Check out my first drive with the camera here.
Long story short, a belligerent gentleman scraped into the rear of my new car (less than two hours off the lot) and after 4 months of arbitration, they deemed neither of us liable. The fault was clearly his, but because no witnesses came forward it became an investigation based off only our testimonies. The plausibility of his ridiculous story let him off and I’ve never been more frustrated at how this crushingly long process could produce an unfair result. If I had a dashcam I would’ve saved on the $1000 deductible and months of angst. The KDLINKS camera is currently the highest rated dashcam on Amazon and at $170 I thought I’d try it out.
Out of the box
| Software Disc | Car Charging Cable | USB Cable | 8 GB Micro SDHC card |
| Manuals | Mount with GPS | Mount without GPS | HD Camera |
8GB will record about 90 minutes at maximum resolution, and I decided to get a 32GB card. The GPS box doubles as a lever to lock in the suction cup and the car cable is long enough to reach from the rearview mirror, around the passenger door, and back underneath to the center console. Installation is easy (just suck it in and pull the wire around the cabin), but it’s a bit tricky when you want to position it correctly behind the rearview mirror and get the right angle. The device itself is small but the display is handy and informational, and everything works the way you’d want it to.
Features include:
A dim garage
A foggy morning
Video quality is great and the WDR captures the right lighting to make your videos visible and colorful in either day or night. Audio is clear and I just hope I won’t ever have to submit a video with me singing in it. Of course, you shouldn’t expect professional film making video and studio audio quality, but this camera definitely meets the high definition standard and makes for a cool device to show off to your friends. Note the images above are screenshots of a post-rendered video so the actual raw quality is a lot better than what you’ll see here. I just wanted to show the range of lighting it can handle.
It does what you want and it does it well. It works right out of the box with little setup and has all the options to tweak to your liking. Turn your car on – it starts recording; memory card runs out of space – it records over the oldest footage; see something interesting – press the button to lock the video so it doesn’t get deleted. These were the only features I cared for, but it’s got more capabilities to match anyone’s needs. Transferring videos is easy and you don’t need to use the software to do it. They make a strong effort to let you know that their customer support is always there for you, and the reviews back it up.
This camera has everything I like to see in a product – ease of use, good performance, clean looks, a decent price, and (hardest of all) the potential to become a necessity. It’s uncommon to find them all in a tech device so I’m thoroughly satisfied.
Click the image below to see it on Amazon!
Do you cleverly conceal it or just put it away in a glove compartment when you’re not driving?