Thikware Q800 Pro

“When I find a color darker than black, I'll wear it. But until then, I'm wearing black!” Coco Chanel ( please don't ask me how the hell i know )
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black on black, thats like an oven hah. I use to only have black cars and I got tired of it, now i got a tan tacoma and a white prius. I think my DR900 over heated once, and where I live its cold winters but we get 90 degree days in the summer, sometimes 100+ but not often. Thats definitely one of its issues but I still like using it as my main camera in one of my vehicles.

I found out why my Q800 wasn't working over the cloud though, I was using a unreleased beta firmware from thinkware, the one thats supposed to improve video quality. But apparently it wasn't ready for public release and cloud didn't work with it. At least thats what i was told, so i gotta go back to the publicly released firmware to test the cloud, unless the new firmware comes out in time.

I keep telling myself to not buy black cars anymore... but I always end up liking the glossiness of a clean black car! And I always regret it when summer comes around haha.

The DR900S overheated daily when it was over 90F each day in the summer. The F800 Pro was next in line, much less tho, and then came the DR750S. The best was the SGZC12RC’s I had in my glove box ;). Now the iRoad X9 is holding up very well in the heat. Will definitely try the Q800 prob over the weekend.

Glad the cloud finally is supposed to work! I am tempted to get a hotspot for my car to test out the various cloud features for Blackvue and Thinkware.


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“When I find a color darker than black, I'll wear it. But until then, I'm wearing black!” Coco Chanel ( please don't ask me how the hell i know )
719b55c8bd50b306120492e7ac53da5c.jpg

Lmao couldn’t agree more! [emoji1787]


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I keep telling myself to not buy black cars anymore... but I always end up liking the glossiness of a clean black car! And I always regret it when summer comes around haha.

The DR900S overheated daily when it was over 90F each day in the summer. The F800 Pro was next in line, much less tho, and then came the DR750S. The best was the SGZC12RC’s I had in my glove box ;). Now the iRoad X9 is holding up very well in the heat. Will definitely try the Q800 prob over the weekend.

Glad the cloud finally is supposed to work! I am tempted to get a hotspot for my car to test out the various cloud features for Blackvue and Thinkware.


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Socal here, actively looking for a new dashcam for my wife's car. Never thought they can overheat during the summer! Hope q800pro can handle better than f800pro. Based on your experience was Street Guardian the best in terms of reliability?
 
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Socal here, actively looking for a new dashcam for my wife's car. Never thought they can overheat during the summer! Hope q800pro can handle better than f800pro. Based on your experience was Street Guardian the best in terms of reliability?

There’s a lot of variables that affect how hot a dashcam gets, such as a car’s color, tint, dashcam placement, etc.

Street Guardian dashcams are definitely among the best in terms of reliability and customer support.

I always have a SG cam in each car for recording while driving. Their current lineup doesn’t have buffered parking recording (timelapse is available), so I usually have a second setup in each car that’s connected to a hardwired battery pack for parking recording.

I just took apart my Q800. It’s pretty similar internally as the F800... so I have doubts about any improvements in heat tolerance.




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Here is my Q800 pro review. Its basically just a minor upgrade to the F800 pro so I basically repeat the same pros and cons that I talked about in my F800 Pro review. I like that there is a power button so I can shut it off at home and not worry about forgetting to plug it back in or switching it back on. I like that it has the low voltage and timer functionality built in as opposed to a separate unit like the power magic pro from blackvue. I like that they offer both time lapse and low power mode for people who don't want to use the power sucking/memory card filling standard motion detection parking mode (it works fine but in high traffic areas it will basically run non stop). And I really like that you can buy just the front camera, and upgrade with a rear camera later, where blackvue makes you buy either a 1 channel or 2 channel version.

Major con is thinkware is still very behind blackvue on cloud features, this is the same cloud feature that the F800 Pro has. There are no more features added to what the F800 could already do. I hope within the year thinkware can add a parking mode cloud feature.

Video quality is such a minor difference I don't think most people would notice the difference between the F800 or Q800 Pro when trying to read license plates. Not really worth upgrading if you already have the F800 Pro. If you want to stick with thinkware and want to upgrade I would wait to see how their 4k model turns out.

 
@USDashCamera Is this with their private firmware that improves video quality? We found only a minor improvement with that but have been told that they're working on another firmware that will improve on video quality even more.
 
@USDashCamera Is this with their private firmware that improves video quality? We found only a minor improvement with that but have been told that they're working on another firmware that will improve on video quality even more.
Most of it is 1.00.04 that is available on the site. The night footage on the freeway is also 1.00.04, but the few shots from the rear camera in the parking lot and the truck with a head light out were with the private 1.00.06. It did make a difference but not really anything that helped read license plates or signs, it seemed pretty minor. I actually made a clip comparing them side by side but I choose not to include it in my review, I would prefer to just wait until there is a publicly released firmware update.
 
