Introduction and question

[Kicker0927]

Hello all, I’m so glad I found this group as it’s been difficult finding good information about all the dash cam options out there. I’m still trying to sort through all the difference in features, apps, and options. I’m hoping someone may be able to give me some further feedback regarding the best option for a new dash cam out there. Thanks in advance!

I have a 2019 Mazda CX-5 in Southwest Florida so obviously the heat is a bit of a concern. I do have a UV/heat blocking windshield clear tint installed. I’ve never owned a dash cam before, but with the crazy drivers here I feel it might be a good choice to pick one up. I would like a dual cam system. I would also like cloud functions. I don’t think a screen is really all that important to me as it would just be distracting and I have a front factory radar camera behind my rear view mirror which forces me to mount a dash cam a little off center. My main concern is a well functioning reliable easy-to-operate app, clean looking install, plug play (or the ability to install and forget), and obviously good picture quality...something that just works and isn’t a headache. My ultimate goal for use is for accident clarification, door dings, breakins, and catching license plate numbers if need be.

I have been looking a lot at the Thinkware U1000, BlackVue, and Nextbase 522GW. My concerns with each are as follows:
TW U1000
- only takes up to a 128gb card
- some complaints re: connectivity
- need extra radar unit (that I feel
should be included inside the unit)
BlackVue
- overheating
- bulky install w/the magic box thing
- paying for cloud service
Nextbase 522GW
- lesser image quality
- bulkier design
- not sold on needing a screen
- rear window cam is too bulky

I considered the Viofo 129 Pro, but after watching comparison videos between the Viofo, BlackVue, and Thinkware...I wouldn’t go with Viofo.

What do you all think? All the professional reviews I’ve seen on the ThinkWare U1000 have been fantastic. I have read some negative reviews on here, but it’s a newer product and I’m sure there are some kinks to work out. All help is greatly appreciated.

 

[kamkar]

It looks like you are only looking at 4K cameras, if so that do limit your selection quite a bit.
It also look like you have some focus on "smarts", in which case thinkware and blackvue are the ones to look at, but personally i would never need those features, i only think wifi are cool as it then let me do settings on my large phone screen VS the small screens on the cameras them self ( old tired eyes here )
But all the other wifi related smarts are a turn off for me personally.
As you are in Florida, you will probably have issues if you want to be able to do parking mode, at least in the daytime with the car out in the sun, the cameras only go that far with temperatures, and they get high with a car in the sun.

There are also the issue of intolerance with brands / models of memory cards, both blackvue and thinkware seem a bit problematic in this regard.

No matter what camera a thing like plate capture is still not a given thing, so many factors play in here, and it don't take much to render this next to impossible.
For instance at night, you will be wise to spot the plate yourself and call it out for the microphone to pick up, i would not rely on the camera having caught anything useful.

On a nice and sunny day,,,, sure almsot no problem with plate capture, but drive into the shade of a building, and all bets are off if you have a event there.

 

[Kicker0927]

It looks like you are only looking at 4K cameras, if so that do limit your selection quite a bit.
It also look like you have some focus on "smarts", in which case thinkware and blackvue are the ones to look at, but personally i would never need those features, i only think wifi are cool as it then let me do settings on my large phone screen VS the small screens on the cameras them self ( old tired eyes here )
But all the other wifi related smarts are a turn off for me personally.
As you are in Florida, you will probably have issues if you want to be able to do parking mode, at least in the daytime with the car out in the sun, the cameras only go that far with temperatures, and they get high with a car in the sun.

There are also the issue of intolerance with brands / models of memory cards, both blackvue and thinkware seem a bit problematic in this regard.

No matter what camera a thing like plate capture is still not a given thing, so many factors play in here, and it don't take much to render this next to impossible.
For instance at night, you will be wise to spot the plate yourself and call it out for the microphone to pick up, i would not rely on the camera having caught anything useful.

On a nice and sunny day,,,, sure almsot no problem with plate capture, but drive into the shade of a building, and all bets are off if you have a event there.

Thanks for the reply. You make some valid points. I am considering all factors here. I just want to make the most informed decision possible and each time I look into things I begin to find certain factors or specs I hadn't considered before.

 

[kamkar]

I don't have any personal experience with any of the brands / models you are looking at, but they all have active sub forums on here.
But i am totally behind making a informed buying decision, just a bit sad i cant help you more, BUT ! i am not the only helpful soul in here.

 

[Kicker0927]

I don't have any personal experience with any of the brands / models you are looking at, but they all have active sub forums on here.
But i am totally behind making a informed buying decision, just a bit sad i cant help you more, BUT ! i am not the only helpful soul in here.

