Looking for a good reliable dash cam, price not restricted.

[Vulnox]

Hi all,

I have been browsing the different manufacturer forums, browsing in here, and I am struggling to find an answer so sorry for yet another request for recommendation, I just wasn’t seeing my specific use case (As far as I looked, there are at least 100 pages).

I have an A129 Duo I bought maybe three years ago, whenever the A129 Duo first came out, I got it as soon as it showed up for sale. It has served me pretty well, and lived its life in my 2019 F-150 Crew Cab. I did have some issues though. I had an incident in a drive thru where someone didn’t pay attention and drove across the front right corner of my bumper, and then said I ran into them (despite there being a scrape along the side of their vehicle, and paint just missing from my bumper). I pulled the video from my A129, but for some reason, while all the other video clips were fine this one was sped up to like 30x speed. So five minutes went by in 3 seconds (essentially). When I got it home to my PC I was able to use video tools to slow it down, but it looked terrible.

That was a huge bummer, add to that the slow transfer speed off the camera when I tried to pull the video off to begin with to show the police, it took about ten minutes to move the one clip. I think I experienced that with my A119 I had before this too.

Anyway…

I now have a 2021 F-150 and may move the A129 Duo to my wife’s car. It still seems to work reliably most of the time, and she only drives a couple days a week currently. Our F-150 sees a lot more usage, and is the far more expensive vehicle. I want something I can actually count on.

I want dual cams, so front and rear like my A129. I want great daytime clarity and FOV, and at least decent night. We don’t drive a ton at night, at least being able to confirm I was in my lane should be enough for that situation. I don’t care too much about parking mode. If someone hits or keys my truck, I just don’t see how having a video of it will matter in 99% of cases. The police from what I have read rarely go looking for them even if you catch a plate, and if someone keys it unless you know the person it will do nothing for you. So parking mode I can pass on.

I don’t need lane detection or collision detection, the truck does lane centering/keeping and collision detection flawlessly. I just want something that will record, in good quality, and the video will be there when I need it.

I don’t have a strict price limit, I just want this to work. I saw other threads like mine, but then they placed a $100-200 limit on the price for a reliable unit. I rarely find items like this to fit a reliability criteria when built to a budget. But maybe I will be surprised.

I have come close to pulling the trigger on the A129 Pro Duo, but the Amazon reviews and reviews here talk a lot. A lot a lot. About overheating issues and Viofo support basically just telling them to turn down the resolution and handicap the main features of the camera. The U1000 sounds promising, but the video quality looks lower than the A129, and some have said it is so it can support all the advanced features like collision detection or cloud storage which I don’t need. Street Guardian sounds great, reliability being the main objective, but it seems their general video quality capabilities are also behind the A129, and it seems they are on the verge of releasing a new unit which may solve that concern, but release date is unknown.

Sorry for the long message, kind of just talking out all my thoughts on finding the perfect Dashcam, and growing more and more concerned that the unit that is as reliable as a Thinkware (seems to be at least) with the barebones pure video Quality of the Viofo units is just not there.

 

[DT MI]

It still seems to work reliably most of the time,

You've already seen first hand what can happen with 'most of the time'. IMO that's reason enough to not continue using that specific camera, be it every day or just a couple days a week.

As to recommendations, my vote (but some may disagree) would be with one of the Street Guardian dual cam offerings ('DCPRO' or 'X2PRO'). I've owned multiple SG cameras over the years and the oldest are still in daily use going on nearly 7 years (March 2015) and have never failed to record. The earlier ones had F/W based intermittent color stability issues that were eventually fixed. As to the video quality it's more than adequate from an evidentiary perspective to show you were not doing anything improper which is, IMO, the primary purpose of having a dash cam.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah. for sure you do not want to focus too much on finer details like plate capture, though there are cases where something like that will be very handy to have.
Even if people like me uploading videos that show cameras do that just fine, we just often forget to mention at the same time, there there are also times in a day where you will not get that plate, especially if you live in a place where cars just have 1 plate.
I will also agree with DT, that Street Guardian are a feel good brand, mainly based on their customer care, but having gotten free SG cameras to beat on for many years now, it have also been one of the most easy brands to do testing for, CUZ they just work.
Even if my latest test camera the SG9663DR have developed a annoying quirk unique to me that we just can not kill ( for some reason i can not connect to the wifi the camera broadcast ) but otherwise the camera video recording and other functions are totally fine, and though offered by SG i have refused them sending me a new one as i can still test on this one, just need to bring my reading glasses to do settings on the little LCD screen on the main unit.
Also you can get a hold of the company boos named jokiin in here, you cant do that with other brands as far as i know.
Okay he is out cold ATM after surgery a weeks or so ago, that might have been severe deal or maybe complicated by the damn virus going around, but normally he is on the forum the most of the hours a day he is awake.
The US retailer is also in here daily to do his good job too.

The SG cameras are not smart yet, they are also not jumped on the 4K resolution bandwagon,,,, yet, but i think a 1440p model was about to trickle out of the pipeline when jokiin had to focus on his well being first of all.
But their 1080p cameras, like others well made still very valid cameras to deploy in a car.

 

[Nigel]

I have come close to pulling the trigger on the A129 Pro Duo, but the Amazon reviews and reviews here talk a lot. A lot a lot. About overheating issues

That is only in parking mode, when left in a hot car, in full sunlight, on a hot day. It will shut down to protect itself.

The Viofo A139 is worth considering, available in 2 or 3 channel variants, has far superior wifi to the A129 Duo and uses voice instead of screen so can be easier to hide away and use than the A129. It is newer than the A129 Duo and Pro and seems to be a little more reliable. It is 2K rather than 4K like the A129 Pro, but that is good for darker lighting conditions, and it can also shut down when parked on hot days.

 

[Vulnox]

Thank you all for the great replies! It seems to line up with what I have seen so far then, SG tends more towards solid reliability, just not "the newest" thing as far as features. I am interested in the A139, but mainly for its form factor and newer components, I just don't think the 3rd channel will benefit me and I was worried that it may have some heat issues as it sounds like some others have when dealing with that much video processing. I have to read up more on if I can just run it with two channels.

I feel like I want the StreetGuardian though. May just hold out for a 1440 unit as I feel that is the sweet spot. We will see though.

Thank you all!