Garmin 57 dashcam

[DrivenToDistraction]

Had one of these fitted at Halfords today. The camera was £130 (£20 off atm) and fitting was £50. When I first used Halfords to fit a dashcam (2017) it cost £25! £50 is a bit steep (recently up from £35), but does include the hardwiring kit. It took the bloke a good hour, so would have probably taken me a lot longer. "Life is too short" and all that. He said that the position of the fuse-box was "not ideal". The dashcam is positioned to the left of the mirror, so you can barely see it from the driver's seat. Not that you need to, mind. I have the screen shutting down after 1 minute anyway. The basic controls (if you need to get into "settings" etc) are definitely easier to use than the ones on my old Nextbase 312GW, which I managed to sell via eBay.

The Garmin 57 camera itself is very 'dinky' (about the size of a matchbox) and works well. The basic features are good, but I had to spend quite a while figuring out how to turn off all the "extras", either because I hate them (e.g. lane departure warning) or have them already (speed camera alert, front collision warning). It also has a limited (24 hours storage only unless you subscribe) "upload to vault" (cloud) feature, which is a waste of time imo. The new thing for me is the (useful) voice control (just say "save video"), so you can quickly save a video (permanently) if you spot trouble ahead. No need to reach for small fiddly buttons. Just need to buy a 128GB micro sd card (£20 from amazon) as the one it comes with is only 16GB. I think a 128 card should give about 6 hours of full HD recording before it "loops". The Garmin app works "OK" but it is not something I can see myself using an awful lot. Easier to just eject the sd card and view footage on a proper (PC) screen.

[Finglonga]

Good cameras now they have sorted the overheating issues. Had mine to the right of the camera to see the speed camera warnings and easy to move if you need to change angle.

Hardwired mine myself, it's actually very easy the thing that takes time is routing the cable to the fuse box.

[symonh2000]

Not sure of the difference (i don't think there is much), but I have the Garmin 56, and it is ok but not great.

Often the footage has a buzzing noise and whilst it is supposedly HD it can be hard to make out car registration plates as the footage looks quite grainy. That sort of defeats the object of having it somewhat.

I previously had a Transcend which had far better footage quality, but unfortunately went faulty after a couple of months.

The other thing with the Garmin is that you cannot turn off the speed display on the video which could possibly get you into trouble if you were not careful.

This is a link to a video I took with mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzUdr5h2MLQ&t=65s

[DrivenToDistraction]

Not sure of the difference (i don't think there is much), but I have the Garmin 56, and it is ok but not great.

Often the footage will have a random buzzing noise and whilst it is supposedly HD it can be hard to make out car registration plates as the footage looks quite grainy. That sort of defeats the object of having it somewhat.

I previously had a Transcend which had far better footage quality, but unfortunately went faulty after a couple of months.

The other thing with the Garmin is that you cannot turn off the speed display on the video which could possibly get you into trouble if you were not careful.

This is a link to a video I took with mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzUdr5h2MLQ&t=65s

Haven't encountered that buzzing problem with the 57 .. yet. Software upgrade? Good that you mention number plate recognition as I think that is the key test for a dashcam. I am happy with the 57 in that regard (been testing it today) but that is viewing the images full screen on a 27 inch PC screen. I haven't done it yet, but I think you can turn off the vehicle speed (in screen overlay settings) so that it doesn't appear at the bottom of the image frames along with the GPS data. I'll post a vid if anyone is interested.

[symonh2000]

If you could post a video on how to disable the speed it would be very useful.

I have tried viewing my videos on a 32" 4K screen and even then the number plates are hard to see unless you are close.

It is almost as if the camera sensor has too much gain which is introducing image noise.

The 57 looks very similar, but maybe they fixed that issue?

[DrivenToDistraction]

Yeah, maybe they fixed it? I can just about read the plates on a carefully selected freeze-frame (oncoming car doing about 40 mph). They can be made more readable with a bit of simple image processing (filtering) - using Microsoft's 'Photos' app, for example.

Regarding speed info, it is very simple assuming you have the option on your 56 model.
Settings/Camera/Data Overlay, then just untick the "speed" option. The other options are location (GPS) and time & date.
It just means that any videos you may want to send to your insurance company or the police won't have your speed on.

[symonh2000]

Excellent, thank you.

I don't generally speed, but knowing my luck if I were to be in an accident I would have been doing a couple of MPH over, which would render the camera footage useless for my cause.

[symonh2000]

Just to update on this, I managed to turn off the speed display.

I just need to get around to fitting the camera to the car now.