Thanks man! Yes, the number of cam brands, features, sd cards, resolutions, cloud and tech offerings, etc is overwhelming! I have been reading other subs on here as well regarding these brands, but you know how it is...it's like reading online reviews...you mostly hear from those who have problems whether from user error, fluke problems, faulty installs, using aftermarket or wrong sd cards, poor network connections, or improper installs.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah people will be fast to flood any media when they had bad experience, but the thousands that have had a good experience you never hear from.
And anybody can make a boo boo, it is how they choose to handle that unfortunate event that make a difference.

Still i cant bother with the follow up mails from online stored saying something like " you got so and so from us, please go and tell your experience on so and so platform"
And i am like NOOOOOOOO i have gotten what i pay for ( a working genuine product ) so i will not go praise your store for giving me what i have paid for.

 

[Kicker0927]

Yeah people will be fast to flood any media when they had bad experience, but the thousands that have had a good experience you never hear from.
And anybody can make a boo boo, it is how they choose to handle that unfortunate event that make a difference.

Still i cant bother with the follow up mails from online stored saying something like " you got so and so from us, please go and tell your experience on so and so platform"
And i am like NOOOOOOOO i have gotten what i pay for ( a working genuine product ) so i will not go praise your store for giving me what i have paid for.

Agreed...so you said you've had many units over the years. Which cam are you currently using, which was your favorite, and what features did you not really consider before purchasing and realized you couldn't live without afterwards?

 

[Nigel]

I considered the Viofo 129 Pro, but after watching comparison videos between the Viofo, BlackVue, and Thinkware...I wouldn’t go with Viofo.

What is the issue with the A129pro?

For image quality it is generally the best, Take a look at VortexRadar’s Best dashcams of 2020.

 

[Kicker0927]

What is the issue with the A129pro?

For image quality it is generally the best, Take a look at VortexRadar’s Best dashcams of 2020.

I wasn’t impressed with the cam compared to the BlackVue or ThinkWare. The image wasn’t as good as the others, the unit was bulky and imo looks antiquated, and if I remember it does not offer cloud services.

 

[kamkar]

I am testing for a few companies, and Street Guardian are the ones that keep me working the hardest, and really you will be hard at work trying to find a bad thing about their customer care and service.
And like many in here i have owned a few of the Mobius brand cameras, but sadly they have not managed to keep up with times, but otherwise they are nice little cameras and with the lens on the end of the match box sized camera the footprint as seen from the front are very small.
Over the years i have used Mobius cameras for rear and side camera + front zoom camera.

If you have been comparing the 3 cameras, it is hard to do fairly if you don't have the same footage from each camera, so you are comparing apples to apples
And without knowing it all i would dare to say viofo do a better support job than the other 2 brands, the Koreans do seem to be very pigheaded about how they want their cameras to perform.
My first quality dashcam was a Lukas LK-7500, but after that i have not been back to that brand, even if the camera are still working fine 8 years down the line.
I only contacted the company once time, and when i finally got a rply it was like talking to a door that use google translate.

For me it is really all about image quality, as a avid hater of it wifi don't even register on my radar, but if someone send me a camera with the stuff i must of course take a look at that too.
And i would also pay a little on the top if i am sure i will get good support and service.

I am very much looking forward to the next batch of SG cameras to arrive, the boss Rick ( UN jokiin in here ) are not joking around, so when i get a parcel from him most times i sit down when i open it as it often seem like he have been tearing one of each down from the inventory shelves and sent it to me.
So for me to have 2-3-4 SG or their sister brand Guardtrak on my windscreen are not unheard of, very fortunate my little car have plenty of room on the windscreen in front of the mirror, but of course that many cameras and stealth are really not there even if i have most of each camera up on the dotted area.

Next big thing ( IMO ) are the dual remote systems with both cameras on a wire, this mean they can be very small, and the main unit you can hide in your car.
For a while i have been testing on one of the first dual remote systems, and the K2S from the makers of many of the mini cameras are working fine, but do have a few quirks too. something i hope they can iron out for the second version.
SG are also working on a 4K system as far as i know, but theirs will for sure not have any smarts as they focus their strength on more important things, the brand was also very late to the market when it come to parking guard features, holding out as they dident think high of the solutions available in the hardware at the time.


Regarding the cloud thing, we often get people in here thinking," well that's nice, i will put in a 4G access point, and then save every drive in the cloud"
But i don't think that will work, even here in little old flat Denmark that have 4G most places you drive, but you will easy find yourself on the fringe of those 4G masts range, and you can also fall out of that and down to 3G without trying all that hard, and even with 3 National providers, and so in general you have 2 networks at your disposal as they often have roaming agreements.
And also you need a almighty data plan, cuz a normal 1080p camera generate about 100 MB of data for every 1 minute of operation, so that's 200 MB/m for a dual system, i assume a 4K + 1080p system will be 4-500 MB/m
And so when driving every 2 minute you will have to upload 1 GB to your cloud service, so you don't have to drive much every day for that to be a considerable amount of data every month.

