I've been researching dash cams too and through lots of reading lots of the cheaper ones fail due to temp problems.
One of the better ones seems to be Viofo A119s, review here: https://dashboardcamerareviews.com/viofo-a119s/
No affliation with Viofo or the site.

 

I recently purchased a BlackVue DR650S-2CH Dashcam for my 993 and had it professionally installed.

It's not cheap at around $400, not including all the bells and whistles or install, but it's got all the features you really want:

*Set and forget
*Very heat resistant
*GPS receiver
*Supercapacitor (not a battery)
*Front and rear recording in full clear HD
*Parking mode with motion and impact sensors
*Cameras are very small and discreet
*Seamless integration with your iPhone/Android smartphone via WiFi

I purchased the $50 self power kit they call the "Magic Power Pro", so it won't drain the battery when the car is off and in Parking mode. Also, it has a Cloud feature so you have the option to see your camera feed from your smartphone wherever you are, and it can also notify you of any impact or motions while you're in Parking mode via push notifications sent to your smartphone.

YouTube has plenty of reviews on this system and it seems to be one of the highest rated and discreet dashcams out there.

I have no affiliation with the company, but so far I'm very impressed with this dashcam

 

A few months back, after one too many close calls with idiots on the freeways around here, I decided that a dashcam was in order. For me, it was between the BlackVue or the Thinkware units. I ended up with the Thinkware F770, but you can't really go wrong with either of those two.

I did the installation myself, which was very straightforward. I hardwired it into the fusebox with two add a fuse kits. Mounting the camera just behind my rearview mirror means that I never see it from the drivers seat, and with all the sensors there in modern cars, most people never realize that the camera is there.

This particular camera allows for a second camera to be wired up as well. I haven't bothered with that yet, but it could be a good idea.

Video footage is pretty good, and this camera also works pretty good during the night as well.

 

About a couple months ago, some nutter in my city had a road range incident, followed this lady home, attacked her with a crowbar, breaking both of her arms. They caught him a few days later, charged with attempt murder. Anyway, they got him, I believe, in part because the lady had a dash cam which caught the guy's vehicle.

I'd been shopping for a while as well for a dashcam, had my eye on the Garmin range. Amazon had the Garmin 35 on sale so I picked up a couple (one for the wife's car, one for me which I rotate amongst the cars I drive). I chose it for the price and ease of installation, plus the brand - I like Garmin's products, have a nav unit which I use in rental cars when we fly away for holiday. I then bought some extra suction cup mounts and hardwire kits. Quite happy with it. Perhaps later I will upgrade to another brand's 2 channel hit, but happy to get into the dashcam market quickly and easily.

 

I was really thinking of this one but not sure I want to bite almost a $500 gadget for how often I take my car out lol! 99% of the time, I use my GoPro just for videos with friends or my IG account. Some of the others people have mentioned don't have sound. For me that's a big part of the experience of what I want one for.

So far it looks to me BlackVue DR650S-2CH Dashcam is one of the best, with the best features. If it was 1/3 of the price, for me a toy...I'd order one today.

Just found this one on Amazon...about $100 and has a few thousand very good reviews...hmmm....
http://www.viofo.com/home/30-a119-10...-dash-cam.html

 

Interesting side note:

A friend of mine captured a collision that happened in front of him on his dash-cam. He approached the person who was not at-fault, told him he had the accident recorded, and gave them his contact info.

A few days later, the insurance company called him and said both drivers were saying conflicting things, and they asked if he would give the dashcam footage that would prove their clients innocence.

He said, no, I will not give it to you, but I will be happy to sell it to you for the price I paid for my dashcam. Once he showed the adjuster the footage on his cam, they agreed and they cut him a check on the spot in exchange for the footage.

 

I've been using BlackVue for a few years now on my other car. They work well, but all cameras have limitations. Reading license plates from the footage of traffic in motion is hard to near impossible due to glare mostly. Do make sure you put it on a switched power input or use an auto-shutoff to keep it from draining your battery in park mode.

