Most reliable dash cam?

smyles said:
Meh, it's nothing compared to $3.500 for a 42" plasma back in 2002...
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It's true, many new items in the world of consumer electronics are expensive when they are first introduced. Then again, my first dash cam, an AT-20 that I purchased just under five years ago offered 1080P and some nice features and cost 67 dollars on eBay. It held up extremely well, all things considered, but finally croaked several months ago after being run continuously 5-8 hours a day as an indoor surveillance camera for nearly two years.
 
My point was to note that what some people would like us to believe that the Mobius is God's gift from Heaven, is in fact, not so. There are over 11,000 messages in the Mobius sections of DCT and the majority of those are related to issues that users are having.
 
Dashmellow said:
...Then again, my first dash cam, an AT-20 that I purchased just under five years ago offered 1080P and some nice features and cost 67 dollars on eBay. It held up extremely well, all things considered, but finally croaked several months ago after being run continuously 5-8 hours a day as an indoor surveillance camera for nearly two years.
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A 1080p dash cam 5 years ago for $67? Did it produce true 1080p, or was it one of those "gazillion pixels! UltraMegaHD!!" no-name Chinese units that used the 1080p label rather freely?
 
Dashmellow said:
It's true, many new items in the world of consumer electronics are expensive when they are first introduced.....
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IBM Clone PC, 8088 processor, 512K memory, dual 5 1/4" floppy drives, VGA monitor - US$4000. Upgrade to a 10MB HD add US$650.

I just described my first computer. 🙁
 
I forgot to mention that $3500 plasma worked flawlessly for 13 yrs (above a fireplace, mind you) and was just recently recycled due to, well, you can't ignore progress and obsolescence of 1024 x 1024 resolution forever.
 
smyles said:
A 1080p dash cam 5 years ago for $67? Did it produce true 1080p, or was it one of those "gazillion pixels! UltraMegaHD!!" no-name Chinese units that used the 1080p label rather freely?
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It was true 1080P. It came with an HDMI cable and I plugged it into my HDTV and remember being astonished at the image quality the first time I viewed footage. The bit rate was much lower than today's DSPs so it could have some pixelation at times and at night it was essentially useless but it was a great introduction to dash cams considering that there was no information about them back then so you just had to buy one and hope for the best. I remember wanting something that was stealthy and this one was all black with no chrome or lettering and was relatively compact, so aside from the specs, that was what sold it to me. It also has a drop-in cell phone style battery that I wish you could still get in a dash cam. Apparently, you can still buy an AT20.
 
parklawn said:
My point was to note that what some people would like us to believe that the Mobius is God's gift from Heaven, is in fact, not so. There are over 11,000 messages in the Mobius sections of DCT and the majority of those are related to issues that users are having.
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What you are suggesting is simply untrue. Many of the threads have nothing to do with camera problems or issues. It's a highly versatile and configurable camera and many threads are about all the unique ways people use them or mount them or install capacitors or whatever. Of course, the Mobius is an enormously popular camera so one way or another you will see more posts about them good or bad. The fact is that with any dash cam or action cam the people who do have issues are the ones who are most vocal and come looking for help. It isn't like there have never been problems with this model but the Mobius has been shown time and time again to be a rugged durable action and dash cam.

And the Mobius is indeed God's gift from Heaven! How could anyone of sound mind ever question this? 😛
 
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parklawn said:
My point was to note that what some people would like us to believe that the Mobius is God's gift from Heaven, is in fact, not so. There are over 11,000 messages in the Mobius sections of DCT and the majority of those are related to issues that users are having.
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You've been around DCT long enough to know that everyone who ever had a dashcam issue will post about it here, whereas the other 99% of owners with no issues don't visit this site at all.

The threads relating to every brand / model of camera discussed at DCT would give the average reader the false impression that all DashCams are fundamentally unreliable.

The sheer volume of posts about Mobius reflects its well deserved popularity & the sales volume. The vast majority of reported issues relate to faulty / fake / counterfeit memory cards, faulty USB cables, PC connectivity & daft owners who can't be bothered to read the excellent Owners Manual or observe the GUI mouseover tips or use any common sense. Probably <1% of issues are attributable to manufacturing defects.
 
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russ331 said:
You've been around DCT long enough to know that everyone who ever had a dashcam issue will post about it here, whereas the other 99% of owners with no issues don't visit this site at all.
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Where do you come up with this nonsense?
 