Really interesting would be how competitive will be the Q800 Pro against the DR900S in reading License Plate at several situations?
I think to record (Track) Videos for your own, there would nothing to compare with a GoPro or something similar, except you want have the best quality.
So a DashCam should be in the first line for your safety and to get the License Plate if someone would hit and run your car.
Of course, it also would be really important to have the best quality if its someone whitout a car who will damage your car.
 
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Really interesting would be how competitive will be the Q800 Pro against the DR900S in reading License Plate at several situations?
I think to record (Track) Videos for your own, there would nothing to compare with a GoPro or something similar, except you want have the best quality.
So a DashCam should be in the first line for your safety and to get the License Plate if someone would hit and run your car.
Of course, it also would be really important to have the best quality if its someone whitout a car who will damage your car.
i just got the gopro hero 7 black a month ago. I love it, but would never want to use it as a dash cam... its black and has a battery seems like a bad thing waiting to happen, and has no auto record when it gets plugged in as far as ive seen. although you can have it set to start recording when you turn it on yourself.
 
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Just picked up a 2-pack of 128GB SanDisk Extreme Plus microSDXC cards from the local Costco. They're on sale through 6/19/2019 for $39.99 (https://www.costco.com/SanDisk-Extr...k-with-microSD-Adapter.product.100485627.html). Plugged one in the recently installed Thinkware Q800 Pro and it worked just fine. I took the second one and plugged it into Thinkware F770 in my other car and that one worked just fine also. Both dash cams are 2-channel configurations. I verified the recordings on my laptop to make sure the video files could be read. So far so good.
 
So far so good with my q800pro coming from the f800pro. I haven’t reviewed any footage for comparison, but from videos and reviews online it seems to be a little better quality over the f800pro. One thing I can say for sure is that the q800pro and the f800pro handle extreme heat the best out of all the premium dash cams I’ve tried. I’d love to install my dr750s back in my daily driver, but it was constantly shutting down in anything over 95*F-97*F rendering parking mode and normal recording useless until the camera cooled off. My sg9663dc also shut down a couple of times as well as my a129 duo. My old opia 2 which I still have, but have not used in sometime now also handled extreme heat without issue. I’m hoping to try SG’s new DR model in hopes that heat isn’t an issue. Even though thinkware is lacking many features that the dr750s has I’m going to have to stick with it for now because of how well it handles heat.
 
So far so good with my q800pro coming from the f800pro. I haven’t reviewed any footage for comparison, but from videos and reviews online it seems to be a little better quality over the f800pro. One thing I can say for sure is that the q800pro and the f800pro handle extreme heat the best out of all the premium dash cams I’ve tried. I’d love to install my dr750s back in my daily driver, but it was constantly shutting down in anything over 95*F-97*F rendering parking mode and normal recording useless until the camera cooled off. My sg9663dc also shut down a couple of times as well as my a129 duo. My old opia 2 which I still have, but have not used in sometime now also handled extreme heat without issue. I’m hoping to try SG’s new DR model in hopes that heat isn’t an issue. Even though thinkware is lacking many features that the dr750s has I’m going to have to stick with it for now because of how well it handles heat.

ive used the f770, f800 pro extensively and now the q800 pro and I've never had them shut off from being too hot now that I think of it.

my dr900s-2ch has overheated once on a 90+ degree day I was parked outside all day with no shade. My 650s years ago also would over heat once in awhile. I'd have to hold them in front of the AC for a few min to cool them down.

this is a big dilemma for me when I want to use a sunshade because you either block your camera during parking mode or it goes between the glass and reflector which will easily heat it up to dangerous levels.
 
ive used the f770, f800 pro extensively and now the q800 pro and I've never had them shut off from being too hot now that I think of it.

my dr900s-2ch has overheated once on a 90+ degree day I was parked outside all day with no shade. My 650s years ago also would over heat once in awhile. I'd have to hold them in front of the AC for a few min to cool them down.

this is a big dilemma for me when I want to use a sunshade because you either block your camera during parking mode or it goes between the glass and reflector which will easily heat it up to dangerous levels.
What I’m thinking maybe the culprit is the chipset in a lot of “newer” premium dash cams seeing is how my q800pro, f800pro and opia 2 all use the Ambrella a12 processor and work very well in any climate. I’m assuming the a12 doesn’t need much energy to power the cams in parking mode or continuous mode in heat or cold which generates less heat and stress on the cameras over all. This is just my speculation though.
 
Anyone else using the Q800 pro? I've had it for about a few weeks or so and lately I've been trying to get the cloud to work. It connects just fine to a hotspot but it absolutely refuses to broadcast it's location when i try to find it in the cloud app.

And now it seems my F800 pro refuses to register to the cloud. I did get the f800 pro to work before but now I can't even get it to register to my cloud account. It has been excruciating trying to get this to work.
I have exactly the same problem, Q800 refuses to report position over a dedicated MiFi hotspot but works with an iPhone configured as a hotspot. Tech support is very slow - not much confidence they will solve it.
 
I cant get my Q800 to connect to my Porsche's WIFI at all. It will connect to my iphone hotspot. But not my cars wifi. My iphone connects to my cars wifi so I don't understand why it fails.

