My In-Depth Video Guides to Choosing a Dash Cam & Picking the Right SD Card

AndrewL said:
Whoops. Thought you were also in Malaysia lol. Well since we're talking about Portugal, where do you normally buy from?
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The mobius 2 is coming. Why don't you like at this and maybe do a review for this.
Mobius 1 is a amazing cam. It's reliable, good image and cheap. Yeah, mobius 1 has all of three elements: perpormances, reliable, and cheaps. :)
 
I buy locally, in store. I have the two major stores in the country, Worten and Rádio Popular, right here in the city. Worten sells Kingston, Toshiba, SanDisk, Samsung, Lexar, Sony, Verbatim and PNY, and Rádio Popular sells Kingston, SanDisk and Integral.
 
AndrewL said:
That's why CPU overclockers prioritize certain batches
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You don't have to tell me, i have been in that game. :) actually i cant remember buying a CPU and not being aware of its batch number, i have even driven across Denmark to get the right CPU stepping.
Actually i still have a totally unused intel CPU that's sold as a regular cpu but it is in fact a cut down Extreme edition with a fjew laser cuts here and there.
you can see that on the pin side where my CPU have the same layout as the "EE" in the little "empty" part in the middle, totally different to the regular 3.2 GHZ CPUs

Hell my backup computer is my old AMD opteron machine with the much tuned "Denmark" CPU, 1.7 GHZ pushed with ease to 2.5 GHZ

In regard to memmory cards i had no issues what so ever with sandisk in anything but dashcams, still have a fjew sandisk cards doing other things.

And on the negative side i just had a 64Gb laxar card ( 300 X ) die 2 times on me before i ever got close to fill it one time, actually now i have the card lying in read only mode with zero data on it :oops::(
 
My experience with Sandisk is also excellent. Used them for years already. Now for my dashcam I use two "SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC UHS-I" cards. One is from Amazon Germany and the other one is from DealExtreme. Been using them for a few months now without issues. Hopefully they will last for many months more, but you guys keep scaring me by telling me they "should be avoided" for dashcams... :-)
 
I completely agree with good and bad batches of flash memory, as well as CPU, GPUs etc. This process is called binning. The reason why I mentioned SanDisk and the other companies in my previous post, as being among the best, is because they actually produce and bin their own NAND. Whereas other companies simply purchase and rebrand.

With regards to quality going down over the years, I find this to be unlikely as the manufacturing and binning process usually gets better over time. The new "Ultra" series of SanDisk cards are rated for a min. of 48mb/s read, while the older "Ultra" series of SanDisk cards were only guaranteed a min. of 30mb/s. The same goes for the "Extreme" line, which are now guaranteed for 90- 95mb/s reads, increased from 80mb/s.

Correct that the SanDisk Extreme line is made of a different NAND types and are higher binned. They are generally of higher quality and more reliable. If you watch the sales close enough, you will find that SD cards are always heavily discounted. I've never had to pay more than $1CAD/GB for my SanDisk Extreme, Samsung EVO+ or Lexar 1000x cards.

All this being said, the only brand that has given me issues is ADATA. I purchased 2 brand new cards, and within a day, both were corrupt beyond repair. I forgot which dashcam I had used them in. Never again. :mad:
 
I am praying my fast U3 kingston card keep it together, i do like it :D
 
A Transcend premium 400x is the only card that has died on me. Didn't even last a month. All my other cards are Samsung Evo+ and Pros. Maybe I 'll give the Transcend High Endurance a try.
 
Being self employed means you work all the time, and have to be really careful you don't work yourself into the ground.
 
thancam said:
The mobius 2 is coming. Why don't you like at this and maybe do a review for this. Mobius 1 is a amazing cam. It's reliable, good image and cheap. Yeah, mobius 1 has all of three elements: perpormances, reliable, and cheaps. :)
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Heard about that. I plan on reviewing the JooVuuX in a month. Maybe I'll add the Mobius 2 to the list once I find out a little more and how it rates against the JooVuu.