Also, DO periodically (every few months or at least once a year), pull out the flash memory card, and reformat it and at some point you will have to replace that card. Those flash memory cards only get so many write cycles then they are dead, so at some point the ability store info will degrade.

Having the 2 cam solution is nice, as one can get a view out the back window as well to assist in what the fool was doing right before they rear-ended you.

Now that the newest ones have WiFi - so you can just download from the camera straight to the phone app, there isn't the bother of getting the video off or having a built in video as it was years ago.

GPS is good to have as it can assist in confirming the location. For the speed info ... you can typically turn off whether that gets added to the video feed or not.

 

Question - I am going to participate in my first Autocross next weekend. Thought it might be fun to record video of my driving; I don't currently have a GoPro or anything like that. Would a dashcam be able to do double duty as both an extension of my insurance as well as to record fun activities? Or is the quality not good enough?

thanks

 

I've been running a SpyTech A119 in my truck since I installed it last weekend. I'm using the highest resolution setting, which is 1440P @ 30fps I believe. Tomorrow, I plan to pull it down and look at some of the video shot during the day, at night, and in the fog that rolled in tonight, plus a couple stills I captured with the other button, but based on the initial testing I did last weekend this might work for you.

Vs. a GoPro or something like that, I think the DashCam field of view is quite a bit wider so it may not give you the ideal type of narrower, directional video that you would normally shoot, but would certainly give you something clear to show your friends. At track speed, you might want to go to a lower resolution setting with 60fps. The next generation of my camera A119S v2 I think it's called, uses a different image capture chip that's supposed to be more sensitive in lower light (like driving at night) as the lens has a larger aperture, but that one I think shoots 1080P at 60 fps, lower resolution, but still HD quality and with a higher frame rate.

I bought the one I did for this vehicle because it has a side to side angle-able lens and I needed to mount it in the top left corner of the windshield - too much other stuff where it would normally go behind or above the mirror, like a radar detector, backup camera screen, and platepass box for tolls. If I like the way this one works, I plan to go with the newer one for my other vehicles since I can centrally mount it, but we'll see - might buy this one again as it's $40 less & times 5 more vehicles, that's a decent savings - like getting the 128GB micro SD image capture card for free, which by the way should hold 7 hours of video at this highest resolution before looping back through and replacing the older footage.

I'll try to post up a couple sample videos and images this weekend.

 

Thanks Pete!

 

Great points. Do you have the accessory which is about $50 that allows you to set how long the cameras record after you turn your car off and automatically shuts down if your battery draws down to 11.5 amps? I have mine set to record 24/7 and even after several days it has not drawn enough to shut down.

 

Petza answered your question quite well. I've used both a GoPro and a DashCam and agree that the only downside of the dash cam is the high-angle field-of-view makes you feel like you were going slower than you were compared to a narrower-angle lens. On the plus side, one with GPS can include a speed readout which can be interesting info. I go ahead and run my VanTrue X2 at high resolution (1440p in my case too) and 30fps works fine for me even in autocross. I prefer the higher resolution to the faster frame rate.

 

I have the Vantrue version of this power-drain protection accessory but I found theirs didn't kick in soon enough. After sitting for three days with the camera in parking mode the car reported a low battery on startup and you could hear the extra effort when turning over the engine. The car still started, but that was too close for my comfort. Hopefully others make a better version of this. By the way, you mean it monitors for 11.5 volts, not amps. 11.5 amps won't turn a starter but 11.5 volts will.

 

Amazon is selling the Vantrue X1 for only $72...I might go that route - not as nice as your X2 but certainly cheaper

 

Uploaded a couple YouTube videos from my ST A119. It didn't capture the photos so I'll try those again on my next few drives. Considering the top left placement and angled lens, results are pretty good.

Here's one from around 6:30 PM - partly cloudy sky

and here's another in the rain

and here's one in the dark - mind you the headlights on my truck aren't nearly as good as those on the P-cars, but even so, I think the newer version A119S v2 with the larger aperture lens is probably the one I'll try for the next car - just couldn't use that one for this application