V1P Max review (4k front and 1080p rear)

[benjos]

Overall quality for front camera: Good
Overall quality for rear camera: Very Bad

Samples: https://mega.nz/folder/v24BhALb#bbsrziQv17AmORPjzMvZUg

This forum limits posts to 999 characters so I will split up the review in multiple posts.


The front camera supports 4K with HEVC (H265) at 25 fps; not 30 fps as advertised in product images. It records good quality during the day and decent quality at night. The rear camera is also limited to 25 fps and will record in HEVC. The rear camera has poor quality during the day and very poor quality at night. In the front camera, HEVC files will be about 20% smaller than the H264 files. Street signs and license plates are usually readable with the front camera during the day time.

 

[benjos]

At night, the front camera video is good but sometimes too dark. The quality depends on the camera auto adjusting to the light. Sometimes the camera will record too dark and sometimes it brightens up all the dark areas. Even when stationary in a long line at a drive-through the camera will adjust the light/shade of the surroundings depending on the vehicle or lights in front of you; in the drive-through scenario, I think lighting up the dark areas would be better. The camera does not have options for spot, center, or average light. The camera could be improved in auto light adjustment. Illuminated street signs and license plates are often unreadable with the front camera at night.

Only 2 resolutions are available for front and rear:
3840x2160 + 1920x1080
2560z1440 + 1920x1080

There are no settings to set the quality or bitrate of the video.

 

[benjos]

The front camera powers on with the 12V car adapter mini USB but not with the included USB type A to mini USB cable when plugged into a USB type A charger (2.1A). This spare cable seems useless for this camera. I tried two other thicker gauge micro USB cables that I had on hand and they worked with the camera, but only one of them was able to power both the front and rear cameras. The package includes two 3M double sided tape for the front mount and two front mounts apparently for two vehicles. The front mount allows for you to slide the camera into position to align it. The camera lens can be angled up/down/left/right a few degrees in each direction but can only rotate by 1 degree. The front mount is secure to the window and does not cause vibration or shaking in the camera recording.

The flip mode flips the video but not the user interface. If you had to mount the camera upside down then the user interface will still appear upside down.

 

[benjos]

Mirror mode makes it show and record a mirror image. Flip and Mirror modes only affects the front camera; rear is not flipped or mirrored. I’m not sure why anyone would need to use Mirror mode.

The loop recording only has three options: 1, 2, or 3 minutes. It would be nice if it had higher values.
The parking monitor feature requires hardwire kit and shows a warning about it. You can confirm it and then pick No or Yes. I didn’t have a hardwire kit to test and when I picked Yes while using USB power, I did not notice any difference.

Distortion Correction mode can be enabled and makes the field of vision slightly narrower so that the fish-eye effect is reduced. Distortion Correction mode makes the video quality worse with the V1P Max front camera especially in dim light or at night time. Distortion Correction can be enabled while in HEVC; some other cameras do not enable this function while using HEVC. I think Distortion Correction mode only affects the front camera.

 

[benjos]

Pressing MIC cycles through display modes for front, rear, picture in picture (front big and rear small or rear big and front small). Holding the MIC button will toggle mute/enable microphone. The audio recording quality is below average. I can hear my car engine/exhaust and voices within the cabin. It will not record music from the car stereo well.

Powering on the front camera will play loud chime music. It takes about 7 seconds to start recording after supplying power. Powering off has two quick beeps that are not as loud.

GPS is built inside the front camera and there is a separate GPS port for some reason. The GPS coordinates and vehicle speed are in the recorded video. The GPS vehicle speed lags by two or three seconds. There is no way to disable the GPS.

Front camera videos have the seconds from the timestamp cut off; you can only see the first digit of the seconds. The rear camera does not have this issue. The font for the GPS and timestamp is blocky and low quality.

 

[benjos]

The rear camera records low quality video which does not look like 1080p. Note that my car’s rear window has a dark tint like 5% or 10%. The video quality is worse than the first GoPro Hero HD which came out 10 years ago. License plates and street names are too difficult to read. The rear camera video also sometimes suffers from some liquid fluid motion (wavy distortion) which I think is due to car interference or vibration. Night time quality is very poor since everything appears nearly black other than street signs and car lights. The big freeway street signs are difficult to read but those signs are usually facing the wrong direction since this is the rear camera. The rear camera is just good enough in case you have an accident so you can see where vehicles or pedestrians came from.

 

[benjos]

The rear camera can only be tilted by about 30 degrees and can only point downward relative to the mounting point. If you were to mount it on the rear glass window then it would just be pointing at your trunk and you cannot aim it upward.


The 3M double-sided tape sticks very well for the front glass. For the rear, I stuck it to the rubber trim around the rear window where it is adjacent to the headliner. This trim is angled like 45 degrees from the rear window such that I can point the camera to see the road instead of just the trunk. Because my car trim is narrow and curved, about 60% of the 3M double-sided tape makes contact with the trim. I also used extra electrical tape to hold the wire above the camera onto the trim and I ran the rest of the wire between the headliner and window trim.

