VIOFO A129 Pro Duo 4K terrible low-light quality vs Street Guardian SGGCX2PRO+ ?

alicecerishe

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I've had the SGGCX2PRO for a while now, wanted to upgrade to a 4k one so I can read license plates from farther out so got the Viofo.
I installed them side by side to compare and......
During the day, it's much clearer for sure, and I really like how it can record in 10 minute clips instead of SGGCX2PRO's max limit of 5 minutes.
However during the night....see attached pics.
And this with with exposure turned on on the Viofo, while SGGCX2PRO's at neutral 0.
Is this normal? Anyone else with a A129 confirm this is how it's supposed to be?
 

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the 2MP sensor will always outperform the sensor in the 4K camera in low light situations, that's expected, of course 4K has the advantage in well lit situations, could always do what some people do and run both, that way you're covered for either scenario, what you miss on one you pick up on the other
 
Yes this is normal, the 2 sensors are physically the same size, so for the 4 K sensor to be able to have that many more pixels they each need to be smaller, and so also less light sensitive.
This is why in some modern phone cameras with a much higher pixel count, for night photos they will bin the pixels of the large sensor up to that way get a larger pixel that can trap / collect more light, so you will often see the 48 Mpix sensor drop to 12 Mpix for night photos as it bin 4 pixels into one and so become more light sensitive.
This way of binning pixels are not yet in dashcams, TBH i dont think the hardware support it, it would be a nice way to make a 4K camera do better but however lesser resolution low light footage.

Still IMO the 4K sensors deployed today in 4K cameras are okay, they will still log your driving and placement in relation to lane markings ASO, and that can still disproof a lot of potential claims against you.

On the other hand, if you compare one of the good 1080p sensors to a lesser one, if you just look at the videos from the 2 playing the good one do look at lot better and you will feel you can see a lot more.
But try and hit pause then or go thru the videos frame by frame, and you will notice that the " a lot more" you can see, well it will still be hard to take small details from it as it are still blurred.

So the good 1080p sensor do give more pleasing footage to view, but it also play right into the hand of the rather limited human eyesight, and the extrapolation our brain constantly do to compensate for that.
The human eyesight are only perfect in a small circle right in the middle of out field of view, the more you go off to the side or up and down it get blurred and the brain start to fill in the "blanks"
So like most people you will see movement way off to the side of your field of view, but you will probably not be able to read a newspaper headline at the same angle
 
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