Viofo A139 Pro vs Vantrue N4 Pro vs 70 Mai A810 HDR vs Thinkware U3000

[safedrivesolutions]

This may surprise a lot of people in here

 

[Nigel]

Might have been a very different result with a little light on the face, for example if you turned the car around so that some of the light from the street lights was on your face. The Thinkware is winning here only because they have accepted an "unacceptable" amount of noise in the image when very dark.

 

[safedrivesolutions]

Might have been a very different result with a little light on the face, for example if you turned the car around so that some of the light from the street lights was on your face. The Thinkware is winning here only because they have accepted an "unacceptable" amount of noise in the image when very dark.

There will be more tests done. So we will see the results in time lapse and etc. Also I am trying to recreate real world situations.

 

[mikek753]

Good comparation.
BTW the U3000 costs 2x of N4Pro

Did you try different EV settings?
Did you try rear camera for the same test?

 

[safedrivesolutions]

Good comparation.
BTW the U3000 costs 2x of N4Pro

Did you try different EV settings?
Did you try rear camera for the same test?

Actually U3000 is
$699 Canadian
N4 Pro is
$529 Canadian

This was strictly a motion detection test

Still will have time lapse
Impact detection test and more to come

Also have night time recordings
Late night tunnel test
Got lots of videos
Easily over 100gb already of footage to edit

I have rear camera footage from my prior vehicle. Unfortunately my car died and is in the shop.

I installed everything yesterday in a rental car.

 

[mikek753]

Please, share your experience for parking modes, especially in a rain, snow
Battery usage in motion vs impact (G sensor), do you use just hardwire kit or extra battery pack for parking mode?

My experience with Motion detection mode wasn't good at all. in a rain it was just none stop recording that depleted car battery overnight. At a day time shadow changes from tree leaf , people, cars in a distance ...
It has to be some proximity sensor with motion detection to get only relevant events IMHO.

 

[viofo]

Normally to get better results for parking recording in extrema low light conditions, some companies may use very low fps to get brighter video like U3000 did.
We also thought about this before, 15fps parking video will be much brighter, but more motion blur.

 

[safedrivesolutions]

i guess we will findnout on time lapse test

 

[viofo]

i guess we will findnout on time lapse test

I don't think the time lapse low fps option is not same as I mentioned above.

 

[safedrivesolutions]

Here is some night footage of the 4

 

[mikek753]

would you try with HDR to be OFF? pls
I see motion blur when HDR is ON, while for static HDR is great, but at highway speed it is crushed license plate numbers IMHO
the Sony Starvis 2 promises built in HDR modes, again it's great for static
especially at low light that HDR just makes unreadable any numbers
I think that no or low motion blur is more important for dashcam then good dynamic picture range
and your above video license plate numbers test is the proof

p.s. I'm waiting for rear camera tests ;-)

 

[kamkar]

1:15 second exposure, that is pretty long even for the slowest of human movement.
I would not like such tricks to get brighter parking guard footage

 

[mikek753]

1:15 second exposure, that is pretty long even for the slowest of human movement.
I would not like such tricks to get brighter parking guard footage

I'm not sure that 15fps means 1:15 exposure
for 15fps it can be from 1/15 to any 1/1000, as well for 60fps it can start from 1/60 and go up to 1/1000

@viofo would you clarify about exposure shutter speed for 15fps parking mode, please
what will be auto adjustable for such mode? F ? ISO ? A ?

 

[kamkar]

Of course you can take 15 " "pictures" in a second and use much faster exposure timing actually you can snap those 15 pictures so fast that the bulk of the 1 second the camera are waiting for permission to snap the next frame.
But ! generally dashcams drop right down as far as they can.

I do love taking long exposure photos myself.

 

[Nigel]

I'm not sure that 15fps means 1:15 exposure
for 15fps it can be from 1/15 to any 1/1000, as well for 60fps it can start from 1/60 and go up to 1/1000

Correct.

@viofo would you clarify about exposure shutter speed for 15fps parking mode, please
what will be auto adjustable for such mode? F ? ISO ? A ?