So i am personally more looking for other means of storage, the best would probably be a SSD drive, where you can get a 1-2 TB one for money still within range for a mortal person.
And maybe some form of automated backup routine, so when you plug a thumb drive in somewhere the camera would automatic move all new data over, or maybe just set it to just backup event files.
And with a fast thumb drive and a fast drive in the camera this should be done fairly quick even if you have opted for the backup of every new file and you have been driving for a few days since last backup.

Many mistakenly think they must backup everything, but why do that if nothing have happened ? i only take about 10 - 15 3 minute files from my cameras every month to mix together for my youtube uploads of idiot drivers, the rest are in my eyes just garbage data.
So the end result is i have 2-3 minutes of data saved every month when i have cut out all the not interesting stuff.

 

[Kicker0927]

I am testing for a few companies, and Street Guardian are the ones that keep me working the hardest, and really you will be hard at work trying to find a bad thing about their customer care and service.
And like many in here i have owned a few of the Mobius brand cameras, but sadly they have not managed to keep up with times, but otherwise they are nice little cameras and with the lens on the end of the match box sized camera the footprint as seen from the front are very small.
Over the years i have used Mobius cameras for rear and side camera + front zoom camera.

If you have been comparing the 3 cameras, it is hard to do fairly if you don't have the same footage from each camera, so you are comparing apples to apples
And without knowing it all i would dare to say viofo do a better support job than the other 2 brands, the Koreans do seem to be very pigheaded about how they want their cameras to perform.
My first quality dashcam was a Lukas LK-7500, but after that i have not been back to that brand, even if the camera are still working fine 8 years down the line.
I only contacted the company once time, and when i finally got a rply it was like talking to a door that use google translate.

For me it is really all about image quality, as a avid hater of it wifi don't even register on my radar, but if someone send me a camera with the stuff i must of course take a look at that too.
And i would also pay a little on the top if i am sure i will get good support and service.

I am very much looking forward to the next batch of SG cameras to arrive, the boss Rick ( UN jokiin in here ) are not joking around, so when i get a parcel from him most times i sit down when i open it as it often seem like he have been tearing one of each down from the inventory shelves and sent it to me.
So for me to have 2-3-4 SG or their sister brand Guardtrak on my windscreen are not unheard of, very fortunate my little car have plenty of room on the windscreen in front of the mirror, but of course that many cameras and stealth are really not there even if i have most of each camera up on the dotted area.

Next big thing ( IMO ) are the dual remote systems with both cameras on a wire, this mean they can be very small, and the main unit you can hide in your car.
For a while i have been testing on one of the first dual remote systems, and the K2S from the makers of many of the mini cameras are working fine, but do have a few quirks too. something i hope they can iron out for the second version.
SG are also working on a 4K system as far as i know, but theirs will for sure not have any smarts as they focus their strength on more important things, the brand was also very late to the market when it come to parking guard features, holding out as they dident think high of the solutions available in the hardware at the time.


Regarding the cloud thing, we often get people in here thinking," well that's nice, i will put in a 4G access point, and then save every drive in the cloud"
But i don't think that will work, even here in little old flat Denmark that have 4G most places you drive, but you will easy find yourself on the fringe of those 4G masts range, and you can also fall out of that and down to 3G without trying all that hard, and even with 3 National providers, and so in general you have 2 networks at your disposal as they often have roaming agreements.
And also you need a almighty data plan, cuz a normal 1080p camera generate about 100 MB of data for every 1 minute of operation, so that's 200 MB/m for a dual system, i assume a 4K + 1080p system will be 4-500 MB/m
And so when driving every 2 minute you will have to upload 1 GB to your cloud service, so you don't have to drive much every day for that to be a considerable amount of data every month.

So i am personally more looking for other means of storage, the best would probably be a SSD drive, where you can get a 1-2 TB one for money still within range for a mortal person.
And maybe some form of automated backup routine, so when you plug a thumb drive in somewhere the camera would automatic move all new data over, or maybe just set it to just backup event files.
And with a fast thumb drive and a fast drive in the camera this should be done fairly quick even if you have opted for the backup of every new file and you have been driving for a few days since last backup.

Many mistakenly think they must backup everything, but why do that if nothing have happened ? i only take about 10 - 15 3 minute files from my cameras every month to mix together for my youtube uploads of idiot drivers, the rest are in my eyes just garbage data.
So the end result is i have 2-3 minutes of data saved every month when i have cut out all the not interesting stuff.

