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Note that the night captures have the orange-ish tinge featured by many sensors, but they still reveal quite a lot of detail. Headlight flare is minimal. Some of flare in the image above is due my less-than-stellar cleaning of my windshield. My bad. You’ll have to miss out on the odd feature here and there – there’s no onboard GPS or speed recording – but you still get voice commands, a parking guard feature and the same vault features as the Dash Cam 47. What’s more, there’s little between the two dash cams when it comes to video quality. In brightly sunlit or dull conditions it’s excellent, and pretty clear and blur-free at night, although the Dash Cam 47 seems slightly better at dealing with windscreen reflections and glare. This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best dash cams. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested them. Design and features Capture settings can be tweaked via the touchscreen, but we found that it worked well right out of the box: results from both cameras were impressive, with plenty of crisp detail and decent dynamic range, even in dim and dark conditions. If you’re looking for a stress-free and reliable dash cam, the X1000 gets plenty right.
Helpfully, both the display angle and camera lens are adjustable, so you can find the right position between road and driver. Full HD footage is shot in HDR at 30fps, delivering balanced exposure and enough detail to make number plates legible. That said, we found that video suffers from noticeable stabilization wobble. This distortion doesn’t reduce the detail, but footage is worse than from other Garmin dash cams. This capture suffers some flare in the lighting, but a great deal of it was my schmutz on my windshield. Notice the date and time. This is what happens when you don’t connect to the phone and Beam battery runs down over a few days. To stop important clips from being overwritten, many of the best dash cams can automatically detect potential incidents and flag the relevant footage to protect it from deletion. Most models with loop recording also allow you to manually tag clips with the same effect, generally by way of a shortcut button on the body of the dash cam. How we test dash cams
In our tests, the front camera’s footage was generally good enough in most scenarios. Viofo utilizes Sony Starvis image sensors, which perform well in low-light conditions. The lower resolution does compromise quality in subpar driving situations though, with fuzzy detail putting it behind the best 4K competitors. The interior and rear cameras offer a wide 170-degree field of view, and the interior camera is equipped with six LEDs for infrared capabilities. Even in the darkest driving conditions, visibility inside the car remained clear in our tests. Naturally, we cannot crash a vehicle to see how well the dash cam detects collisions. Instead, firmly tapping the dash cam can simulate a collision, allowing us to see what happens when footage is saved. It is also possible to trigger a recording by powering the camera with a portable battery and tapping it against our desk. It may seem rudimentary, but it works and keeps our insurance company happy.
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test. We look carefully at how easy it is to fit the dash cam and manage any trailing cables, plus how easily it can be removed from the car and transfer any video to a laptop for viewing or storage. Finally, we review the captured footage to see how it compares to the footage from dash cams we already recommend. With a large 3.5-inch touchscreen and icon-based interface, the Thinkware X1000 is simple to configure and there’s no need to rely on a smartphone partner app. A rise in popularity of voice control has also made its way over to the humble dash cam, so expect Alexa integration and other such voice-activated technology at the very pinnacle of the range.Nexar’s Beam is diminutive, simple, and unobtrusive. Ignore the color treatment in the lens above—it’s not that color naturally. As for the footage, 1080p at 30fps might not seem amazing now that 4K dash cams are becoming more affordable, but the Dash Cam 47 gives you crisp, bright images whether you’re driving at night or in bright sunlight, with more shadow detail than some other dash cams and good handling of glare from the sun or headlights. Like the Dash Cam 46 before it, it’s a great all-rounder. We were happily surprised by the video quality. The cameras can record Full HD footage in both directions, capturing video that’s smooth, sharp and clear, matched by decent audio. The interior camera occasionally struggles in bright sunlight, but that’s a small criticism of otherwise impressive performance. The front camera can also go solo to shoot in even more detailed 1440p. You’re on a tight budget: Its multiple talents mean the DriveCam 76 demands a fairly high price. If you won’t use all of its features, you’ll find better value in standalone cameras.
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