Just a 1 week report on the new dashcam. After a previous foray into Dashcams with the Blackvue 650 which fried itself within a week, I held off replacement.
Since the recent keying of my car on the street outside the house, I decided that I had to get another - with a good reputation for staying cool, with a good parking mode and battery management.
I found a cracking deal on the Thinkware F770 dual channel camera (£209.99 - the RRP is £250 and it is hard to find it under £240).
The front unit is a little bigger than the Blackvue's, but sits flat against the screen just below the domed cap of the rear view mirror's rain/light sensor. It is pretty inconspicuous to the passer by unless they are really looking for it as the black casing matches the performance Golf headlining well. Importantly for me, where I have placed it, I cannot see it from the drivers seat.
Conspicuousness is a debatable subject - do you want people to know you have a dash cam and leave your car well alone, or do you want them not to know you have one so you can covertly capture them doing something untoward? I'm not sure which I prefer right now.
Right now the front unit LEDs are switched off (as much for energy savings concerns as anything else). The rear unit tiny blue LED isn't switchable, so I currently have a tiny bit of black electricians tape over it.
Ideally I suppose you want people on the road to know you have a dashcam so they refrain from driving like a cock around you, and offroad perhaps not to draw attention to it (if you fear someone breaking into your car for a dashcam - unlikely).
Comparisons to the Blackvue:-
Auto shut-off battery management is built in - no magic boxes needed here for parking mode.
Lane departure warning - built in and selectable. Haven't switched this on yet as it requires calibration on the move (need the wife to drive while I calibrate).
Speed camera database and speed of road notifications via GPS - accuracy dependent on the quality of the database - it was last updated a month ago. Haven't switched this on apart from a quick play with it. Might switch it on for unfamiliar routes.
A similar warning sytem to ACC, albeit with an optical trigger rather than radar. Possibly useful for the wife's A1 without ACC, but I switched it off for the Golf.
The unit is very adaptable in the settings - motion recording or time-lapse modes of parking protection and sensitivity adjustment for event logging.
Picture quality is noticeably better on the 1080p output of the F770's rear cam than the Blackvue's, far more so at night, front camera not noticeably better in good conditions. The camera/sensor combo is officially a little better on the F770. You can pick 3 profiles for SD card allocation of main/incident/parking partitions.
Slightly better camera combo, slightly more conspicuous for considerably less money, and it seems to run quite cool. Found a decent Toshiba 128Gb card for it at £25.
