Viofo A229 Review

[Vortex Radar]

I just finished and published my Viofo A229 review. Overall I'm really liking it and I think it's one of the best 2CH dashcams I've tested.

 

[Panzer Platform]

Right on Ari,
I rate this review 10/10. Lol
You touched on every single important issue, (not that you don't do that in every review).

Now that you've gotten intimate with the A229 do you think the current hardware, and heat dissipation capability can support a future firmware update that allows a 60fps option?

My other secret wish is identical recording Bitrates front/rear, (one can dream). Lol
-Chuck

 

[kamkar]

My sample perform fine too.
One thing i find a downside is the rear camera are not on a mount, so you can not completely remove it when cleaning the window on the inside.
I have always considered the rear camera a secondary camera, but i do like that they have begun to match the front resolution.

I did a parking guard test this summer ( 3 hour timer ) the camera recorded the full 3 hours and then turned off on the timer, i did not expect that CUZ it was a helluva warm day and i parked my car facing the sun.
And ! Of course i rolled up the windows to really bake the camera.
Now Danish summers even when they are at their very hottest do not match many other places, but i really did expect the camera to shut down on temperature

 

[Nigel]

One thing i find a downside is the rear camera are not on a mount, so you can not completely remove it when cleaning the window on the inside.

I find that rotating the lens to point inwards is sufficient for cleaning, not a problem, other than having to realign it after - add some alignment marks

Now that you've gotten intimate with the A229 do you think the current hardware, and heat dissipation capability can support a future firmware update that allows a 60fps option?

I think you are going to have to get the Pro version for 60fps, at least when using 2x 2K channels.

 

[Vortex Radar]

haha yeah I'm not sure about a 60fps version too. I mean it'd be cool, but I haven't done a deep enough dive into the components to figure out if it has a powerful enough processor and bandwidth to support it. I figure if they do, great, but if not, oh well.

 

[kamkar]

I would prefer something higher resolution, and if possible better low light performance than current 4K cameras than 60 FPS
I know i have once said i would like 120 FPS able dashcam, and i still do, but it would be a extra on my windscreen like my zoom camera.

 

[Nigel]

I would prefer something higher resolution, and if possible better low light performance than current 4K cameras than 60 FPS
I know i have once said i would like 120 FPS able dashcam, and i still do, but it would be a extra on my windscreen like my zoom camera.

Why not 4K front+2K rear, Starvis 2, HDR, and 60FPS all in one camera?
I think the technology will be with us next year, if any of the dashcam manufacturers are ambitious enough to produce it!

 

[kamkar]

Well sure.
It could also be something have changed in regard to 60 FPS, when i did my 30/60 FPS experiment it was many years ago with cameras using the OV4689 sensor, so a lot have happened since then.
But back then really hard wanting 60 FPS to be the next big thing in dashcams, well i had to drop that hope and just carry on with 30 FPS, even if cameras since then have been able to do 60 FPS i just use 30.

The main challenge i see with 60 FPS are not really the higher / faster minimum FPS, but more the fact that the 60 FPS cameras are same bitrate as in 30 FPS mode, and so essentially spreading the "butter" thinner.
If the case was a 30 FPS camera was 25 mbit, but the same camera in 60 FPS used 50 mbit, then sure, but that have never been the case as far as i understand it.

I am very much looking forward to seeing starvis 2 sensors in operation.

 

[Vortex Radar]

Why not 4K front+2K rear, Starvis 2, HDR, and 60FPS all in one camera?
I think the technology will be with us next year, if any of the dashcam manufacturers are ambitious enough to produce it!

That sounds like a LOT of data to push, lol. I’d imagine we’ll se a progression starting with 4K / 1080p / 30fps / Starvis 2 and incrementally improving one of those things at a time.

As nice as it would be to do a 5CH 8K 120fps non-ghosting HDR setup or something, lol, companies also gotta ensure that things make sense from a financial perspective, not to mention in terms of overheating and reliability, something that is already kinda questionable tbh.

There’s also incentives for companies to keep making dashcams with incremental improvements so they can 5 dashcams between here and there vs. one uber expensive ultra dashcam today.

 

[Nigel]

If the case was a 30 FPS camera was 25 mbit, but the same camera in 60 FPS used 50 mbit, then sure, but that have never been the case as far as i understand it.

Yes, good point, and at the moment the bitrate seems to be a bit limited by reliable memory card speed when using multiple channels. But you don't need double the bitrate for double the fps, 30% extra gives good results.

As nice as it would be to do a 5CH 8K 120fps non-ghosting HDR setup or something, lol, companies also gotta ensure that things make sense from a financial perspective, not to mention in terms of overheating and reliability, something that is already kinda questionable tbh.

Well they already gave the A229 the larger case and larger grill vents to cope with the overheating, next step is to make use of the larger case and grills!

