Got my GT550W directly from Amazon and love it...

PiCASSiMO

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Purchased the GT550W from Amazon.com through E-PRANCE that was fulfilled by Amazon and showed up on my doorstep in 2-days. Very happy with the quality of the camera, very sharp with an average bitstream of 15.26 Mbps.

Here are the YouTube samples:

1A:
1B:
2A:
2B:
3A:
3B:

And if you are interested, here are the RAW files that don't have the high compression found on YouTube, each about 224 MB running 120 seconds (or 14.93 Mbps):

http://www.mediafire.com/download/n5rf44coy4tt36m/07230006.MOV
http://www.mediafire.com/download/zb42h1q1qqz7bl8/07250007.MOV
http://www.mediafire.com/download/z9ixdeaukbe13cy/07480011.MOV
http://www.mediafire.com/download/grd8nww3wps0igv/07500012.MOV
http://www.mediafire.com/download/m6e6vv2svdjtdor/16280017.MOV
http://www.mediafire.com/download/w3nfcm86ackjxtc/16300018.MOV
 
Good videos. how much did you buy it?
 
$115 USD purchased on Monday and delivered for Wednesday, via Amazon Prime. I wished the seller, E-Prance, would bring the GT550W back in stock for allow Amazon fulfillment, along with its smaller GT680W brother. I remember when it was available that weekend, there are about 15-units left and by the end of the week they were all gone. I'm seriously considering buying another for my wife, and probably a few more for the rest of my family.

The reasons I would purchase from Amazon (sourced directly from the US) is:
  • Delivery would take no more than 2-days (or a week typically non-Amazon Prime)
  • Returns are easy, just put into the box, get your prepaid UPS label, and return it without a hassle.
I've had the unfortunate purchase of a 808 DR32 back in May that was uber defective. Lens was sub-par that cause everything to be out of focus everything in the field of view that was further than my car's front bumper length. It was difficult to return it back, as USPS couldn't take it at their facilities ("cameras" are prohibited to be shipped to China), so I had to create a label at home before trying again with USPS and cheating their system. Ultimately, my DR32 never showed up in FoxOffer's hands and I've been trying to get a refund for it since (it's been been close to 5-months now) via my credit card company. FoxOffer was gracious enough to offer to provide me full refund of my camera, but for some reason the actual reimbursement via PayPal to my credit card is slow and agonizing process.

So I don't want to go through that again. It's either fulfillment through Amazon, or just buy it for a few dollars more via a US seller like gametronex via eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/370919422432
https://www.ebay.com/itm/221298754968
 
Whoop whoop, I got mine yesterday from FoxOffer. It works great but the battery dies super quick. Do you use motion detection on yours? My camera doesn't seem to notice motion when I am driving at night and it shuts down recording until some bright lights trigger it again. Kind of disappointed because I wanted to wire it to run 24/7 and capture all motion.
 
Whoop whoop, I got mine yesterday from FoxOffer. It works great but the battery dies super quick. Do you use motion detection on yours? My camera doesn't seem to notice motion when I am driving at night and it shuts down recording until some bright lights trigger it again. Kind of disappointed because I wanted to wire it to run 24/7 and capture all motion.

I haven't tried the motion detection... but if I need to special hardwire my car to run off the car's battery when the car is off, I will probably not bother with it. My car is parked in my house garage, so there is no need for that extra level of protection.
 
My car is in a garage at night as well, but at work I back into my parking spot and am paranoid someone will back into the front of my car while leaving their parking spot. You would need a constant 5v power source to run it all the time. Depending on your car this would mean running a power wire.
 
My car is in a garage at night as well, but at work I back into my parking spot and am paranoid someone will back into the front of my car while leaving their parking spot. You would need a constant 5v power source to run it all the time. Depending on your car this would mean running a power wire.

I see your concern... and perhaps tapping into my fuse box of my car may not be that difficult, assuming that draining 5-volts straight for 10+ hours will not cause issues performance of my battery, I may actually consider trying that.

What if you had tried one of the external battery sources that has 10,000 to 15,000 mAh of juice to power the GT550W for 10+ hours?
 
The 12v cigarette lighter charger that comes with the GT550w is rated for 1amp at 5v. So, the camera should only be using about 5 watts maximum. That translates to roughly a half an amp at 12v. My car only draws about .3 amps when shut off so I don't think the extra 5 watts of power should be a problem. In the real world, the camera probably draws less than 5 watts of power. If I take an extended trip and leave the car in the garage, I can just unplug the camera. I will probably test it when I get home. I will post a follow up to let you know how much power it actually consumes.

You could use an external battery but I think it would just complicate the wiring. Car batteries have quite a bit of capacity.
 
For those interested, I tested the current draw of my GT550W and it is using a little under .60 amps at 5v while both charging the battery and actively recording. This factors out to about 3 watts, to me this seems negligible.

Now I just need some way to have it do motion detection when the car is shut off and to record the entire time I am driving.
 
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