However, I do have quite a few issues with it. Some of these I hope will be resolved with app and firmware updates, but some would require new hardware.
The Car Mount
It's really not great. It has a "locking ring", but it doesn't lock, just tightens. And while it is super easy to remove the camera with the push of a button, it's is very, very difficult to properly reattach it and make sure both sides of the connector are locked in. If they are not both locked in, you will have power connection issues. These combined means that every time I reattach the camera to the car mount, the car mount moves, and I have to readjust the angle to get it right for the video. This is exceedingly annoying.
It is also not very subtle - the giant suction cup, which to its credit holds on well, is glaringly obvious from the outside of the car. And, as kamkar1 mentioned, it's not the most stable, but isn't all that bad. I definitely would like a better, more discreet mount, and a better attachment mechanism (perhaps something with magnets?), but that would require a whole new iteration of the hardware.
Highlight Button
Maybe this is a battery saving feature for the remote itself, but if I do not push the button when I've started the car, it never connects to the camera. It is also a bit in the way on the steering wheel. Not really an issue for normal driving, but for any serious performance driving I will probably be removing it. I may also look for somewhere else to mount it besides the wheel.
I also wish it had more options besides just marking up to 1 minute of footage. Given that this camera is geared towards driving enthusiasts, it would be great if I could hold or double press the button to start a long highlight and then again to end it, for instance if I am coming up on a particularly curvy and empty stretch of road.
Sounds In Video
The shutter sound the camera makes when you press the highlight button is not just heard on the video - that would be expected - it is EMBEDDED in the video while all other audio is muted. The same happens for the sound it makes when it starts recording, when the OBD connects, and when the remote connects. I have not tried turning all sounds off to see if it still does this (my guess is that it doesn't) because I like having the sounds in
the car to know that something has happened. Hopefully a future software update will allow turning that on or off.
OBD Info Delay
In both the real time display on the camera and in the desktop app / exported video, the refresh rate for the data from the OBD is delayed / slow. I had hoped I could use this as a boost gauge since my car doesn't have one, but the display update has so much lag that it's unusable for this purpose.
Also the gauge overlays on the video have delay and sometimes the speed and GPS will just be frozen for periods of time, where I am clearly accelerating or decelerating, and moving, but the speed and GPS location remain static. I am not sure if the speed comes from the GPS or the OBD. I would guess (and hope) the GPS since they both freeze together, but on the camera screen the speed is not available until the OBD sensor has connected to the camera.
Video Quality
So at first, and normally, the video looked really good. But I did a mountain run on an overcast day with lots of bare trees and leaves on the ground, and the video is awful, totally pixelated. I don't know if maybe something got wonky with my settings or what - when I checked the settings everything was right, set to the highest quality, but that particular video looks terrible, and is also choppy, while most of my short videos, especially in sunlight, look really good. I intend to do the same run again on a prettier day and compare and will also be paying more attention to this going forward. I did have mount connection issues leading up to this and ended up draining the battery. I may also need a better microSD card.
Also this camera chews through space - estimated 7.5 hours on 128 GB. It records all video twice - once in the high resolution that you have it set for, and again in a lower resolution / quality for use as the preview in the desktop app. It also comes with a desktop connector (the camera itself does not have a micro USB port), but it is not USB 3, so using this to transfer the massive amount of data the camera generates is slow. It would probably be better to just remove the micro SD card and use a reader, which I will probably start doing. You would think this would help eliminate my problem with constantly having to reattach the camera to the car mount, but getting to the card while the camera is mounted is difficult and would also cause the mount to move anyway. And, I learned my lesson with that with my Mini when the card shot out and I had to take the seat out of my car to find it!
The Time
It is never right! You can't set the time manually. I suppose it is meant to pull it via GPS, the only thing you can do is click "Synchronize Time Zone" in the mobile app, and it says it is done. But it is ALWAYS off by an hour. Also, if you want the date / time actually burned into your video, it adds a Waylens logo next to it, the time is not right (and sometimes not even the same time that the overlay uses - occasionally I have noticed one or the other be right but not both), and it does not respect the setting you give it for date format, it is always dd/mm/yyyy. Hoping for a firmware update to fix this.
The Desktop App
It is atrocious. You have to use it in order to get the overlays, and in fact I believe you have to use it period since the raw video is a .ts file that while Windows Media Player can play it, neither Movie Maker nor Sony Movie Studio can import it for editing.
The camera also doesn't record in 3 or 5 minute chunks like most do. If you drive for 2 hours, you have a 2 hour .ts video file. So I am really not sure what to do with that other than run it through the Waylens desktop app. Which, did I mention, is atrocious?
Video preview is jerky. Exporting to MP4 takes forever, but at least works for the short highlights. But trying to export a 1 hour highlight that I created of my mountain drive led to all kinds of trouble.
Trying to export it with overlays from my desktop never succeeded. It would always either crash the app, crash the computer, or for some reason just cause the computer to reboot while I was away. Ultimately I was able to export it with no overlays, which took over 6 hours.
Trying to do the same thing from my laptop, which is better equipped, never crashed or failed, but I ended up with choppy white screens every few seconds in the video until I closed every single background app that I could, tried again, and eventually got the video I wanted. On and off because of the waiting it took me 2 full days to get the 2 video files I was looking for, and as I mentioned before, the final video looked really bad.
So while the day to day driving video looks good, this was an especially disappointing turn of events for me given what this camera is designed and marketed for. I can't imagine trying to get video with overlays of a full track day or long road trip.
This one I am at least optimistic will be improved with software updates. They have already released an update that adds a new overlay style that I really like. Unfortunately that one doesn't let you choose which overlays to use and also has a throttle indicator that does nothing. The latest update also adds a Waylens logo / name to the bottom center of your video, and a fade to black with a huge Waylens logo at the end of your exported video. That's really not cool in my opinion. I also wish you could move the overlays around, but they are always in a predetermined spot based on which overlays you are using and and what size.
Now, to address some of the specific questions in this thread:
The Waylens Horizon has been officially released - anyone got it? If yes, could you post some raw videos?
I wish I could do this for you, but I am not sure how. As I mentioned, the files are .ts which my video editing software can't read, and the clips are not broken into 3 minute files. So the only thing I can think to do to even get a video short enough is go for a drive, stop recording, start recording, then stop again after a minute or so. Even then I am not sure where / how to upload the video so that it doesn't get recompressed by YouTube (if YouTube would even take the .ts file). Anybody got any ideas on this one? Dropbox?
Also, I don't think it has any of the standard dash cam features (being that its marketed as GoPro for cars) such as emergency accident recording, parking mode etc.
It does have accident recording based on G force, which creates a highlight of your specified length. You can set this up to 30 seconds before event (or highlight button press) and 30 seconds after, though I wish you could set it to be longer. Parking mode is a bit trickier. It has a setting for how long you want it to continue to record on its internal battery after you turn the car off. From the reviews I have read the battery can last up to 30 minutes. It doesn't have a hardwire option, though I suppose the electronically inclined could rig something up. But in that case I don't think it would have any features to prevent fully draining your car battery.