I don't know the actual number of dash cams in use in the world today but the DCT membership is currently at 17,000 and the vast majority of members have never even posted or only posted a small number of times. 17,000 is one percent of 1,700,000. Whatever the actual numbers are, only a tiny percentage of dash cam owners post here and not all of those posts are about complaints or problems, so to say "99% of owners with no issues don't visit the site at all", seems like a plausible and reasonable "guesstimate".
 
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smyles said:
A 1080p dash cam 5 years ago for $67? Did it produce true 1080p, or was it one of those "gazillion pixels! UltraMegaHD!!" no-name Chinese units that used the 1080p label rather freely?
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Likely Ambarella A2 (released 2007) with an MI5100 sensor, popular combo at the time, usually held back by poor lenses and very basic firmware but they did do true 1080p and could do pretty decent daytime video (lens permitting)
 
jokiin said:
Likely Ambarella A2 (released 2007) with an MI5100 sensor, popular combo at the time, usually held back by poor lenses and very basic firmware but they did do true 1080p and could do pretty decent daytime video (lens permitting)
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The Ambarella A2 sounds about right. One of these days I should pop it open and see what's on the PCB. The lens isn't too bad at all on my AT20 and I never had any complaints about the firmware. The menu was very comprehensive and well thought out and the camera exposed scenes properly with accurate color. By today's standards it's certainly obsolete but that camera did it's job well for a long time and doesn't owe me anything.

Here's what the AT20 looks like. It had a cool feature that was very similar to the slide-in cradle for a Mobius. You could reverse the camera upside down in the cradle and use it mounted on your dashboard instead of hanging from the windscreen.

AT20.webp
 
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parklawn said:
My point was to note that what some people would like us to believe that the Mobius is God's gift from Heaven, is in fact, not so. There are over 11,000 messages in the Mobius sections of DCT and the majority of those are related to issues that users are having.
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You will find people having issues with every cam ever made so that number alone tells us nothing- what matters is how many of those issues were not user-resolvable giving correct reliable function afterward, and how many cams had to go back under warranty. In that, the Mobius does indeed seem a far better bet than anything in it's price class. It must also be remembered that the Mobius is not exactly a dash cam but a more complex action-cam so one must go through a little more fuss with it's settings to get it functioning as desired. Kind of like the difference between a snap-shot camera and a SLR model- both will do the basics well but in offering more, the SLR also requires more user input to take a snap-shot so more can be done incorrectly.

No cam is "Gods gift from Heaven" because all cams are a compromise and eventually anything electronic in nature will fail. Parklawn, I challenge you to show me a more reliable camera for $150 or less based on the criteria I spoke of: those things which could not be resolved by the user. And bring verifiable data- we all know what opinions alone are worth. Until then your opinion is no more credible than mine or anyone else's.

Phil
 
I've got two iPhone 5's that have each been replaced by Apple 4 times (I gave up on using mine, my wife's one is playing up yet again), my iPhone 4 was replaced 3 times, hers twice, my 3GS was only replaced once, iPhone 3 not but was stolen, the richest tech company in world can't make a product without a problem so I hardly think any dashcam manufacturer, be that us, Mobius or anyone else is going to be able to make a foolproof product anytime soon, all we can do is make things the best we can and try and constantly improve what we do, we get problem product from time to time, it's currently under 1% which by this product category standards is probably about as good as we can do, for the 1% that do have problems all we can do is make sure we take care of things with the least amount of fuss for the end user, we do always look at what caused any problem and what we can do to improve things, our products may look the same but there's a constant evolution with each production as we make minor changes

I think when it all comes down to it service and support are everything, I don't begrudge Apple for the product not being as good as it should be, or as good as I would like to be because whenever I have had problems they take care of it quickly and efficiently, even after multiple replacements my wife is still happy to take the next iPhone when it comes out

For dashcams I think the largest complaints come not from those that have had products fail because lets face it, every make and model will have some percentage of failures, but from those who don't get adequate support afterward, some of this is self inflicted I guess as a result of buying offshore, human nature says people will look for a bargain when they can, nobody wants to spend more than they have to, reality is though if you buy online from a different country there is often little to no after sales support and often no legal recourse should things turn sour, the consumer protections you might enjoy buying in your home market don't apply

The problem is increased when buying online out of China, the standard of product for export and domestic markets is not the same, even if it looks the same, I've yet to see or hear of domestic market sellers that employ 3rd party QC inspection services as is typically used on export product, there are sellers that knowingly ship product that doesn't work well as they know that returns are next to impossible and the sale is just a number, they're not building customer loyalty or a brand, they're just moving boxes

/end rant 😀
 
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