The need for (shutter) speed: What’s essential for a dash cam in 2017?

[ArseTechnica]

[url]https://arstechnica.com/?p=1057763[/url]

[Snowmew]

If you're spending over $100 on a dashcam, you're probably buying the wrong dashcam.

I don't think many people would consider much of these features "essential".

[JennyC6]

Important aspects of a dash cam:

* Clear field of view. Fish-eye bullshit distorts distances even more than they already are when recorded by a camera, makes it hard to read things(Like road signs, license plates) that aren't pretty much directly ahead, looks like shit, and gives some viewers nausea. Say no to fish-eye.

* Able to withstand temperature extremes. It can get up to 180 degrees in the interior of some cars, especially in desert regions in the summer. Camera has to be able to survive that.

* Records even during high impact scenarios. What good is a dash cam if the crash erases its memory? EVen if the recording stops at the instant of impact it will have still captured the necessary information, provided the memory isn't impact sensitive.

* Excellent anti-glare lens.

* Excellend night vision.

* Built-in power supply of some sort, battery, supercap, whatever, to augment the vehicle's own.

* GPS-based coordinates, direction, speed displayed in the picture somewhere near the timestamp.

* Timestamp.

[Snowmew]

[QUOTE=TestECull;52425174]Important aspects of a dash cam:

* Able to withstand temperature extremes. It can get up to 180 degrees in the interior of some cars, especially in desert regions in the summer. Camera has to be able to survive that.

* Excellent anti-glare lens.

* Excellend night vision.

* Timestamp.[/QUOTE]

Yeah these things are important (and easily found in a sub-$100 camera) but...

[QUOTE=TestECull;52425174]* Clear field of view. Fish-eye bullshit distorts distances even more than they already are when recorded by a camera, makes it hard to read things(Like road signs, license plates) that aren't pretty much directly ahead, looks like shit, and gives some viewers nausea. Say no to fish-eye.[/QUOTE]

I am a big fan of wide FOV because human eyes are wide FOV. You can see a lot more shit than the camera does, even with a wide FOV, and it's important that the camera reflects all of the elements that you can see. Road signs and shit like that are not as important since it's not like they disappear after you crash, and FOV has a miniscule effect on plate legibility.

[QUOTE=TestECull;52425174]* Records even during high impact scenarios. What good is a dash cam if the crash erases its memory? EVen if the recording stops at the instant of impact it will have still captured the necessary information, provided the memory isn't impact sensitive.[/QUOTE]

Dashcams aren't advertised as "crash-resistant" unless they're extremely overpriced and overengineered. Any well-designed dashcam (see A119 and the like) will work fine. I had a friend who was using a cheapo G1W and it survived a ~40MPH impact better than his totaled car, didn't even fall off the windshield.

[QUOTE=TestECull;52425174]* Built-in power supply of some sort, battery, supercap, whatever, to augment the vehicle's own. [/QUOTE]

No consumer dashcams are fully DC-driven. Capacitor-driven dashcams are way better than batteries for the reason you mentioned before (180F temps will completely destroy a battery). Batteries are basically useless.

[QUOTE=TestECull;52425174]* GPS-based coordinates, direction, speed displayed in the picture somewhere near the timestamp.[/QUOTE]

GPS is definitely not a necessity on a dashcam and speed is definitely not recommended if you ever go above the speed limit (everybody does but you'll be giving the insurance company proof that you were breaking the law, while nobody can prove that the other guy was speeding). You don't need a record of where you were to show an insurance company, and your phone will do it better anyway.