Seeing the various videos on YouTube where you see some people being jerks then suddenly getting a deserved dose of karma, as well as people causing accidents, etc, my interest in finding a decent dashcam has been sparked (again).
The last time I really checked was a few years ago, when even low end dashcams were still well over $50 unless on sale. So, with my interest sparked again from the videos, I'm trying to learn what I can about the different products available.
What I'm interested in finding a list of cams (and hopefully buying one) that fit these criteria...
1. High quality is a must. I'm not expecting cinematic quality where you can zoom in on a building that is a mile away and see a couple of people making out. However, being able to read a license plate, street signs, etc, without having to be within 10 feet is definitely desired. Fairly decent night recording, as in, not crap, and 18+ fps using a reasonable bitrate. (I'm guessing the bitrates are fairly standard, but wanted to add that in just to be sure.)
2. GPS is also a must. Can be quite useful, especially if someone is challenging or questioning where something took place.
3. Speed of the vehicle. Preferred by not required and if available, would like the option to disable it, though push come to shove, ability to turn it off is only a minor preference.
4. Somewhat discreet. The more discreet the better, of course, but my focus and interest is that it's not an eye sore. A couple of cams that I came across from browsing this site and looking on Amazon, are the Dome D201 and DAB202. To me, the 202 is acceptable, but the 201, not so much.
5. Minimum of 64gb microSD support, prefer 128gb or higher.
6. Date/time configuration - Prefer year/mm/dd but mm/dd/year is acceptable if other isn't an option. I insist on 24hr format for the time though.
7. Audio switch (can disable audio if I want).
8. Automatically recycle the space on the microSD card. I know some (or all?) break the videos down into segments, usually by amount of time recorded. Highly prefer loss-less recording. If I play a few pieces back to back, no jumps, cluing you in to the fact that there was a file change. For ones that record based on amount of time, being able to select the file sizes would be nice, though not too important.
9. Ability to press a button (or two?) to protect a segment from being overwritten. Also some sort option where I can turn the cam off or have it in standby mode or 'motion detect' mode. ** See below
10. Best bang for the buck, of course.
** My vehicle, 2004 GMC Envoy XL, is one of those where the outlets are "always on" even when the vehicle isn't. So cams that rely on active power to toggle recorder or not isn't a reliable setting for me. Thus being able to press a button to turn off recording is desired. Having it auto-resume based on amount of movement could make things easier as well. If there is an easy way for a cam to detect that status of the vehicle (engine on or not) despite the outlets, that works too.
I hope that I'm not seeming like too much of a noob and I hope what I listed isn't asking the impossible. The list isn't really in order of priority, though quality, gps, storage and date/time stamping are of importance. I'm taking a guess that a couple of things I listed are pretty standard among most cams, but felt it better to include vs assuming.
Thanks in advance for responses.
P.S.
If it's permitted, then I can provide a couple of links to videos that show where some of my renewed interest came from. One is a somewhat popular video of an accident on the highway (decent quality video) and other is of a minor fender-bender (also decent video, but has GPS information on it).
