frostrambler
New Member
- Joined
- May 19, 2014
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 3
- Country
- United States
After my G1W randomly stopped recording at different moments, I bought a G1W-H that was fine for one day, and then it lost the ability to detect when the power cable was removed. It would always think it was on external power, even when I turned the car off, and thus would run down its battery every time, unless I manually shut it down... I am done with crappy no name brand cameras. I picked up a Garmin Dash Cam 20 last night at bestbuy, its 250, but at least if it gives me crap, I can return it.
So far the Dash Cam 20 is good, its very sturdy and easy to use, however the recording quality is actually a little worse than the G1W, the 1080p quality is a little more blurry, a little more artifacty, license plates are a little harder to read. I read the bitrate is somewhere around 9kb/s instead of 12-15 thats found on the G1W and G1W-H. The suction cup is sturdy but the attachment is quite long, so its not as easy getting the camera close to the windshield and hiding it behind a mirror.
Stupidest item is the usb mini charge port is on the right of the device and the included cable has an L-shaped connector, and it faces you, not the windshield, so obviously when they designed it, they thought people would be using it plugged in directly into the lighter below it, not pulling the cable through the car. It gets worse, the cable isn't proprietary, but its not a regular USB mini cable. If you plug in any normal USB mini cable, the camera prompts you upon startup if you want to go into mass storage mode. You need to press a button to say no, then it goes into regular recording mode. So running a 2 dollar cable from monoprice thats 15 feet long to connect to the camera will cause me to have to click that button each time I start the car. (It seems the camera IS recording while it gives me the prompt, the red light is on and after I dismiss the prompt, you can see the video has been recording already, but the prompt doesn't go away automatically, so if I want the screen to shut down and not disturb me, I need to press a button)
To get rid of this, Garmin offers their own 5 meter (apprx 15 foot) cable, for 25 dollars on their website.
I can't believe its this difficult to get a good problem free dashcam. I looked into the mobius as was suggested here, and I did not want to mess with its configuration and such. If only someone would make a custom firmware for the garmin that increases the bitrate to 12 or 15 like the G1W and removes the stupid mass storage prompt when using a non-garmin usb cable.
So far the Dash Cam 20 is good, its very sturdy and easy to use, however the recording quality is actually a little worse than the G1W, the 1080p quality is a little more blurry, a little more artifacty, license plates are a little harder to read. I read the bitrate is somewhere around 9kb/s instead of 12-15 thats found on the G1W and G1W-H. The suction cup is sturdy but the attachment is quite long, so its not as easy getting the camera close to the windshield and hiding it behind a mirror.
Stupidest item is the usb mini charge port is on the right of the device and the included cable has an L-shaped connector, and it faces you, not the windshield, so obviously when they designed it, they thought people would be using it plugged in directly into the lighter below it, not pulling the cable through the car. It gets worse, the cable isn't proprietary, but its not a regular USB mini cable. If you plug in any normal USB mini cable, the camera prompts you upon startup if you want to go into mass storage mode. You need to press a button to say no, then it goes into regular recording mode. So running a 2 dollar cable from monoprice thats 15 feet long to connect to the camera will cause me to have to click that button each time I start the car. (It seems the camera IS recording while it gives me the prompt, the red light is on and after I dismiss the prompt, you can see the video has been recording already, but the prompt doesn't go away automatically, so if I want the screen to shut down and not disturb me, I need to press a button)
To get rid of this, Garmin offers their own 5 meter (apprx 15 foot) cable, for 25 dollars on their website.
I can't believe its this difficult to get a good problem free dashcam. I looked into the mobius as was suggested here, and I did not want to mess with its configuration and such. If only someone would make a custom firmware for the garmin that increases the bitrate to 12 or 15 like the G1W and removes the stupid mass storage prompt when using a non-garmin usb cable.
