There are several things to consider when you are thinking of buying a new dash cam for your car. In today's world, having a dashcam in your car will save you lots of time and energy when you need to claim for your insurance, in case of an accident involving your car. If you are not at fault, your car dashcam will prove your innocence and it will help tremendously in your insurance claim process.
People also uses dashcam to capture some interesting events happening on the road such as a crazy accident, a meteors zooming by the sky, a UFO object flying in the sky, a road rage driver, drivers speeding and breaking the road rules. As a matter of fact, everyone should be owning a dashcam in their car to protect themselves in case of insurance claims.
Some of the points to consider when buying a new car dashcam are as follows:
1. Wide angle viewing recording dashcam:
Look for a wider camera viewing angle dashcam because they can capture a wider field of view and record them in their media storage cards. This will be helpful later when you are reviewing your video recording and it might just capture something extra with its wider viewing angle.
2. Screen display size:
Dashcam usually have a screen displaying what the dashcam camera is seeing on the road. It is like a "Live" security camera on your car windshield. The bigger the "screen" size of the dashcam display, the more it will obstruct your actual view of the road. So if you have a small car, go for a smaller display size car dashcam. If you have a bigger car, go for the bigger screen display car dashcam.
3. High definition quality videos:
Go for a dashcam record quality of 1080p or more. The higher the resolution, the better it is for recording quality videos. Keep in mind though, that better quality videos require more storage space. You might find your dashcam running out of space too soon, if you have low storage space media card.
4. Bigger storage capacity dashcam:
When looking for a new dashcam, very often people forget to consider its storage capacity. It is always better to choose a dashcam which can support bigger storage media card capacity such as 64gb, 128gb, or 256gb. It may be expensive to buy a bigger capacity storage dashcam but believe me, the money is worth it. You will be able to record more videos and in high definition quality and your memory space will not run out often.
If you have a low memory capacity dashcam, what happens is that when your memory storage card runs out of space, the dashcam will still continue recording videos but it will start to overwrite the oldest videos. In that case, you may have to more frequently download your dashcam videos and back them up in your computer hard drives.
5. Lithium battery or battery less:
Some dashcam runs on lithium rechargeable batteries and some dashcam do not have any battery in it. This latter type of dashcam uses the power plug of your car and it turns off right away, after you turned off your car engine, and pulled your car keys off the ignition hole.
With lithium battery type, the advantage is when you turn off your car, your dashcam can still continue recording videos acting as a security camera, until its battery runs out. This is helpful if you are shopping for a few hours and if someone trys to steal your car, everything is being recorded. However, the lithium battery runs out eventually, soon in about an hour or two hours. Then no video recording will take place.
The other battery less type of dashcam have the advantage of lasting for longer years, since it doesn't have any lithium battery. One of the main reason a car dashcam breaks down is due to the malfunction of lithium batteries. This type of car dashcam can also tolerate higher fluctuations of temperature especially during the hot summer days and freezing winter months in Canada.
As soon as the car ignition is turned off, this dashcam also turn off immediately. So it can't be used as security cameras while the engine is turned off. These dashcam are built smaller in size because they don't have any battery added to its design, and won't be obstructing the view of the driver much.
6. Presence of Screen display:
Some dashcam especially the ones without the batteries does not have any display screen to view the live video feed. You need to use your mobile phone to view the live display feed or when you want to replay the recorded videos or download them. But it allows you to remove the storage memory card and transfer the recorded videos to your computer.
The other dashcam type has a screen display size of 3.5" or more and it starts displaying the video live feed immediately upon powering up. One disadvantages of using this type of dashcam is that it is bulky and sometimes obstruct the view of the driver in some angle. Also, while driving during the night, the display screen lights can be quite distracting to the driver. I found myself frequently looking at the car dashcam display screen instead of looking at the actual road. Luckily, you can turn down the brightness of the dashcam display screen to minimize distracting the driver with its bright light.
