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Hi. My name is James Lee and I am coming to you with a review of the brand new BlackVue
DR650GW two channel dashcam from Pittasoft. This is my first video review, so I hope you'll
forgive some of the rough edges.
I started researching dashcams about a year ago, but I came to the conclusion at the time
that the technology wasn't quite there yet, for me anyway--maybe I'm just picky. Even
today, when you search Amazon for "dashcams," or visit popular review site dashcamtalk.com,
you see the market is just *flooded* with no-name and rebranded devices. What the heck
is an E-PRANCE? And do you think "Garmin" actually engineered that? I don't want to
suggest that these devices don't work, but I'm firm believer in buying once and buying
right. I'll happily pay more for a quality product from a reputable company.
Before I get into the specifics of the BlackVue, let me talk about what I think is important
in a dashcam in general:
First and foremost, I should be able to set it and forget it. I have enough to devices
to play with, a dashcam shouldn't be one of them.
It should record continuously, overwriting the oldest footage without intervention. In
fact, I don't even want to have to set the time on it. A built-in GPS receiver will be
able to do that for me.
GPS is also nice to have to keep an accurate record of your speed and location. Some people
fear that GPS data could be used against them, but after considering it, I realized both
speed and location can be derived from the video anyway, so what's the difference.
It should have a supercapacitor, not a battery. Most dashcams have some way to keep recording
in the event of an accident, but the cheaper units have batteries which don't age well
and aren't very reliable in extreme temperatures. Supercapacitors don't really have these problems.
It must be capable of front and rear recording. If you're only recording the front, you're
only getting half the story.
And I suppose, if you're only recording while you're driving, you're getting even less than
that. So it should also have a parking mode, to record what happens when you're not around
your car.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, it must be officially available in North America.
The minute you tell me to buy from some shady importer on eBay, I'm no longer interested.
So as you can see, I expect a lot from a dashcam. And the BlackVue was really the only one that
met my requirements. Let's have a closer look at it:
It comes nicely packaged in a fairly modern looking box.
You see this is the international version.
It's made in Korea.
This is interesting. It's FCC approved. Nice to know Pittasoft plays by the rules.
Inside the box is everything you need to get started: the front camera, the rear camera,
extra adhesives and cable clips plus a microsd card reader, a 12 to 24V power adapter, and
a long coaxial cable to connect the front and rear cameras.
There's also a full-color manual in pretty good English.
My order came with a PowerMagic Pro, also from Pittasoft, to hardwire the BlackVue to
my car. It basically allows the dashcam to keep running while the car is off until your
car battery dips below a certain voltage or a configurable timer is reached. This thing's
not very pretty, but it gets hidden away in your fusebox.
Looking at the cameras themselves, I like the discreet cylindrical design, and the matte
black color. The camera can rotate 360 degrees in its mount. On one side is a proximity sensor
that can be used to toggle audio recording. On the other, is a cover, under which the
included microSD card is stored. On this side are also power and coax sockets, and a wifi
toggle button. My unit came with a 16 GB microsd card, and 32 GB versions are available, but
I found it was actually cheaper to buy a 32 GB card separately on Amazon. (The DR650 will
support cards up to 64 GB.)
Installation took the better part of an afternoon, but I am a perfectionist, and I spent a lot
of time centering and aligning the cameras, and hiding wires. I imagine you could be up
and running in as little as 20 minutes if you don't cas as much about these things.
After a lot of trial and error, I found that the best way to get properly aligned cameras
is to run a string straight down the outside of your windshield then use the live view
capabilities of the BlackVue to center the string in frame, and the rest will take care
of itself.
For hardwiring the BlackVue and PowerMagic Pro to my car, I opted to use a couple add-a-circuit
kits. My car has both standard and mini size fuses, so I originally bought standard size
kits, but it was only after receiving them that I saw they're only rated for 10 amp ciruits.
The only circuits in my car less than 10 amps use the mini size fuses, so I had to take
a trip to the auto parts store to get a couple of mini add-a-circuit kits.
With those in hand, it was really just a simple matter of identifying one circuit that is
always on, and one that switches on with the ignition. A multimeter is useful here. Then
just follow the instructions on the add-a-circuit kit to install them properly.
The PowerMagic Pro connects to the new circuits quite easily: the BATTERY lead to the always-on
circuit; the ACCESSORY lead to the switched circuit; and the ground to virtually any metal
part in your car.
