K100 Mirror DVR Dash Camera NT96650 / AR0330 / F1.6 / WDR-HDR / 6G lens

Videos are uploading to Youtube. I'll also try uploading to a storage site for true video quality samples.

Few thoughts and questions in the meantime:

Making a comparison video: Is there a link someone can give me to show me how I can make a comparison video like the ones I've seen around here? I drove around with the K100 and a Mobius at the same time last night and this morning. Would be interesting to both videos one on top of the other for a comparison to one of the more popular cameras around the forums.

WDR: A previous member said that his K100 didn't have WDR? Mine clearly has it in the menus and I did take a video with it off and on. Drove around the same path in each mode so you'll be able to see the difference soon. Did that member get a knockoff of these so early in the game?

Video quality - early impression: It's a heck of a lot better than my F70 knock off of a knock off that records in really poor AVI format.
  • Daytime is pretty excellent in my eyes, although the Mobius looks to be more true as far as color and picture quality goes. Still, it's a fair trade off to me to get the discreet form factor.
  • Night time isn't too shabby either. Again many times better than my F70 junk. Definitely not as clear or correct as the Mobius here but functional enough to me. Doesn't catch license plates at a high rate but you can at least see details in the surrounding areas with WDR on.

Build quality:
  • Form factor is decent. The lens itself could use a little more ability to lean to left, right, up and down. The microSD slot is a little tricky to get to while mounted but I can make it work. I'd imagine some sort of an angled tool would help also.
  • The recording and charge status light brightness are bit much to me. They glow top center on the face of the rear mirror surface area. Blue for recording, Red for charging. Blue lights up enough to make me look up at it sometimes because it makes me think a police officer is trying to pull me over! The red light behaves strangely while plugged into my cigarette lighter using the included charger unit. It blinks at a low level ( I like the brightness of it here ) but rapidly. And not at a steady pace either. While charging in a wall charger or computer, the red charge light is a much brighter solid red only. Maybe I need to try another mini USB 12v cigarette adapter I have lying around? Either way, it'd be nice if there was a menu option to remove the lights entirely or turn the brightness down on them. If not, I'll have to find some sticker to cover them up.
  • Rubber band mount straps. This is a BIG concern for me. I can deal with recording quality drawbacks but if the thing won't stay mounted then I have a useless device. I definitely prefer the extendable arm type mounts for a rear view mirror but figured I could deal with the rubber band look. Strapped it on and it went on using the outermost slots just fine. Unfortunately any type of minor nudging or adjusting seems to make the rubber bands snap. I was simply trying to wiggle the K100 to get more room to remove the microSD and snap! There goes one side. I was able to pull it tighter and use the next slot up on the now broken rubber band. Stayed put until I woke up the next morning and noticed the camera hanging at a strange angle. The next one up snapped also, this time without anyone touching it. Maybe the warm/cold overnight temperature swing made it stretch and shrink? Moved the K100 around and snap, the other side now breaks off. I'm going to contact the vendor to see what can be done but I really hope they move to the more reliable fixed arm type mount system. Anyone have ideas on ways to make a more reliable mounting system on my own?
Picture of broken rubber band mounts. They broke in 4 places in a span on 12 hours. I was NOT manhandling them or shifting the mirror around constantly.

photo_zpsca612a88.jpg
 
Looking forward to your videos for comparison.

I had better luck with my bands, but they were pretty tight and I used a lot of force to secure them, so I am pretty sure they will hold tightly. I did not expect it to snap as they felt quite soft and 'pull-able'. Temperature here is quite hot, and humid where I am. I guess if it is too cold it may behave differently. It is a hook and band system so if it breaks you can look for something else to hold the mirror.

If you have a workable solution for taking out the memory card that would be great. Now I have to bring a laptop with usb cable to download my files, otherwise I would need to swivel the mirror and adjust back to my confortable view angle every once in a while.

Because I am driving on the right, the blue & red lights are not as bright. They are recessed and more optimised for LHD cars :) When charging, my red light is continuous, have not seen any blinking before. It will come on for a short while, as someone has pointed out before that the battery capacity is very small.
 
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Test videos are all uploaded on Youtube! Don't forget to set them to play in 1080p.
  • K100 WDR comparison. Looped around the same short path. Fairly well lit most of time but also a residential block where it was fairly dark
K100 WDR on:

K100 WDR off:

For comparison, here's my Mobius w/ WDR on, mounted above and to the right of rear view mirror:


  • K100 dusk sample. Freeway driving during rush hour


  • K100 night time sample. Dark windy residential road


  • K100 night time sample. Shopping plaza, mostly lit residential streets

 
K100 morning sample. Shady freeway with sun glaring at times. Mobius mounted for comparison.

Sorry you might have to skip around to get the same scene.


K100:


Mobius comparison:


K100:


Mobius comparison:


K100:


Mobius comparison:

 
Hi, here are some of my recordings on youtube:

Short clips recorded during the day:

1 night clip:

Pls view in HD. Also do note that I have a strip of dark tinting across the top of my windscreen.

