Dash cam company with good support

JustAnotherSaver

I'm probably not going to be long away from having to get a new car. Whenever that happens i'll be getting a different camera installed than the one i currently have - not just a different camera but different brand altogether. They appear to have zero support - Mio Mivue.


Now i know with things like TV's your Panasonic's and your Sony's etc are decent known brands. Thing with dash cams is i don't really know who's regarded as good and who isn't.


Nextbase appear to be one that gets used a lot based on the YouTube clips i've seen, but i imagine that's largely due to them being pushed in Halfords & i'm guessing many will just head straight to Halfords for things like this so they'll end up with a NextBase unit of some description.


Mine has developed a couple of issues and it seems i can get no help on it at all so i'd like to avoid that next time round.


Is there anything out there better than NextBase (that offer support if anything goes wrong)? Blackview is one i've seen mentioned a bit but then that maxes out the brands i've heard of.

DUTR

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

I'm probably not going to be long away from having to get a new car. Whenever that happens i'll be getting a different camera installed than the one i currently have - not just a different camera but different brand altogether. They appear to have zero support - Mio Mivue.


Now i know with things like TV's your Panasonic's and your Sony's etc are decent known brands. Thing with dash cams is i don't really know who's regarded as good and who isn't.


Nextbase appear to be one that gets used a lot based on the YouTube clips i've seen, but i imagine that's largely due to them being pushed in Halfords & i'm guessing many will just head straight to Halfords for things like this so they'll end up with a NextBase unit of some description.


Mine has developed a couple of issues and it seems i can get no help on it at all so i'd like to avoid that next time round.


Is there anything out there better than NextBase (that offer support if anything goes wrong)? Blackview is one i've seen mentioned a bit but then that maxes out the brands i've heard of.

I don't know what issues you were having, but the sd cards can only be written on a finite number of times, the way the dash cams work, they won't last as long as hoped as they are constantly being written to and over written.

missile

I chose Thinkware. We all have different priorities and I believe it is the best available to meet my need for Parking Mode recording.

forgotmyname

Plug it in and it works. If it stops working then its highly likely to be out of warranty also. The support will be we can sell you a new one.

pogofish

If only MSE had a sticky[/b[ that covered all dashcam-related issues!

JustAnotherSaver

Different people different points of view ... mine is if only people on MSE simply moved on to the next thread if they stumbled across one they didn't like or couldn't help on. I guess we can't all have what we want eh?

DUTR: my camera is only about 6-7 months old and I've tried out new cards. I don't do a whole lot of driving either. My wife's is practically the same camera and hers has no issue installed only a few weeks after mine. Both are hard wired.

It's bad when you come within inches of being taken out at 70-80mph and when you check the card it didn't even read your journey.
Ok it was a very near miss and a miss is a miss but you just know that if I do have a collision that'll be the time the camera doesn't record.
Doesn't happen all the time but it happens which is bad enough.

That's the main issue with it tbh.

foxy-stoat

I use Blackvue cameras for a few years not with no issues - so no feedback with support as never needed it.

neilmcl

Mine is a Viofo A119 that I've had for the past 2 years. Really good results and less than £100 to buy so who cares if the long term support is lacking, and I've always found you get better support via product specific community forums anyway than you do with the official manufacturer support with these type of products.

forgotmyname

I have the 720p twin camera that techmoan reviewed many moons ago.

Still working great.

Even though its 720, the quality is better than some of the 1080 cams he has tested since.

JustAnotherSaver

I think the image quality on the one i have (Mio MiVue 618) is not that great. It's not bad but i just think it's lacking a bit. The colouring i find to be a little odd too - it's a bit on what i'd call the warm side.



That's just a minor point but i find that itr adjusts/focuses quite slow (my opinion) which is more serious although i can still live with that.


It worked fine for months but then it would randomly not record a journey. So for example - i'd drive to work, i'd drive to the gym and then i'd drive home. It would only record the first & last journey for example. That's exactly what happened when i was nearly taken out.



I then updated the firmware thinking it'd fix it but no such joy. i also format my SD card (128GB) at the start of every week and like i say, i've used new cards since.


It seemed to record all the journeys but then after a while i noticed another that hadn't been recorded. This is quite a serious issue.


Another annoying problem is it records random length videos. They're supposed to be 3:00min long but they're actually anything between 0:01 and 3:00. A 30 second clip, instead of being part of a 3:00 min video could be broken down into 5 clips itself.

neilmcl wrote: »

I've always found you get better support via product specific community forums anyway than you do with the official manufacturer support with these type of products.

I've found no suggestions so far going down that road (no pun intended) unfortunately.







My wife has the 698 model which as far as i'm aware is the exact same forward facing camera but it has a rear camera also. She's had no issues at all (aside from the focusing & colouring i mentioned).

DUTR

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Different people different points of view ... mine is if only people on MSE simply moved on to the next thread if they stumbled across one they didn't like or couldn't help on. I guess we can't all have what we want eh?

DUTR: my camera is only about 6-7 months old and I've tried out new cards. I don't do a whole lot of driving either. My wife's is practically the same camera and hers has no issue installed only a few weeks after mine. Both are hard wired.

It's bad when you come within inches of being taken out at 70-80mph and when you check the card it didn't even read your journey.
Ok it was a very near miss and a miss is a miss but you just know that if I do have a collision that'll be the time the camera doesn't record.
Doesn't happen all the time but it happens which is bad enough.

That's the main issue with it tbh.

I use an old android phone with an app for dash cam, and suffered the same issue, some video blocks were missing, changed the sd card and it's fine and has been for a while,