I don't see dashcams going to 8K, and the 120 fps is only needed for race cams, which GoPro is already handling, but Starvis 2 does have the non-ghosting HDR, should be with us soon.

There’s also incentives for companies to keep making dashcams with incremental improvements so they can 5 dashcams between here and there vs. one uber expensive ultra dashcam today.

Yes, and even if the dashcam companies don't want to do that, the sensor, SoC, memory card, etc. companies will make sure that incremental improvements is what happens.

 

[EdSM]

future firmware update that allows a 60fps option?

I wonder what would be the best usecase for a high framerate camera given that the size and the sensitivity of dash cameras tend to be on average less than what we can get with some ip cameras. The faster the camera shutter gets the less sensitive the camera will seem (less light gets in a frame)

Could it be resolving close by license plates in the daylight while the camera vibrates? Have you ever been in the situation to need that? Or maybe resolving street signs while driving by? I mainly use the camera when the car is parked and I did not have to deal yet with a hit and run to see if I would need a faster camera, so I wonder if I should try one out.

 

[Panzer Platform]

I wonder what would be the best usecase for a high framerate camera

Please forgive my ignorance, I've only been using dash cams for 3 years, and I still consider myself a basic entry level user. I do not have the expertise of most of the other gentlemen here.

For the past 3 years I’ve been asking around; “What is better 30fps vs. 60 fps for dash cam use”. And this is what I’ve gathered;
60fps is good for bright daylight hours.
30fps is good for low light night time hours.
60fps can help with motion blur during bright daylight hours.
60fps can degrade image quality during low light night time hours.
60fps uses more power, and processing umff.
60fps creates more heat.
60fps uses more SD Card storage.

So of course building a dash cam with the option, and capability of 60fps will be more expensive, and some would say an unnecessary waste for a user that always selects 30fps. But, I would argue the 30fps user would still benefit from hardware designed for 60fps because of a concept referred to as headroom, or underdriving. So I think it would be nice to have the option of 30fps, and 60fps.
-Chuck

 

[kamkar]

The experiment i did with 2 joovuu X cams right beside each other, and aside for FPS chosen all the same default settings, it was extremely marginal if the 60 FPS camera got a capture the 30 FPS camera did not.
Even if in some cases the 30 FPS camera just had that 1 frame with a good plate capture, where as the 60 FPS camera might get that good capture in 2 -3 frames, that 1 frame are still all you need.
I dident really see any cases where the 60 FPS camera just had that one plate capture, and the 30 FPS one did not, i think that only happened in one case out of 10 or so days where i pulled both memory cards to compare.
Comparing video like that, even if i of course did not do that for every drive on the memory cards, it is quite time consuming as you need to have the same 2 videos going and move thru them at 1 frame at the time in 2 different windows, so a lot of back and forth.
i will estimate for that experiment just looking at footage i spend 8 - 10 hours in front of the computer, CUZ of course i had to compare different light conditions too ( did not test night as i saw that to be irrelevant at the time )

And there are all the other side effects mentioned by "PP"
And heat generation and memory card space needed, if 60 FPS enabled cameras also had a higher bitrate for that mode as i think it should, it would mean even more heat generated and even more memory space needed.

I would also assume we will soon see AV1 compression in dashcams, as it is open source and free, so make sense as it is also very desirable to get more memory space for use that way.
But of course a AV1 encoder will have to be there in hardware to do that.

 

[EdSM]

Chuck, we are all beginners at something otherwise we're boring . I was just curios about what people need, or I might need without even realizing. Hi framerate is really cool when watching fast events like the water splashing on or off your car. Or maybe in a mud race. Gopro did a really good job at making cinematic effects easy for people like us. With a really fast camera you could see the face of the bird that slammed in your windshield but I think that's beyond what a dash cam can do. It just takes a lot more framerates and special SD cards to be able to see an impact like that.

 

[kamkar]

With plenty of light, a camera can choose to use a really fast exposure time, irregardless of the camera are set to 30 or 120 FPS, so you can still get that crisp wide eyed bird just before it hit the windscreen, but with 30 FPS you just can not make a nice slow motion sequence of that, instead in post you can freeze frame on that good frame, let people enjoy that for 5-6 seconds and then back to your video footage.

In the 90ties one night driving home from work,,,,, of course at way over the 110 kmh speed limit on the motorway, i hit a owl ( i assume ) i pulled over and the telescopic antenna on my car had a Wile E. Coyote worthy bend, the bird hit the windscreen in the upper Right corner but did not break anything other than the antenna, but it was a almighty thud.

 

[Nigel]

60fps is good for bright daylight hours.
30fps is good for low light night time hours.
60fps can help with motion blur during bright daylight hours.
60fps can degrade image quality during low light night time hours.

I don't see any technical reasons why any of those are generally correct, there are some arguments for them having some validity, but I think they are best considered as being wrong/myths.

