Almost EVERYONE is Wasting Money on Dash Cams.

buying a car is a major decision and you'll want to do everything you can to protect your investment oh oh god oh what the that guy just hit me good thing i caught his license plate on one of my uh many trusty dash cams this one's kind of crap this one too well surely my expense no come on it's unusable what the heck is going on here i spent over a thousand us dollars on a dozen of the top rated dash cams on amazon and almost every single one sucks to the point of being basically unusable how did this happen i did my homework i got the most recommended i got the highest rated units i thought i picked up something reliable why aren't these things decent like our sponsor build redux build redux makes it easy to configure your new build with support guns to help along the way they also offer competitive pricing as compared to building a pc yourself so head to build redux dot com slash linus and start your new build today this video started over three years ago when my wife came across some hilarious examples of blatant insurance fraud that was prevented by dash cam footage she asked me to get some dash cams for our cars no problem said i and i headed over to amazon where to my surprise nearly everything was obscenely priced full of misleading specs covered in obviously paid reviews or sometimes all three long story short i settled on a cheap and cheerful unit with decent reviews and bought two of them not one of which even managed to power on so i gave up then one of our new writers overheard me recounting this story and went i can look into that i need a dash cam too and two weeks later we've learned a lot to start with the dash cam market is still not as straightforward as one might hope marketing materials for cheaper dash cams can be confusing and contradictory and their performance is basically impossible to compare without trying them side by side in the real world dash cams take all the issues of reviewing a regular camera and they add on a ton of extra usability features that need to be evaluated parking mode discreteness loop recording gravity sensors even the length of the cable matters too long and you've got an unsightly coil of wire to hide too short and it could be a challenge to reach your power source it's a lot to take in the good news is that if all you want is proof of fault or lack thereof in the event of an accident it's still pretty hard to go wrong our value pick is the thinkware f70 it's pretty bare bones in terms of features lacking creature comforts like gps data or even a screen for that matter but it is dead simple to set up since it doesn't need to be paired to an app the included 3m mounting tape is quite permanent and while it won't be winning any awards for image quality we were able to clearly identify the vehicles and people in our footage and we could even make out license plates at least on stationary cars that's pretty okay especially for just 70 us dollars but there were situations where it left us wanting a bit more now our target price was under a hundred dollars and we ended up with a wide range of features and image quality so let's make our way through the rest of them from cheapest to most expensive this is the a20 from bayoun a brand with no website but they do have the lucky number eight spot in the amazon best sellers list you might not expect much for 60 and if that's the case boy are you ever a savvy shopper image quality during the late hours of the day is lacking and at night is so bad that you'd think you were filming on a potato making matters worse the screen doesn't automatically dim so you'll be constantly vibrantly reminded of how little useful information your camera is capturing the bt13 comes in at 10 more ranks number six on amazon and just like the bayou own it comes courtesy of a mystery meat brand with no website this time called choretao it's not that hard to have a website guys i've got one it's full of great deals like these nine dollar mystery cable ties lttstore.com daylight quality is grainier than the a20 for sure but text is actually slightly easier to read indicating that choretao might be using a better sensor but what they aren't doing is much in the way of post-processing to enhance the image quality and this is especially apparent at night where the a20 actually looks somewhat decent in comparison also like the bayou own the screen stays on by default annoying but one interesting feature it has at least is that the rear camera input is mini hdmi so if you wanted to use a decent camera for your rear view the chore towel could act as your screen and save your backups otherwise we stand by our recommendation of the thinkware f70 at this price and at 80 for that matter these two chunky boys didn't make it into our side-by-side tests due to their considerable bulk both have cabin-facing cameras though so realistically they're designed more for an uber driver audience anyway the t1 comes from eway the first manufacturer with an actual website and in broad daylight driving away from the sun like ideal conditions it can't seem to make out the words on many road signs let alone other important details not a good showing for the second highest rated unit with a cabin camera chunker number two is the d30h from pruvio they claim it's a 4k camera which if true could be a really great value but out of the box the metadata for the files clearly reads 1080p with that aside in the daylight it can read signs which is an improvement over the bayoune and the e-way but license plates are still elusive unless at a complete stop and positioned just right one cool feature though is that it uses capacitors instead of lithium batteries unlike the rest of the cameras we've talked about already this is a nice to have because lithium batteries especially when subjected to heat and when they are constantly fully charged wear out more quickly which can lead to battery swelling and in extreme cases fire let's step up our budget surely for a hundred dollars this sponsored listing for the rexing v1 4k will be a good choice right i mean it has 4k right in the name right and forbes named it the best dash cam for a tighter budget of 2022. let's see how that's going actually not too bad forbes looking at the videos from around dusk it is slightly clearer than our 70 f70 but only slightly field of view colors ability to make out text all of that is pretty much the same which means that unless you really need the screen it doesn't feel worth spending 43 percent more maybe garmin can change my mind they used to be very well known for their gps offerings their compact dash cam mini 2 was a little out of our price range at 110 but hey what's 10 extra bucks for the much better brand name one right well not right but at least not wrong it performs about as well as the v1 4k maybe a bit better or worse depending on the circumstances and it has some nice features available but those features require an app and that app requires an account and that account requires you to give garmin your information which is super now surely the number one pick on amazon is going to ride in and save the day right at 120 it is now firmly beyond our original price target but what's another 10 bucks if it's a lot better right here we go really at dusk the rove r2 4k manages to capture less detail than our budget f70 and at night it's more of the same signs are readable sometimes if you're lucky but there is one last hope it's the darling of budget dash cam stands across the internet and it happens to nail our 100 budget exactly it boasts true 1440p recording with easy and secure mounting and comes from a manufacturer that accepts community feedback and maintains their products through firmware updates it's even popular enough to get into the top 20 on amazon and it's the viofo a19 v3 all of which sounds great but what about the image quality i mean in fairness it is the best we've seen so far especially when it comes to the finer details and it's 20 cheaper than some of the competition but i can't help but be a little disappointed it just feels like no matter which brand we buy and no matter how much we spend we're