Module 79L said:
I buy locally, in store. I have the two major stores in the country, Worten and Rádio Popular, right here in the city. Worten sells Kingston, Toshiba, SanDisk, Samsung, Lexar, Sony, Verbatim and PNY, and Rádio Popular sells Kingston, SanDisk and Integral.
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Thanks! Wow, does Worten look so much better online than Radio Popular. Good thing they have real physical stores. Thought prices were really expensive then I realized the Euro has really dropped in value to the USD.

kamkar1 said:
You don't have to tell me, i have been in that game. :) actually i cant remember buying a CPU and not being aware of its batch number, i have even driven across Denmark to get the right CPU stepping.
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Haha, it took me two months to buy my i5-2500k because I wanted a very specific batch number. So many emails...

stefxx said:
My experience with Sandisk is also excellent. Used them for years already. Now for my dashcam I use two "SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC UHS-I" cards. One is from Amazon Germany and the other one is from DealExtreme. Been using them for a few months now without issues. Hopefully they will last for many months more, but you guys keep scaring me by telling me they "should be avoided" for dashcams... :)
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If it works don't replace them! If you have the energy to check them once in a while that's for the best. Ideally your dash camera will also notify you if there are any problems (which is why I prioritize warning notifications so much).

VIIVIIIXIII said:
I completely agree with good and bad batches of flash memory, as well as CPU, GPUs etc. This process is called binning. The reason why I mentioned SanDisk and the other companies in my previous post, as being among the best, is because they actually produce and bin their own NAND. Whereas other companies simply purchase and rebrand.

With regards to quality going down over the years, I find this to be unlikely as the manufacturing and binning process usually gets better over time. The new "Ultra" series of SanDisk cards are rated for a min. of 48mb/s read, while the older "Ultra" series of SanDisk cards were only guaranteed a min. of 30mb/s. The same goes for the "Extreme" line, which are now guaranteed for 90- 95mb/s reads, increased from 80mb/s.

Correct that the SanDisk Extreme line is made of a different NAND types and are higher binned. They are generally of higher quality and more reliable. If you watch the sales close enough, you will find that SD cards are always heavily discounted. I've never had to pay more than $1CAD/GB for my SanDisk Extreme, Samsung EVO+ or Lexar 1000x cards.

All this being said, the only brand that has given me issues is ADATA. I purchased 2 brand new cards, and within a day, both were corrupt beyond repair. I forgot which dashcam I had used them in. Never again. :mad:
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I agree, there are few manufacturers who create their own memory. I don't think I said Sandisk's quality has gone down over the years nor do I think they are a bad brand. Big fan of them. I'm specifically targeting the Ultra series because they are incredibly popular and not designed for dash camera usage. There's a lack of information and I think I can really make a difference in reliability and creating a targeted message which will get people to buy something that's objectively better for not much more money.

jokiin said:
16 to 18 Monday to Friday, probably only 12 or so Saturday and Sunday
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Sounds about right, figured as much with the progress of Street Guardian as well as the number of hours I see you here. I haven't heard of someone yet who is building something big and works 9-5.
 
https://www.blackboxmycar.com/blogs/news/42333441-what-sd-cards-do-we-use-recommend

Found this old blog post from BBMC, it seems they recommend the very same ADATA SD cards that I problems with. They also mention "some success" with SanDisk Ultra SD cards.

It's probably more a matter of compatibility between SD card and dashcam unit, as they both have to work together. For this reason, I only use SDHC card (up to 32GB), even if the camera supports cards of larger capacities (64GB+). Lots of dashcams struggle with the SDXC format, and sometimes you have to perform a special out-of-camera formatting process to get it work properly...
 
VIIVIIIXIII said:
It's probably more a matter of compatibility between SD card and dashcam unit, as they both have to work together. For this reason, I only use SDHC card (up to 32GB), even if the camera supports cards of larger capacities (64GB+). Lots of dashcams struggle with the SDXC format, and sometimes you have to perform a special out-of-camera formatting process to get it work properly...
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If we ignore that Sandisk voids your warranty if it's used in a dash camera there are several notable manufacturers who say not to use the Ultra cards.

