of holes you can see the backlight through...

Are they all like that?

Attached photos to illustrate the issues.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Not a very clear image that's for sure.

 

[TD-1226]

And it did it again.

With a new twist, it never looked like this before.

Thoughts?

 

[Street Guardian USA]

I'd contact your seller for RMA replacement.

 

[BMbler]

I keep reading a lot of good about these, .....................

View attachment 14225 View attachment 14226

G30 good reviews?
My $0.02ct- dump it and get something tested and recommended on this site!

 

[BMbler]

And it did it again.

With a new twist, it never looked like this before.

Thoughts?

View attachment 14227

Yeh, I had DV207 clone nonsense, managed to give it relative to try, so he broke it... (paid under £25)
Had 0801 fake (after hell of an argument and possible second unit sent to me by seller)... packed up after a month, still some (little) money paid- wasted (I think it was under £30)

Got myself GT680W- works perfect and image/video/reliability quality makes it DashCam, I can(and do) rely on

 

[TD-1226]

I did contact the seller... utter silence so far, he has 4 days until Ebay "steps in", whatever that may mean. This thing was so cheap I'm not really worried either way, whether I get to return it or not. Worst case scenario I'll strap it to an RC plane... rather well suited to that actually, it's only half the weight of my GoPro.

Speaking of which, I've always wanted to use my old GoPro (original HD Hero I bought new waaay back) as a dash cam, stellar quality and reliability... but no loop recording So, following the G30 fiasco I've done plenty of research and was blown away by the SJ4000. Ended up ordering the WiFi variant.
Then I've found the Blackview Hero 2.7K... on a massive special on Antelife.com right now, ended up buying that too!

I just wish I've done this research earlier. This way I'll have three "GoPros" to put all over the Jeep or on my RC vehicles, two of which work great as dash cams. Why did I even bother with the G30, I have no clue. It doesn't have a GPS map logging functionality so even if it worked, it would offer nothing over those little guys.

In the end... I'm kinda glad the G30 turned out to be a dud, it pushed me to dig deeper and find some real gems that suit my needs much better...

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Using an action camera with a large battery as a full time dashcam is not generally recommended . (unless you're going to remove it from the car after every drive)

 

[TD-1226]

Sure, I can't just leave a GoPro clone in there when I park, too "desirable", so to speak.

But then again I wouldn't leave the G30 either, that thing is too big and obvious, and looks too blingy and "expensive" somewhow.

 

[skojevac]

I've had this (kind of) camera for almost a year and a half now, and I think as long as it is a combination of Novatek 96650 and AR330 it makes videos of rather decent quality in daylight and it's actually not that bad during the night either. The camera looks like many others out there without any inscriptions, and it does have fish-eye lens for wide angle view, but that also produce a lot of "barreling" in the video.

Speaking of hardware combination, there is really a bunch of similar looking cameras with all kinds of hardware combinations, and it also comes under different names (like S30, S550A) that it makes it really hard to find the right one, and until you actually have it in your hand you can not know if it's a good version or a fake one. Unless, of course, you order from original retailer.
At the moment of purchase I was not aware it was supposed to be Dome G30 product, so I remember I was fishing on the ebay looking for reliable seller who would actually send me a product with all the features as it was advertised.
The camera has performed well for the past year and a half, and I also tend to believe it's a capacitor version since it shuts down within seconds after being disconnected without corrupting files.

It starts and shuts down with welcome and goodbye screens.

Immediately after plugging into computer it gives options to be used either like a media device or as a webcam. If chosen to be used as a web cam computer recognizes it as J1455. I did not try to use it as a webcam though so I do not know if it would actually work that way.

Menu looks like this.

So far I was not able to find the new version of firmware, but the one that came with the camera works great, so it's probably better not to fix it if it's working.
It records full HD videos with 30 fps and data rates of up to 1500kbps.
Quality of the videos can be seen here.

[youtube]

[/youtube]
[youtube]

[/youtube]
[youtube]

[/youtube]
[youtube]

[/youtube]

 

[rogaworld]