It's very odd the way this camera is being promoted. It's being presented as a kind of security camera peripheral for the smartphone generation with lots of bells and whistles yet they seem to be completely uninformed about the primary functionality that compels most of us to buy and use dash cams.
Case in point: Engadget published an article entitled "
Owl is a smarter spin on a dashboard camera" - "
It's like an LTE-connected Dropcam for your car."
The author seems absolutely clueless about dash cams, the how and why of how people actually use them and in video and photographic technology in general.
He states: "
Owl hopes to do for the dashboard-camera market what the iPod did for portable audio players." ...."It's easy to see the parallels between where dashboard cameras are today and where MP3 players were before the iPod. There are plenty of options on the market, but there's still no killer product." Really?
Dash cams are
not iPods. There is no "killer product" the way there is no "killer" DSLR, "killer" video camera or no "killer" CCTV camera. There is no equivalency. Cameras capture content, both still frame and video and people buy different types of cameras in different prices ranges and capabilities for different purposes. There will never be the one "killer camera" they way there was a "killer" music and media player for vast libraries of other people's marketed content like an MP3 player.
Obviously, the core features of the OWL cam seem appealing to any of us who crave high functioning parking mode but unless we have high functioning core
dash camera functionality for traffic and road documentation it's just a kind of expensive car alarm. Parking mode is essentially an ancillary dash cam feature and while it's great to see a company attempt to put such sophistication into the concept unless they develop a camera that performs the primary job of proper evidentiary capture out on the road they don't have much. Indeed, this is a Baby Monitor for your parked car with fancy features such as voice commands and other shiny bells and whistles and not much more. This camera needs to focus more attention on accident capture and it especially needs the ability to record to standard memory cards that can be quickly and easily removed from the camera when necessary, such as after an accident or when no connectivity is available. In fact, my basic impression of this camera is that it is intended almost exlusively for people in urban settings. I get the distinct impression that the designers never stopped to think past that question. There are many folks like me who live in mountainous rural areas with spotty coverage. LTE connectivity certainly seems appealing but it still needs local
removable memory, not WiFi downloads off the internal memory. It needs embedded time and date on the video. OWL also needs to explain more to potential buyers what kind of actual camera performance they can expect, day and night, what FOV the camera lens provides, what bit rates it records at and what menu settings are available, such as looping, G-sensor, time lapse, etc., etc. We don't even know whether it has any of these common dash cam capabilities or settings. But we do know you can get alerts if someone messes with your vehicle and yell at people in your car from anywhere in the world.
As for pure cluelessness about why people actually buy dash cams, one of the most hilarious but revealing aspects of the Engadget article regarding how this camera is being promoted to the "smart phone generation" as some kind of appealing smart toy is that the author does not even drive a car. He is however so enamored with high tech gadgetry to the point where he wishes he drove a car. In the article, the author states,
"While I don't own a car, the Owl is the first dashboard camera I've seen that makes me wish I was still a regular driver."