The rubber strapping provided is quite tight. I would prefer the top/bottom clip on type, but this is no big deal. It stayed on great after some muscling with it :)

The access to the microSD card slot is a bit awkward, from the top. So once the card is in, I'm not likely to change it unless I need to. For extracting my video files, I just use the usb cable method with a laptop.
Hello. Please upload some RAW files dropbox or another web adress thank you
 
Some video clips as promised. Even with Youtube compression, you can clearly see that GT300W, which uses the same sensor & chipset is much sharper during the day and brighter and sharper at night. I mounted K100 & GT300W next to each other so that you can easily compare the two. I haven't updated the firmware yet so the date bug is still there and reads 14/10/03 instead of 14/01/03.

K100 Day Clip 1

GT300W Day Clip 1

K100 Day Clip 2

GT300W Day Clip 2

K100 Night Clip 1

GT300W Night Clip 1

K100 Night Clip 2

GT300W Night Clip 2

I'm not trying to completely trash the K100. I can live with the shortcomings of the battery and bad placements of usb and memory card but the image quality needs to be good. Given the same sensor and chipset, I was just expecting GT300W video quality in a more user friendly and discrete form factor.
Hello. Please upload some RAW files dropbox or another web adress thank you :)
 
Try this to see if you can access it:

http://url.cn/NjFCKX

After clicking,
1st page - insert this password to access: UTeB
2nd page - click the left blue button to download

Once you are able to download & view it, let me know if you want more.
 
Try this to see if you can access it:

http://url.cn/NjFCKX

After clicking,
1st page - insert this password to access: UTeB
2nd page - click the left blue button to download

Once you are able to download & view it, let me know if you want more.

Thank you so much :) It's perfect night record !!! :)

Please Upload some day video
Please
Please
Please
 
Hi, here are some of my recordings on youtube:

Short clips recorded during the day:

1 night clip:

Pls view in HD. Also do note that I have a strip of dark tinting across the top of my windscreen.

The rubber strapping provided is quite tight. I would prefer the top/bottom clip on type, but this is no big deal. It stayed on great after some muscling with it :)

The access to the microSD card slot is a bit awkward, from the top. So once the card is in, I'm not likely to change it unless I need to. For extracting my video files, I just use the usb cable method with a laptop.

Upload this RAW files ???
 
I just got this unit last week from FoxOffer. Ordered on the 12/12/13 and received it on 1/3/14 in Los Angeles. I was hoping for better video quality because of the sensor and chipset but I'm just overly disappointed. The video from this unit is very noisy when you compare it to GT300W, which I also have. GT300W is amazing at night but K100 is just very bad at night. Night video is very noisy and just not sharp. I would consider night video to be useless at this point because you can't see the license plate number clearly unless you're a foot away from the car in front of you.

I'm not sure if it's better but K100 file uses AVC 4.1 profile at 15Mbps. GT300W uses 4.0 profile at 15Mbps. It doesn't seem to have WDR/HDR and the EV adjustment just adds more noise to the footage. Picture on FoxOffer site does show HDR in the menu but it doesn't show up on my unit. K100 is rated at 1Lux min illumination so I know I wasn't getting better image at night when compare to GT300W's 0.3Lux min. But GT300w appears to me to be at least 4X brighter and sharper. The video from K100 just looks like 720P extrapolated to 1080P. It's just not sharp.

The microSD is on top and the slot is very recessed. You pretty much have to take the thing off your mirror to remove the memory card. You'll need a long fingernail for a male to press the memory card that it would eject. You can't really adjust the lens angle much unless you move the mirror to the point where you can't really see behind you. If I aim the lens to get a good front view then I can't see the middle and left side of anything behind me. It's just a very poor design. With so much space on the unit, they should have used standard SD card instead of microSD. That would at least help fix one issue.

The battery on it is either defective or not meant to be used more than 1min. I let it charge overnight and was only able to get max 1min of usage before it turns off. This really doesn't matter much if it's easier to remove the memory card to copy the videos. But because the card is so hard to take out without removing the whole mirror, I have to cut power to the unit and use the USB port to copy the video off it. The USB port should have been moved a bit lower. At the current location The USB is at the top so the USB cable will hit the headliner of your car unless your stock mirror is mounted pretty low. This makes it difficult to unplug the unit to copy the video files off because you have to tilt the whole mirror forward to unplug the cable.

Had I not have the GT300W, I would think that it's borderline acceptable but because I have been using GT300W for over 6 months, K100 is just a big disappointment to me. I was really looking forward to have something more discrete but I will have to keep using GT300W for now until something better comes along.

I will try to upload the video comparing the K100 to GT300W later on.

Upload RAW files K100 ? Thanks
 
Does anyone have a link or knowledge of how to stay updated on firmware updates for this K100 dash cam?
 
Does anyone have a link or knowledge of how to stay updated on firmware updates for this K100 dash cam?

I am not optimistic on them updating the firmware actively unless there are bugs.
 
OK good to know. Not being an overly popular model I would agree too but just thought I'd ask.

I finally got my replacement straps from FoxOffer ( they sent me 2 sets ) so I'm running this cam on my car again. So far so good as far as the straps go. Something strange did happen today on a 1.25 hr long drive through some traffic. The cam suddenly turned itself off. Not sure if the hard wired power supply just had a hiccup or what. Turned it back on and all was fine. I only noticed because the blue recording light stopped blinking so I guess the bright blue dot actually does come in handy sometimes! :)
 
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