I ran the wires along the headboard, around the A pillar, and down under the weatherstripping.
The only tricky bit was loosening the A pillar cover, which on my car required prying off
this cover and unscrewing the screw underneath. A little plastic spudger was useful here.
Installed, the front camera fits nicely behind my rear-view mirror. From my driving position,
I can barely see it. I should note, that this camera seems to have been designed for left-hand
drive vehicles. For right-hand drive, the mirror would not leave enough room to be able
to center the lens in this way.
The rear camera was easier to install, especially because the coaxial cable carries both power
and signal. I was a little worried about how the camera and wiring would cope with being
on a rear lift gate, but with the included cable clips, I was able to leave a loop of
wire available to handle it. From the driver position, the rear camera is not distracting
in the rear-view mirror, and it has a subtle LED to reassure you that it's working.
From the outside, thanks to their small size and black color, the cameras are not noticable
unless you are specifically looking for them. The front camera has a blinking security LED
that defaults to on, but I've turned this off in the settings.
Through-out this video, I've been showing some of the footage from the BlackVue, but
now let's take a closer look at how it behaves under various real-world conditions.
The front camera has a wide angle of view, but not so wide that it causes distortion.
It records in Full HD 1080p at 30 frames per second so the picture is clear and detailed,
and you can usually zoom in enough to read a license plate.
The rear camera has more of a fish-eye perspective, which I think works well for the back. It
only records at 720p, so there is noticably less detail compared to the front. It's enough
to see what's going on, but don't expect to be able to read license plates.
Both the front and rear videos are recorded with timestamps, an optional speed indicator,
and sound. They record in sync as you would expect.
At night, noise creeps in to reduce detail. The picture remains well exposed, even with
oncoming headlights. Sadly, my unit came from the factory with literally hundreds of dead
and stuck pixels. I really expected more from this Sony Exmor sensor.
Surprisingly, I think the rear camera produces an excellent image at night. You can easily
see whats happening, and when we come to a stop, you can still read a license plate.
One thing that was said to give the older BlackVue model trouble was a lot of motion
detail, such as in these overhead trees. With the increased recording bitrate of the DR650,
I think they've taken care of that. Still, there's always room for improvement.
It's worth pointing out that the camera splits clips into one minute segments by default.
In this sequence, you can see that the clips are perfectly gapless for the front, and have
a few frames dropped for the rear.
Now I'm in the car recording through the DR650's internal microphone, speaking at a normal
volume. As you can hear, it's quite clear, without an abundance of road noise. Not bad
for a dashcam.
Parking mode engages after five minutes of not moving. It records one minute clips whenever
it detects motion from either the front or rear cameras. In busy places, it will record
continuously, so I would recommend having at least a 32 GB memory card. Mine stores
about 8 hours of video before looping over older clips.
It's worth mentioning that the camera will even overwrite clips that it marks as "events."
If you want to be sure an event doesn't get overwritten, copy it off the memory card as
soon as possible, or use the app to "lock" it.
It is fairly easy to do either of these things as the app runs on your smartphone and connects
to the BlackVue over wifi. The app also lets you view filter and view the clips stored
on the memory card. In practice, this works well enough, but the app does crash sometimes,
and it's not going to win any awards for design.
One thing I think Pittasoft deserves a lot of credit for is their desktop app. It presents
a very intuitive way to browse through thousands of clips by day, hour, minute, and second;
quickly showing which clips are normal, event, or parking modes. It has all the usual playback
controls plus some others like speed adjustment. It automatically does picture-in-picture and
lets you zoom in on the video.
It also shows you your speed and position, and the three-axis accelerometer data. I don't
know why one axis is always shown as 1G though. All-in-all, a great addition to the dashcam.
I ordered my BlackVue from BlackboxMyCar.com since they were the first place to have it
in stock. The owner, Alex, was very responsive and the package had no trouble coming in from
Canada via the postal service.
As for alternatives, I was really interested in the Cowon Auto Capsule AW2. Cowon is a
company I know and trust, and it looks like the AW2 ticks all of my boxes, except it isn't
available in the US. Come on Cowon.
Another is the Vicovation Marcus5. It seems pretty capable, but man is it ugly. And it's
also not available in the US.
All in all, I've been finding the BlackVue nice to have. It lives up to the set-and-forget
dashcam I was looking for, and it's already captured some close calls.
Anyway, that about wraps up my review. Thanks for watching.