How big capacity of SD card should I buy for my dash cam?

Joined
Sep 26, 2019
Messages
34
Reaction score
3
Location
Los Angeles
Country
United States
I bought a Vantrue N4 dash cam recently. It's a 3-channel dash cam(front, cabin, rear) so I'm wondering if a 128gb SD card is enough or should I get a bigger capacity SD card? What do you think?
 
Maybe read this.
 
I bought a Vantrue N4 dash cam recently. It's a 3-channel dash cam(front, cabin, rear) so I'm wondering if a 128gb SD card is enough or should I get a bigger capacity SD card? What do you think?
Not sure what bitrate that camera uses? But you will probably only get about 3 hours on a 128GB card unless you turn the quality down, a 256GB would give much more chance of something not getting overwritten the same day. Note that memory cards wear out over time depending on the number of loops of the card, so a double size card will last double the lifespan, and they are normally less than twice the cost, thus bigger is better value in the long term as well as giving far more chance of not losing things before they are needed.
 
Taken from our member @Sunny review of this cam found HERE

Overall bit rate is around 15.3 mbps for front camera, inside cabin bit rate is around 6.7 mbps and rear camera bit rate is around 8.3 mbps.

He also notes this cam will support up to a 256GB card ;)

Phil
 
So a 128GB is about 4 hours recording, minus any locked files and photos.

That is a low bitrate for a 2K resolution, you won't want to turn that down.
 
Better/ lower bitrates at 1090p but agreed- keep it at 1440p for vid quality. It also needs to be remembered that the overall bitrate is somewhat high but not pushing as far as some other cams do which will probably help with heat and reliability. It will take another jump forward in processors before things get much better.

Phil
 
Can someone help me with some math?

I’m looking at what size card to get for a U1000.

The front camera is rated at 28 Mbps (4K). The rear camera is rated at 14 Mbps (2K). That’s a total of 42 Mbps (MegaBits per Second). Converting to MegaBytes per second and I get 5 MBps.

5 MBps * 60s/min * 60min/hr = 18,000 MB = 18GB.

So a 256GB card would hold 14 hours of video, correct?
 
Approximately. File size time is a static figure, but the data written in that time will vary. Nothing changing while parked will generate a smaller file size than when driving through a forest where the cam tries to capture the many details, so expected recording times will always be approximate.

Do be sure to use only cards which other owners have had good experiences with, as cams can be picky about which cards they work well with ;)

Phil
 
Yeah for something like that you should get a 256GB card, that would be fine for a guy driving regular mileage, if you on the other hand work out of your car then you might want to consider something larger.
Personally with a dual 1080p system i get many days of driving on a 128GB card, but i also drive very little so the average are maybe something like 10 - 15 min daily.
But even with 1 -2 of my "long" drives weekly i still have over a week worth of footage, and as i have made it a habbit of using the event button to save things, then i dont have to worry when i once every month go looking for footage to upload to youtube.
 
Back
Top