Here's an update. I've tried both the Owl and the Raven Dash Cams. The Raven gave me all kinds of alerts, vehicle speed, aggressive driving and stopping, unit turned off or unplugged, plus you get a web page that give you access to your cars GPS map locations and video from the unit, it's heavily tied into the ODB2 ports diagnostic systems, so it's great for monitoring young drivers or whoever you loan your vehicle to as it gives you lots of feedback on what's happening. The Owl just uses the ODB2 port for power. The Owl connects with a magnet that has not jumped off from it's base but makes it really easy to remove and take with you. The Raven clips into it's base and can be removed also.
Owl works really good with the iPhone and pretty good with an Android phone, can't use both phones, as you can only link it to one phone. The flashing led does make it look more like a car alarm. I live in what I consider a low crime areas and so far have had no problems with theft and have used both units for about three months. Both survived high summer temperatures in my car but I learned a long time ago to keep both rear passenger windows open by about an inch to help control heat buildup. I once had a cellphone holder melt because I was closing all the windows during hot summer weather. I like the image quality of the Owl better and it was really easy to retrieve video from any location with my cell and took under a min. to do so. The Raven took a little longer to download videos, perhaps a little over a min. Owl makes it really easy to access and share videos. With both units sometimes cloud access may not be available and the units upload when service is connected again. This means there may be a chance that if you part in an area with no cell reception there may be no alerts or video if the unit is taken. So far I've noticed this to be very rare living in a big city.
I decided to go with the Owl as it's really easy to setup and has that Apple style plug and play working for it. Will have to see how the cold weather effects them. Raven has better night vision, Owl has bright LED lights to light up the inside of the passenger compartment when unauthorized entry is detected, works great with the iPhone but not so great with my Android phone, as I often get mistaken as an intruder. The parking alerts work well for both phones as I get alerts of people walking to close to the car, both have a low, medium, and high setting, so I don't get a lot of false alerts. Owl turns itself off after 24 hours if you don't drive your car during that time, or if your battery is low.
I do believe using the cloud and being able to use your cellphone to instantly see what's going on inside and in front of your vehicle from any location and at anytime is the future, Tesla has cameras all around it's cars and have started developing the front camera for use as a dash cam. I'm not a professional reviewer or affiliated with any of these companies, all this stuff is just off the top of my head as there are probably lots of additional features I've left out. Owl has uploaded Youtube videos directly from Owl owners which allow you to see what they captured including a few of them capturing people breaking into their car and one or two of them stealing the dash cam. Strangely some thieves left the dash cam. I'm currently looking for adapter cables to see if I can hook them up to a battery pack. As someone who's really into gadgets, I've enjoyed playing around with these and a few other dash cams.
I too like a good looking cam, but if the video isn't usable what's the point in having it? 
Dashcams built by folks with a cam background are often the reverse, with good video but features which sometimes don't work well 
There is nothing wrong with being stupid about something as long as you correct that- everyone starts out from stupid, then rises from there 