Depends on which camera you are talking about?
For the Viofo cameras, I don't think they ever drop below 1/30th they will happily use 1/2000th on a bright day.

Looking at the video in post #1, I think the A139 Pro has about half the exposure time of the others, half the motion blur, the slower exposure time on the N4 allows it to do a much better job of the stars in the sky, the U3000 spoils the stars by turning up the ISO/gain so much there is far too much noise and the brighter parts of the image are over exposed, losing detail, but it does gain a little detail in the darkest areas.

If you pause the video at 1:47 and step through that second one frame at a time (Press ">"), there is an odd effect in the U3000 and N4 where his arm becomes very thin and almost disappears, while on the A139 his arm is always there, always solid and always the correct thickness! Not sure what is causing that effect? I don't think it is caused by motion blur. Objects completely disappearing does not make good evidence!

 

[safedrivesolutions]

would you try with HDR to be OFF? pls
I see motion blur when HDR is ON, while for static HDR is great, but at highway speed it is crushed license plate numbers IMHO
the Sony Starvis 2 promises built in HDR modes, again it's great for static
especially at low light that HDR just makes unreadable any numbers
I think that no or low motion blur is more important for dashcam then good dynamic picture range
and your above video license plate numbers test is the proof

p.s. I'm waiting for rear camera tests ;-)

HDR is suppose to work great at night. I actually feel it does work great from what I see. However the U3000 from Thinkware does not have HDR.

 

[safedrivesolutions]

Looking at the video in post #1, I think the A139 Pro has about half the exposure time of the others, half the motion blur, the slower exposure time on the N4 allows it to do a much better job of the stars in the sky, the U3000 spoils the stars by turning up the ISO/gain so much there is far too much noise and the brighter parts of the image are over exposed, losing detail, but it does gain a little detail in the darkest areas.

If you pause the video at 1:47 and step through that second one frame at a time (Press ">"), there is an odd effect in the U3000 and N4 where his arm becomes very thin and almost disappears, while on the A139 his arm is always there, always solid and always the correct thickness! Not sure what is causing that effect? I don't think it is caused by motion blur. Objects completely disappearing does not make good evidence!

I agree that it may not be best video quality. it was 11pm at night. We are not in a normal community so it gets pretty dark which is why I parked towards the cul de sac. Our backyard is pitch black.

I know a few people feel that the video footage would be used to charge someone but I know people who have clear as day video footage of their neighbour and the cops dont press charges.

I find the majority of my clients want to know which employee, neighbour, family member, or person who lives under the same roof is causing this. Also they want to prove for insurance reasons that they did not do it.

 

[Panzer Platform]

Here we go with Collision detection

Nice work Ben.

If you quote a measurement of milliamps, you must indicate at what voltage it was measured at.
Otherwise it will be false & misleading.
Example:
100mA @ 11.9 Volts = 1.19 Watts
100mA @ 14.4 Volts = 1.44 Watts
0.25 Watts is a big difference when operated with a 96Wh Dash Cam Battery Pack.

96Wh ⨸ 1.19 Watts = 80 hours of run time.
96Wh ⨸ 1.44 Watts = 66 hours of run time.
That is a difference of 14 hours of operation.

There’s an easier way.
Just quote power consumption in Watts.
The only reason I’m breaking your balls on this is because @Nigel broke mine. Lol

 

[safedrivesolutions]

Nice work Ben.

If you quote a measurement of milliamps, you must indicate at what voltage it was measured at.
Otherwise it will be false & misleading.
Example:
100mA @ 11.9 Volts = 1.19 Watts
100mA @ 14.4 Volts = 1.44 Watts
0.25 Watts is a big difference when operated with a 96Wh Dash Cam Battery Pack.

96Wh ⨸ 1.19 Watts = 80 hours of run time.
96Wh ⨸ 1.44 Watts = 66 hours of run time.
That is a difference of 14 hours of operation.

There’s an easier way.
Just quote power consumption in Watts.
The only reason I’m breaking your balls on this is because @Nigel broke mine. Lol

new video being uploaded. Found an issue in testing results

 

[safedrivesolutions]

Video edited and republished after testing Vantrue N4 Pro new collision detection update.