Thanks for the info! I am not familiar with many of the brands you mention. I will have to look into those. I can tell you that right now the Viofo A129 Pro Duo is on sale and I can pick up the whole package for about $280. The others I have been looking at including the ThinkWare and BlackVue would total around $750. However, living in south FL could take a toll on a cam I would imagine so I'd rather not go too cheap and regret it a year down the road. I thought cloud storage was supposed to be like the new great thing with dash cams. Is the tech not there? Why no mentions of the Nextbase 522GW...that cam is rated "best cam of 2019" on a lot of sites I've been browsing?

 

[Nigel]

Why no mentions of the Nextbase 522GW...that cam is rated "best cam of 2019" on a lot of sites I've been browsing?

In Florida the battery will very likely die within a year! You want a super capacitor dashcam.

the unit was bulky and imo looks antiquated,

Incorrect, it looks big in photos, in reality it is easy to hide behind the mirror and is inconspicuous from the outside,

It does have no cloud functions, but not many people use them anyway.

 

[Kicker0927]

In Florida the battery will very likely die within a year! You want a super capacitor dashcam.



Incorrect, it looks big in photos, in reality it is easy to hide behind the mirror and is inconspicuous from the outside,

It does have no cloud functions, but not many people use them anyway.

Yes, I see that now as I look at the A129 Pro closer. For the price, I would totally jump on the A129 Pro Duo, but no cloud functions bother me. Also, I just saw a couple companies talking about releasing IOT dash cams with built-in hotspots soon. I would totally wait for one of those as it would hopefully allow 24/7 access to your camera's view over your mobile device.

 

[DT MI]

...I would totally wait for one of those as it would hopefully allow 24/7 access to your camera's view over your mobile device.

In order to do that the camera would have to be powered 24/7 which is a completely different challenge in it's own right.

 

[Kicker0927]

In order to do that the camera would have to be powered 24/7 which is a completely different challenge in it's own right.

Very true, I am just learning about all this stuff, but it's no different then the ThinkWare and BlackVue cameras. As long as they have a hotspot to connect to you can access your camera view 24/7 and/or receive notifications to your connected app. The camera isn't necessarily always running at 100%, but if you access it via your app it will turn on and in parking mode it buffers the video until triggered and needed...but it must always be connected to a hotspot in order to use these functions. If the cam has a hotspot built into it then the whole unit itself could be added to your mobile plan as an extra line like you'd add a ipad or apple watch.

 

[DT MI]

The camera isn't necessarily always running at 100%, but if you access it via your app it will turn on and in parking mode it buffers the video until triggered and needed...but it must always be connected to a hotspot in order to use these functions.

Essentially the only power savings when in that mode is that used to physically write to the card and power the display. Given the display is off most of the time anyhow the power savings being in 'standby' mode are minimal since the sensor and processor have to be fully powered in order to buffer the data. Additionally, power will be required to listen for the 'wake up' call. It's all technically possible but for 24/7 monitoring capability power will be your biggest challenge.

 

[Nigel]

It's all technically possible but for 24/7 monitoring capability power will be your biggest challenge.

And don’t forget the extra power required to run the mobile data and Wi-fi hotspot radio transceivers will make the hotspot truly hot!

I rarely need to look out my car windscreen when I am not in the car, if something happens, is finding out within 30 seconds really going to help, or just spoil my entire day?

 

[Kicker0927]

And don’t forget the extra power required to run the mobile data and Wi-fi hotspot radio transceivers will make the hotspot truly hot!

I rarely need to look out my car windscreen when I am not in the car, if something happens, is finding out within 30 seconds really going to help, or just spoil my entire day?

I think the idea of cloud storage for me really comes down to the fact that I’m looking for a cam I can mount and forget. I don’t want to have to remove the cam to take inside to connect to WiFi in order to transfer video to my phone or Computer nor do I want to have to remove an Sd card each time. I’m looking for a cam that films and sends video to my phone app...simple. I don’t know if the Viofo A129 Pro does that...if so I might buy it. If it’s a hassle to obtain video or I have to sit in my car for hours while data transfers I would not buy it. All I can figure out is with the ThinkWare U1000 the videos are sent to the cloud each time your phone is in the car via your phones hotspot. Then anytime you want to access your videos they are right there on your phone app and it’s not necessary to run out to your car and grab your cam, sit within a few feet of the cam while data transfers over WiFi, or remove an sd card each time you want to see what was recorded. And for the life of me I can’t seem to find any good explanations of how any of this works or which cam company uses apps that are more user-friendly.

 

[Nigel]

It would be nice to be able to play any driving video from the last year instantly on my phone, but that is very unrealistic, especially for 4K multi-channel videos.

It may be worth you asking in the U1000 section about what is realistic when using that camera, I don’t think you will find anyone using it as you have suggested.

 

[jokiin]

All I can figure out is with the ThinkWare U1000 the videos are sent to the cloud each time your phone is in the car via your phones hotspot.

that doesn't happen