 

[benjos]

The next day the camera fell off the 3M double-sided tape but the tape held it from falling completely. I stuck the rear camera back on and the day after it still stayed stuck to the 3M tape but the second day after the 3M would fail to hold it and it would be dangling and only held by the electrical tape and the wire that is wedged between the headliner and trim. I have to press the camera up on the trim each day I want to drive with it. It holds position during my drive. The rear camera also has holes in the mount in case you wanted to drill into something to secure it.

The included cable clips with double sided tape are too weak to hold the cables to my rubber or vinyl interior trim; the clips keep falling down. My car does not let me tuck in the wire behind the front headliner. I can tuck the wire behind the A pillar but then I have to use a lot of black electrical tape to hold the wire up on the rubber window trim.

 

[benjos]

When browsing the folder where the video files are stored, the date modified of the files do not match the time of the video watermark. The date modified of the files is the seven hours earlier than the video timestamp watermark. The timestamp watermark appears correct and will use the adjusted time zone's time. So in California at 10 PM Pacific Daylight Time and the time zone in the camera is set to Los Angeles, and Daylight Savings time is On in the options, the recording will show 10 PM and the file names will be named with the correct date and time but the date modified will show 3 PM.

The front camera actually records two video streams: one is the high resolution and the other is low resolution (1024x576). Both video streams are saved into the same file. I assume the low resolution is for playback on the camera. I would prefer that the low resolution be a separate file to delete easily.

 

[benjos]

The Emergency button (or when G-Force Sensitivity detects too much force) will save the previous one or two minutes plus the next 20 seconds. The G-Force Sensitivity is too sensitive even on the Low sensitivity setting and may trigger on hard bumps or even sometimes I don’t feel much of a bump. It will record both the front and rear as a copy in the emergency folders. The camera’s supercapacitor is just big enough to keep recording for a half second more and saving the file if power is lost. While testing in emergency recording mode, I unplugged the camera and it would shut off in a half second (similar to when you turn off your car or unplug cigarette adapter). The normal video is still saved and playable which is good; however, it is not saved into the emergency folder. I would prefer if the camera could record longer after the camera loses power.

 

[benjos]

When no micro SD card is inserted and you power on the front camera, you will hear a single alert of “Please insert card” and you will see “No SD card” on the screen. When you insert the micro SD card while it is on, the camera will shutdown and restart.

The supercapacitor is good to have instead of a Lithium battery that could expand under hot weather. I have not tested the camera in hot weather too much other than while driving. I have not noticed any missing videos or cut off videos while using the camera with my 256 GB Samsung Evo micro SD. This same micro SD would sometimes give “slow SD card” alerts in my 4K HEVC action camera that has high bitrates but I think those messages were mainly due to heat in the action camera. I have not noticed the Rexing front camera to get hot but it does get warm if you touch it and if I eject the microSD card after it has been recording for a while the microSD is hot.

 

[benjos]

The camera formats the microSD card as vfat. This format is compatible with Linux and Windows.

When I plug my separate micro USB 2.0 cable to power on the front camera from my computer, I see menu for USB Storage, USB Webcam, and CHARGE. Once you are in any of the modes, you cannot easily switch to another mode; you will have to power off the camera and turn it on if you want to choose another mode.
If I choose USB storage (while plugged into a USB 3.0 slot), then it will work with Linux and transfer at about 32 MB/s.
The USB Webcam mode lets the camera function as a webcam and works on Linux; however, the video feed seems to have scan line distortion which I think is due to the camera being 25 FPS (or Hz) while my screen is 60 Hz.
The CHARGE mode just puts the camera into dashcam mode while paused (i.e. not recording). You can choose to record or go through the options.

 

[benjos]

The Rexing Connect app (v1.2.6) for Android requires access to your device location, access to photos, media, and files on your device, and access to take pictures and record video. If I deny the location access, the app will not launch; it will keep asking for location access when you relaunch it.
Using a firewall app, I noticed that the Rexing app will want to make many internet connections including to Facebook even before I connect to the camera.

The Rexing app lets you control the camera (to start and stop recording) and has mostly the same options as within the camera’s user interface. The only difference is that the app lets you change the WiFi password. There is a bug with the app or camera because it does not correctly save passwords with special characters; it will save something but your password with special characters will not work. Also the camera will show you the password without special characters but that password does not work either.

 

[benjos]

Resetting the camera to defaults will reset all the values back to default except for the date and time. This is the only way to fix bad WiFi password. The app or camera also does not save passwords longer than 22 characters; the camera will show 22 characters of the password but that password does not work either. The app doesn’t show the full camera version; it appears cut off.

The app also has some internet features which I did not test such as letting you create a profile or sharing videos.

I used the app to check for firmware updates. As of 10/20/2020 there was no firmware update. The RexingUSA web site also does not have any firmware for download for this camera.

 

[benjos]

The Software Agreement within the app says that personal information will be collected such as phone ID, recorder ID, and usage time. Essentially, the more info you give to the app the more they will use your data.

I experienced other bugs with the app where I couldn’t connect back to the camera because it said I wasn’t connect to the camera’s WiFi yet I was already connected to it. Sometimes while clicking on something I saw an error or warning like something was not supported or not available.