As I've mentioned previously, both of the V3s I've had in my vehicle for over a year have recorded at unusually low volume levels to the point where the captured sound was almost useless. I found this situation has been tolerable for me because I have other cameras in my vehicle if I ever really needed decent quality audio such as to capture the sound of my turn signals or something else. For example, I occasionally call out the license plate numbers of a vehicle in traffic if I encounter a situation where I want to be certain that I document the number even if the video doesn't capture it.
More recently, after the v 2.0 firmware update, I noticed that the audio was now much louder and this was a welcome improvement except that the audio still seemed a bit muffled and tubby sounding. I knew it could be better but still, I felt OK with the performance I was getting even if it wasn't optimal. Most of the time, in most circumstances I don't find the quality of the audio to be all that important.
That brings me to something that happened just the other day. I encountered an interesting situation that I thought I might like to post video of here on the forum. While driving, I briefly described what I was seeing so that viewers would have a better understanding of what they were looking at.
It so happens that I have two front facing cameras in my vehicle, the V3 and an original (at least six year old) Mobius with a telephoto lens on it. I intended to post simultaneous video from both cameras.
When I got home and reviewed the video from both cameras I was astonished by the comparison! The audio of my voice describing the event on the Mobius was absolutely crystal clear, realistic and nuanced. I could hear every last detail of my voice and my surroundings. I could easily use the adjective "superb" to describe the high quality of the recording due to the clarity and ambience.
The audio from the A119 V3 was far different. It was terrible actually. It was muffled to such a degree that even after repeated listening I couldn't make out many of the words I myself had spoken. If this was audio I really needed for some mission critical documentation, it would have been useless!
If some dash cam users don't care about the quality of the audio from their cameras, that's fine. If a user wants to turn off the audio, that's fine too, of course. But I believe there should be a minimum standard of performance where a camera should provide a decent level of audibility and clarity in a recording. Dash cams are there to document our surroundings after all.
I've been using dash cams now for ten years, have had experience with dozens of cameras and with few exceptions, I've come to expect that a dash cam will capture sound clearly enough to hear what happens in and around the cabin of my vehicle. There is no reason for it to be otherwise. Anything else is unacceptable!
All in all I really like the V3s. Nevertheless, it is discouraging that there have been several significant issues, such as audio quality, banded low light video and HDR double exposures that have remained more or less unresolved for a long time now and that Viofo seems reluctant to even discuss or address publicly.