I also wish it had more feature settings to fine tune the voice responses. I had to turn all volume off completely to shut this thing up some.

Also, I accidently hardwired my constant and switched 12V lines and left it running all night in my car. It literally recorded all night long and I STILL was able to sit in the car, rewire it correctly (I used fuse taps) and then start the car! So even in normal full power mode, this thing DID NOT drain my battery overnight. YMMV... But I was shocked!

Overall I like the camera. The video is pretty clear and much better than the Garmin 56W but it does have some noise. The sticky mount is nice dark tape which looks much better on the window than that clear sticky tape you see used today as well. But mine has a bubble dead center of the rectangle mount and it's annoying to look at. Pushing it hard sticks it to the window, but it lifts and shows a air bubble which you can clearly see from the font window. It annoys me. I wish the mount was smaller and more flexible.

I wasn't thrilled that I had to mount it pretty much dead center in order to use its other functions. I wanted to mount it tucked up above and next to the rear view mirror. But the lines they have in the view finder that they want you to line up with the hood and road would not in that location. This is due to the curve pitch of my front window and lack of left and right tilt for the FOV.

If your front window is curved like mine (911) the flat base used for this camera will angle to the left or right, thus pushing your field of view one way or the other. The camera can tilt up and down. But make sure you test your FOV before you stick it to the window. Because you can NOT move the lens left or right at all. That sucks.

Other camera designs allow you to move the FOV in all directions. Not just up or down and centered to the window. So if anyone who is looking for info on this camera like I was a couple days ago. I hope this post helps as much as the other posts helped me.

Overall, I am happy with it. But I won't get another wedge design again because of this.
 
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I cant get my Q800 to connect to my Porsche's WIFI at all. It will connect to my iphone hotspot. But not my cars wifi. My iphone connects to my cars wifi so I don't understand why it fails.

I also wish it had more feature settings to fine tune the voice responses. I had to turn all volume off completely to shut this thing up some.

Also, I accidently hardwired my constant and switched 12V lines and left it running all night in my car. It literally recorded all night long and I STILL was able to sit in the car, rewire it correctly (I used fuse taps) and then start the car! So even in normal full power mode, this thing DID NOT drain my battery overnight. YMMV... But I was shocked!

Overall I like the camera. The video is pretty clear and much better than the Garmin 56W but it does have some noise. The sticky mount is nice dark tape which looks much better on the window than that clear sticky tape you see used today as well. But mine has a bubble dead center of the rectangle mount and it's annoying to look at. Pushing it hard sticks it to the window, but it lifts and shows a air bubble which you can clearly see from the font window. It annoys me. I wish the mount was smaller and more flexible.

I wasn't thrilled that I had to mount it pretty much dead center in order to use its other functions. I wanted to mount it tucked up above and next to the rear view mirror. But the lines they have in the view finder that they want you to line up with the hood and road would not in that location. This is due to the curve pitch of my front window and lack of left and right tilt for the FOV.

If your front window is curved like mine (911) the flat base used for this camera will angle to the left or right, thus pushing your field of view one way or the other. The camera can tilt up and down. But make sure you test your FOV before you stick it to the window. Because you can NOT move the lens left or right at all. That sucks.

Other camera designs allow you to move the FOV in all directions. Not just up or down and centered to the window. So if anyone who is looking for info on this camera like I was a couple days ago. I hope this post helps as much as the other posts helped me.

Overall, I am happy with it. But I won't get another wedge design again because of this.


Yea, this thing definitely needs finer control over voice prompts. I ended up muting it since I couldn’t stand it anymore. All I really care about is parking incident notifications... but I’m sure the prompts are great with valet drivers lmao.

Well, it ran overnight and had no issue because: Porsche’s use AGM batteries, and have good capacity, as long as you don’t heavily drain it all the time (just trickle if needed). I remember getting a quote for battery replacement on the Macan and Panamera... $850 lol. But then again, this is less than the cost of replacing the LiFePO4’s in the latest BMW M cars.

As for FOV, most dashcams don’t have much adjustment, and are similar to the Q800 (Blackvue, Thinkware, iRoad, SG, latest Viofo, etc). For all the dashcams, I don’t think I’ve ever installed one and had the lines perfectly lined up, in any of my cars haha. Prob would work for like a G-Wagon though...?

For the bubble, I would try to leave it out on a hot/sunny day, and then press on the mount (remove dashcam first lol). Or heat gun.


Btw, you should grab a few clips. I’m sure you will LOVE the audio quality lmao... maybe throw it in Sport, drop it (PASM), roll down the windows at like 60mph, etc. [emoji23].


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I returned mine! That thing was a POS. Audio was horrible! The video quality on mine looked like VHS. So much NOISE. So Im looking for something VERY discreet, no LCD and can record 24/7.

And all these dash cam reviews say its SOO good. BS. It sucked.
 
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I reinstalled my old dr650gw I haven’t used in a few years and it looks so much better. No more grain!

Dr650 and up over F800 in my opinion.
 
Porsche in CPT :eek: Clearly this old Dane are not keeping up with things on the far coast. :)
 
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