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Stuff We Use: Dash Cams
On our never-ending quest to improve this place by listening to feedback from the B&B, we are taking a new tack with these product posts, choosing instead to focus on items we use and may have purchased with our own meagre income. After all, if we’re giving you the truth about cars, we ought to give you the truth about car accessories. The arguments for operating a dash cam in one’s car is as clear as the video footage the camera is supposed to capture. Practical reasons such as being able to prove you weren’t the one who ran that red light are top-of-mind, and while few of us like to think about the possibility of a wreck happening whilst we’re behind the wheel, the law of averages dictate something is probably going to occur at some point in our driving careers.
On our never-ending quest to improve this place by listening to feedback from the B&B, we are taking a new tack with these product posts, choosing instead to focus on items we use and may have purchased with our own meagre income. After all, if we’re giving you the truth about cars, we ought to give you the truth about car accessories.
The arguments for operating a dash cam in one’s car is as clear as the video footage the camera is supposed to capture. Practical reasons such as being able to prove you weren’t the one who ran that red light are top-of-mind, and while few of us like to think about the possibility of a wreck happening whilst we’re behind the wheel, the law of averages dictate something is probably going to occur at some point in our driving careers.
These days, dash cams can go far beyond the old-school solutions of using a suction cup (which might or might not stick in varying weather conditions) to affix a forward-facing camera to the windshield of one’s car. Many units do still use some form of suction cup the R&B in that seemingly low-tech feature has advanced to the point where it seems like an actual human could swing off the thing and not budge it from the glass, such is its holding power. Even better are the magnetic mounting points which stick onto the windshield with a skiff of removable adhesive; this solution delivers power to the camera through the magnetic clip, a device which also permits owners to quickly swap the thing between cars or take it with them when away for an extended period of time.
Speaking of being gone for a spell, it isn’t a bad idea to actually leave the camera in place whilst leaving a car unattended – especially if you’ve installed it properly to a constant source of 12V power. Cameras like the VanTrue Nexus 4 Pro slickly designed to ‘wake up’ when it senses motion, making it the perfect tool if you’ve parked in a spot where it’s likely other road users like to use their bumpers for actual bumping. This particular cam is able to constantly rewrite 10 seconds of footage in this mode, meaning it’ll save that amount of video prior to waking up as well. It can be a great advantage when trying to find out where those new scratches came from on yer car’s front bumper. It sure beats trying to paw through poorly quality and highly pixelated security footage from a nearby building.
It is arguable that dash cam clarity has grown by leaps and bounds lately, baking high-res video capture which used to be the domain of pricey cameras into affordable options these days. We’ve had good luck with units featuring a so-called CMOS image sensor in the forward-facing camera, which is a semiconductor that takes images of objects by extracting light, captured by a lens, as electrical signals for each pixel. When translated into plain English, that Star Trek technobabble basically means the camera is capable, when combined with 4K HDR guts, of picking up license plates with alarming clarity and sharpness.
Some dash cams now have two lenses, one peering forwards into traffic and another backwards into the cabin. This is great for those who side hustle with rideshare companies. Just be cognizant of laws which might say a notice is needed to tell passengers they’re being recorded, such is the hyper-litigious nature of some people. Seek out a camera with specs claiming a recording width of about 160-degrees in both directions, an angle actually greater than the field of vision for most humans, meaning these things are just as good or better at seeing what’s going on than most of the dunderheads in traffic.
As planned, this series of posts will continue to focus on items we’ve actually used. In this case, the unit was provided for testing and we will either be sending it back or donating it to a charity for silent auction at the end of this summer’s driving season. We hope you found this post to be helpful.
[Images: VanTrue, Nextbase]
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