Let's start with our very own @jokiin he has said in multiple threads that it has problems. In this one he said certain chipsets have compatibility problems as well as overly aggressive write locking. Papago does not recommend sandisk or Samsung cards. Vicovation has a specific post saying the ultra cards have problems with writing at faster speeds for the new OPIA2.

I've enjoyed our conversation but for me I don't think I have more to say. I'm open to hearing any specific technical reasons for why one card is better than ours but all I (we?) have to go on are results and reports from manufacturers and users. I think I've done my research and I'm glad your cards are stil lworking.
 
Out of curiosity, could you link some of the technical reports and tests from your research? I'd like to do some reading on my commute home. Thanks
 
VIIVIIIXIII said:
https://www.blackboxmycar.com/blogs/news/42333441-what-sd-cards-do-we-use-recommend

Found this old blog post from BBMC, it seems they recommend the very same ADATA SD cards that I problems with. They also mention "some success" with SanDisk Ultra SD cards.

It's probably more a matter of compatibility between SD card and dashcam unit, as they both have to work together.
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for sure that has a lot to do with it, on the Zoran platform the engineers use Adata for file system testing as they are guaranteed to fail in the camera, yet the same card is a preferred brand on other platforms
 
I never worked 9 to 5, only a fjew ppl here do that i recon, i allways worked 7 to 4 or something similar to that.
best job i ever had i worked 12:00 to 5 in the morning, but then i only had 11 workdays every month, and in winter i could sleep for 6 hours on work and get paied for it.
 
kamkar1 said:
actually now i have the card lying in read only mode with zero data on it :oops::(
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I was able to fix "read only" on one of my Lexar 633x. Never had problems with Lexar 633x before, this is my fist time like this.
Strange thing happened, I had card completely full after few overwritings test, tried to delete all files via PC, but when I hit CTRL-A / Delete, then it showed me some warnings, then something like "scan and fix-thing" and after that there was no "Delete" option at all from Properties. I tried to format via PC, but every time warning "windows was not able to format" pop-up.
Luckily Lexar 633x comes with USB 3.0 card reader, so I tried it and it worked. I was able to format via PC. Not sure what caused on the 1st place to go into read only mode and I am still digesting my assumptions why supplied original USB 3.0 reader was able to help me to recover from read only mode. Maybe somebody has ideas ?
 
VIIVIIIXIII said:
Out of curiosity, could you link some of the technical reports and tests from your research? I'd like to do some reading on my commute home. Thanks
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I don't have any technical comparisons between brands. I can pull up some of the resources I used to get general figures:

500 Write Cycle Figure from Kingston: PDF
Heat affects data retention but only at prolonged temperatures over a long period of time: Link (PDF)
Higher temperatures improve durability as it makes the silicon more conductive, reducing stress: Link (Article)
Lexar 633x Review Stating It's MLC: Link
Writing Permanently Damages Cards: Link
Better Error Correction in Expensive Cards: Link

Hope that helps. Personally I want better sources, I spent many hours looking for good articles or research papers and there wasn't many that talked about consumer cards and the technology found within.

jokiin said:
for sure that has a lot to do with it, on the Zoran platform the engineers use Adata for file system testing as they are guaranteed to fail in the camera, yet the same card is a preferred brand on other platforms
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I was reading about that, where some brands may prefer certain brands because of their controllers. Is this something commonplace? I haven't seen many companies specifically state a certain brand or line of card is recommended because they have tested it to work with their platform.

I would like to recommend the right card for the right platform but I haven't seen any info on this.
 
AndrewL said:
I was reading about that, where some brands may prefer certain brands because of their controllers. Is this something commonplace? I haven't seen many companies specifically state a certain brand or line of card is recommended because they have tested it to work with their platform.
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I think some of it comes down to what the engineers use for development and testing, for Novatek that's Transcend and one of the primary reasons we changed to using Transcend cards
 
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