ending up with pretty much the same crappy image even from our best camera so let's do something i wouldn't actually recommend and completely blow our budget these are the blackvue dr750x plus and the thinkware u1000 the dr750x is blackvue's second most expensive one channel dash cam at 270 us dollars it has dual band wi-fi a back illuminated image sensor with enhanced night vision and support for lte cloud storage backup and the thinkware u1000 well that's thinkware's flagship device the best of the best 150 degree viewing angle 1440p 60fps recording geofencing with push notifications red light camera detection and picture quality that oh come on the black view is as bad as the crappy chinese cameras and the u1000 is barely better than the a19 v3 if at all it does have some creature comforts i mean i guess it's nice that it tells me when there's a red light camera coming up ahead red light camera in 200 meters so that i can stop at it instead of just blowing through like i normally would i mean this thing's gonna pay for itself and save traffic tickets and the geofencing feature okay that legitimately could come in handy once my kids are old enough to drive and maybe black used cloud storage would come in handy in case the camera got destroyed in a crash but at more than double up to quadruple the prices of these other options i am frankly blown away that there's anything but a colossal improvement in the quality of capturing video out the front of my windshield you know the entire purpose of these devices what is going on here i mean if i were to put a 400 gopro in my car instead of one of these cameras it would look amazing how are these all so bad well here's a hint you might see nine dash cams attached to this car you know what i see two dash cams in nine different plastic shelves listen to these startup chimes video mode please insert microsd card look at these default folder structures heck even just look at the rear cameras that come with some of these notice any similarities the thing is there are hundreds if not thousands of dash cam brands but there are only a handful of companies that actually manufacture the two most important components the soc and the cmos image sensor in socs the major player is taiwanese fabulous semiconductor manufacturer novatek not to be confused with the russian natural gas corporation of the same name their bread and butter is lcd controllers for companies like asus or sony but on the side they also make camera socs like the nt96660 and the nt96655 with the numbering scheme not easily obtainable by the general public it's hard to tell exactly what the specs of these chips are or when they were designed but from what we could glean online the 9660 was built sometime around or before 2017 and the last two digits appear to be the series and iteration so of our 10 dash cams in that near 100 range eight of them were using nova tech socs and viofo was one of the few examples we could find of any camera using an soc where the second to last digit was higher than six meaning most of them are using five-year-old technology at best identifying a novatex system is fairly easy they often have the same startup sounds or use the default backup cameras or even have folder structures that include the name novatek other manufacturers of socs include high silicon from huawei thinkware's manufacturer of choice ambarella and the very infrequently used all winner in our limited searches we could not seem to find the soc manufacturers for blackvue or for garmin products though it's fairly likely that they're using one of these three as for cmos image sensors nearly every company uses sony starvus a subcategory of their exmor sensors xmars are used in nearly everything from phone cameras in apple and samsung phones alike to high-end consumer cameras to the lowest end webcams and the starvus line is the type that is specifically designed for security cameras and other similar applications that require decent low light performance the most common sensor to find in dashcams right now is the imx 335 it's a perfectly fine sensor actually capable of 1440p video with a reasonable enough level of clarity even in low light the rove and the viofo both use this sensor so then you would think they would have the same image quality right clearly there's a difference though what it could be is something to do with rove using its limited processing power to upscale the image to 4k or it could have to do with the road using an nt9660 processor while the viofo uses an evidently newer nt96670 for the several hundred dollars more that you would pay for the thinkware u1000 you're getting a starvus imx 334 which appears to be the next level up from the 335 totally intuitive but the difference as far as we've been able to see isn't that great if i could put it in pc gamer terms it's kind of like upgrading your graphics card from a 3070 to a 3070 ti but for double or triple the price there are a few other sensor manufacturers like omnivision or galaxy core but these are only used occasionally and image quality at least going by the other reviews doesn't seem to be a huge improvement there either one great thing about sony being the big kahuna and image sensors is that they're pretty open with their data sheets so if you know what image sensor a camera uses you can at least find some basic information on it but that's only going to take you so far without having information on the soc or probably more importantly the software algorithms that we'll be running to process the raw image the biggest takeaway here then is that no matter which dash cam you choose there is kind of this hard limit on image quality that can be achieved at the moment and some of the low end models they're already pretty close to that limit so you're either going to be settling for good enough or as we suggested before you could throw a gopro up on your windshield with all the associated inconvenience that comes with that did i remember to roll it and the problem is i doubt that this is going to change anytime soon because the top dash cam companies seem to be more interested in adding features like the ability to string five cameras together or let you review your footage with full gyroscopic readouts rather than actually making a camera that can read a bloody license plate 10 feet in front of you so if you're in the market for a dash cam ignore the amazon reviews f70 for the budget shoppers out there and viofo a19 v3 for pretty much everyone else their video quality isn't nearly as far off the top of the line as you would think and neither of them is going to put you at major risk of having your window smashed to steal your dash cam if you want to add a rear cam as well the a129 plus or similar offerings from biopho will allow you to do that as well also without breaking the bank now let's break our bank where our sponsor puts money freshbooks freshbooks is the easy to use accounting software that helps you do your business you can impress clients with professional looking invoices that detail the work you've done use automated payment reminders if invoices get passed do easily track expenses and use their time tracker to log every minute of billable hours so you don't have to think about it later and keep everyone on the same page with their projects feature which makes it easy for clients your team and your contractors to collaborate share files and comment freshbooks also has your back at tax time with a ton of reports to choose from you'll know exactly where your business stands and you can easily hand the keys over to your accountant so they can take over when it's time to reconcile everything for the year so choose the plan that's right for you and start your free trial of freshbooks for 30 days today with no credit card required at freshbooks.com linus if you enjoyed this video our first dash cam video is a treat you can watch luke threaten me with is that a crowbar no it's an ice scraper i think i'll be all right what the heck is going on here stop forward as one might help you what the cause it's and everything is the included 3m mount keep doing it definition of insanity right here we go boys