60fps uses more power, and processing umff.
60fps creates more heat.
60fps uses more SD Card storage.

These are correct, although you don't have to use more SD card storage, you can use the same amount but then you only have half the data per frame, and that reduces image quality.

The heat is a big issue in dashcams, at 60fps instead of 30fps, the image sensor is doing twice the work, so it would be reasonable for it to use twice the power and thus generate twice the heat and reduce battery run time in parking mode.

So what are the advantages of 60fps?

• You get twice the temporal resolution, which would be very desirable if you have a race car doing 150mph, but at normal road speeds is unnecessary from an evidence point of view.
• You get more chances to have a license plate in a readable position. In practice this rarely seems to be useful at normal road speeds, but I assume there is the odd occasion when a license plate is only visible for less than a 1/30th of a second. I would definitely put 4K first though since that increases the range at which plates are readable thus giving a lot of extra chances for reading them.
• 60fps video looks much smoother, most people see it as smooth motion instead of individual frames, which isn't the case for sunlight dashcam video at 30fps. With the new Starvis 2 sensors being more sensitive, they will have a lot less motion blur, and this will mean that all daylight video will look better at 60fps. You can make 30 fps video look smooth by interpolating intermediate frames, solves the problem without all the disadvantages of 60fps, but currently this function is not built into most video players, so while 60fps may be unnecessary for dashcams, I think it is desirable, if the disadvantages can be overcome and the extra costs are of no consequence.

And another disadvantage:

• Most dashcams can't use HDR at 60fps, and while HDR has not been a very desirable feature so far, it is with Starvis 2.

 

[EdSM]

With plenty of light, a camera can choose to use a really fast exposure time, irregardless of the camera are set to 30 or 120 FPS, so you can still get that crisp wide eyed bird just before it hit the windscreen, but with 30 FPS you just can not make a nice slow motion sequence of that, instead in post you can freeze frame on that good frame, let people enjoy that for 5-6 seconds and then back to your video footage.

In the 90ties one night driving home from work,,,,, of course at way over the 110 kmh speed limit on the motorway, i hit a owl ( i assume ) i pulled over and the telescopic antenna on my car had a Wile E. Coyote worthy bend, the bird hit the windscreen in the upper Right corner but did not break anything other than the antenna, but it was a almighty thud.

You were lucky you were not going somewhere slower with your windows down. Some friends of mine were driving on a country road in the US with their windows half down. It happened that something got a turkey flying straight through their half opened back window. Not all of it made it through and their back seats studently took a Halloween theme.. The pictures looked crazy.

At your speed plus the birds incoming speed moving relative to each other, say 120km/h or about 33m/s. At this speed in 33ms that goes between 2 frames at 30 fps the bird moves about 1m. So in the worst-case scenario you would see a smudged fluffy blob coming at you when the bird would be about 1m away and the next frame would be some bird saliva on the windshield or other liquids that are better not seen. In the most likely scenario at 30 fps the bird blob would be in less than 1 m away but blurry, nonetheless. If you were a really lucky guy you might be able to see that impact even at 30 FPS. Lets hope you don't get that messy luck

 

[Dashmellow]

You were lucky you were not going somewhere slower with your windows down. Some friends of mine were driving on a country road in the US with their windows half down. It happened that something got a turkey flying straight through their half opened back window. Not all of it made it through and their back seats studently took a Halloween theme.. The pictures looked crazy.

At your speed plus the birds incoming speed moving relative to each other, say 120km/h or about 33m/s. At this speed in 33ms that goes between 2 frames at 30 fps the bird moves about 1m. So in the worst-case scenario you would see a smudged fluffy blob coming at you when the bird would be about 1m away and the next frame would be some bird saliva on the windshield or other liquids that are better not seen. In the most likely scenario at 30 fps the bird blob would be in less than 1 m away but blurry, nonetheless. If you were a really lucky guy you might be able to see that impact even at 60 FPS. Lets hope you don't get that messy luck

Fortunately, no blood and guts horror movie themes when an owl hit my windshield a couple of years ago but quite a shock and a hell of a sound on impact! Also, a great video capture from a Viofo A119 V3. Wouldn't have known exactly what hit me without the footage.

Windshield Owl Strike​

 

[EdSM]

That's a pretty cool shot. It tried to go around you.

 

[Dashmellow]

That's a pretty cool shot. It tried to go around you.

Yeah, without the camera footage all I saw was a checkered pattern very briefly that I assumed were feathers from a large bird but I had no idea what it was. The sound made me think my windshield had cracked and it took me a few seconds to get my bearings. It was amazing to get home and see exactly what happened so clearly.

The V3 has been an impressive, reliable camera, especially for the price. I have one facing rearwards too. I can see where the A229 would make for a good alternative to my set-up.