Quick first review - DX's Cheapo Dashcam

[AndyL]

Well, it claimed to be 5mp... And 31.30$ How can ya go wrong right? :) http://dx.com/p/wide-angle-car-dvr-camcorder-w-2-led-night-vision-tf-2-lcd-120604

Well, typical made in china - arrived, seemed to work, car adapter broken... Luckily, I can unbreak whatever canada post can break :) (or 6yr olds can improperly manufacturer in china) Plastic clip to the spring that makes the connection in the adapter - and holds the fuse in place, had broken... about a 5 second fix

Expected worse... Set to 640x480 - Just a clip from driving back home from a customers house (30? seconds?)

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I'll grab a 1280x1024 shot sometime, don't think I'd ever run it at that.

Motion detection works good - got tons of videos of people walking by the truck, no adjustment on sensitivity.

Suction cup... Sucks - Think the windex trick has it stuck now...

30$? Who can complain!

[Boosted131]

Must be getting paid by the hour driving that slow :p

Looks decent for $30 though

[AndyL]

:D I don't live in calgary, did ya see the truck eating potholes? I think the pothole patrol digs them deeper as traffic calming
:rofl:

[Kloubek]

Hey - go figure. I have this exact same one en route and should be here in about a week. Like you - I figured, how bad could it be for only $30?

Well, it isn't great - but you don't have it on top quality and again... it's $30...

[spikerS]

I ordered the same one, how long did it take you guys to get yours? My order is still under preparing shipment for the past 8 days...

[Tik-Tok]

The last cheap one I bought lasted 3 months. Keep us posted on it's longevity.

[AndyL]

Mine arrived in ~3 weeks... one of these days YouTube won't fail my uploads, and i'll post the HD and h1 videos

kloubek - did you ever get yours working?

[Kloubek]

Yeah, mine took about 3 weeks too. BUTTTTT...

1) The car charger didn't work. LED went on, but it didn't charge the unit. (And yes, the spring/etc is set up fine)
2) The unit charges, or records, but not both at the same time. This makes it virtually useless since I'm not plugging it in and unplugging it when I'm driving.

When I brought this up to the seller, they offered to send me a new one. Great.... until I find out the one they want to send me is the other cheapo model that everyone else is selling, which doesn't have a pivoting head. I really liked that feature since you can velcro the camera to your windshield, and have the lens peaking out from under the shaded band on windshield instead of using a big bracket.

[AndyL]

wtf? DX customer service FTW! :banghead:

Mine did lock up once, but it's been working fine...

Did you try a reset (be forwarned, when I did it - it dumped me into chinese? took a while to figure out how to get it back to engrish) or a generic usb charger?

[clem24]

Do these work like a black box and records automatically when car is started and retains x minutes/hours of video, or do you need to manually set it to record and manually clear the memory? Thinking of getting one..

[Kloubek]

Originally posted by AndyL
wtf? DX customer service FTW! :banghead:

Mine did lock up once, but it's been working fine...

Did you try a reset (be forwarned, when I did it - it dumped me into chinese? took a while to figure out how to get it back to engrish) or a generic usb charger?

Actually, yes. I have a generic USB charger in the car and it does charge the unit, but again, I have the issue where I cannot record at the same time.

Clem: (when it works) recording is automatic, and it auto-overwrites itself when storage gets full.

[AndyL]

Mines setup as always powered - record on movement... Doesn't exactly overwrite, seems to run till full, then rm -r * and starts over.

Gotta figure out this movie editing; HD looks worse than 640x480 on youtube... Not sure if movie maker chopping it up is screwing with it, or youtube is...

H1 (? whatever the mid range setting is)
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HD
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HD @ night (stoney)
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