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 5,996,449

Keywords: what's the best dashcam for $100?, what dash cam should i buy?, best dash cam in 2022, what's the best dsh cam, why do all dash cams suck?, is the dashcam good?, avoid dash cam, lenovo, garmin, #DubbedWithAloud

Id: 4AnyhHl3_tE

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/rrrrrroadhouse]

Tl;dw - Viofo a119 V3 ($99) or Thinkware F70 ($70)

Anything else or spend any more and you've got diminishing returns.

EDIT - *Ah yes, and VIOFO a129 Plus Duo ($170) - for dual cam

[u/hackenclaw]

My biggest problem is car maker has not standardize a mounting slot near the rear view mirror. They also do not provide a USB port for us to power my dashcam.

Till this day I have to run my 2meter cable around my windscreen to reach the usb port on my dash board.

[u/space0watch]

Check out r/IdiotsInCars that sub Reddit shows how a dash cam can come in handy

[u/PickledBackseat]

That Novatek startup sound is literally stolen from Sony's Cybershot line LOL

[u/DarkGhostHunter]

I just wanted to add the existence of the 70mai line, which (from some Youtube reviewers) are pretty good for being cheap and with a good video quality.

Another thing this video forgot to add is the polarizing lens. For some cams these are mandatory when dealing with interior reflections.

[u/Yojimbo4133]

Watch linus release a dashcsm soon on his merch store.

[u/sandor2]

they should have tested 70mai and some other xiaomi or yi products

[u/Losawe]

Why hasnt anyone modded the Android OS as a homebrew operating system to the level that you can use a cheap 100$ smartphone as a dash cam?

Even the cheapest Android phone has enough CPU power for video processing and also a build in 4K HQ camera for front and HW rear view.

Something like a custom ROM that you compile for your cheapish Phone and install and then mount on the front window.

[u/VanayadGaming]

I still don't understand why they simply don't get a cheap off the shelf SoC and make a better dashcam. Looked in my country and it is the same thing.