Why You Need a Dash Cam and How to Choose One?

There are several points to consider when get a dash cam.

1. Driving Evidence: Firstly, dash cams are created to meet the demand for preserving driving evidence. With an increasing number of bad drivers not following traffic rules, dash cams serve as our best driving companions. When accidents occur, they provide clear accident monitoring videos, making it easier for the police to determine responsibility, preventing extortion, speeding up insurance claims processing, and helping others by providing evidence in accidents.

   

   To ensure the availability of driving evidence when choosing a dash cam, the following factors must be considered:

   • Provide video evidence from multiple angles: If you are rear-ended, the rear-facing camera can provide a complete accident record. If the other party changes lanes without following the rules, causing you to collide with them, the front-facing camera can provide a complete record of the accident. If you are an Uber driver, the interior camera can prevent any trouble caused by passengers, such as theft, damage, or loss of items. Therefore, when choosing a dash cam, front and rear cameras will be your best choice. While a dash cam with three views may seem like the perfect choice, we believe it is only the best choice for Uber drivers because the interior-facing camera may capture some embarrassing scenes, which should be avoided as much as possible for personal vehicles.
     
   • Capture clear videos: Currently, 4K resolution is perfect for your daily use. Please note that some dash cams advertised as 2K or 1080P may meet your minimum requirements, but in some cases, license plates may not be recorded, rendering the evidence useless.
   • Support loop recording and emergency lock: A 1-minute 4K dash cam video is approximately 160MB. If you use a 64GB memory card, the dash cam can only record for about 6 hours. If the memory card is full, you have to manually delete it. Therefore, dash cams currently have the function of loop recording, which saves recorded videos in 1-minute segments. When the memory card is full, the newest 1-minute segment will overwrite the oldest one, ensuring continuous recording of the dash cam. You may wonder, if you don't have time to extract the evidence from the memory card, will the evidence be overwritten? This is correct, so dash cams are equipped with a gravity sensor. When an accident occurs, the gravity sensor is triggered, and the currently recording video segment is locked. The locked video segment will be saved in a separate partition that does not participate in loop recording and can be preserved continuously. Of course, in some cases, the gravity sensor may fail, such as very minor scratches. At this time, you need a dash cam with manual locking video file function, such as FOCUWAY's dash cam, which can lock videos by voice command "Lock the video".
     
   • Driving trajectory, speed information, accident time: These are very important evidence. When purchasing a dash cam, whether it has GPS should be one of the important references. FOCUWAY's dash cam with GPS can record the driving trajectory, driving speed, and automatically obtain the standard time of the local time zone (you need to manually set your own time zone and adjust daylight saving time after receiving the dash cam).
     

2. Parking Security: Dash cams default to using a car charger powered from the cigarette lighter. Since the cigarette lighter will power off when the car engine is turned off, your dash cam will remain off when parked. (Note that all dash cams must rely on external power to maintain recording.) FOCUWAY has specifically designed a hardwire kit that can be used when parking. With the FOCUWAY hardwire kit, you can enable the dash cam's time-lapse recording function. After the car engine is turned off and parked, the dash cam will automatically enter time-lapse recording mode, allowing continuous video recording while parked. This can provide evidence in cases of accidents, damage, or theft while parked, making it easier to report to the police, file insurance claims, and find the parties involved.

   

3. Recording: In fact, a dash cam is a camera installed in a car that records your entire journey. When you are on a road trip, the dash cam will help you record the scenery along the way. When you are driving, the dash cam will also help you record interesting things and various wonderful moments encountered during your journey, making it convenient for you to share with friends and family.

   Speaking of journeys, if you choose a dash cam with GPS functionality, your travel route will be saved in each recorded video file.

4. Other Considerations:

   • WiFi functionality: Although WiFi cannot access the internet for the dash cam, if the dash cam has WiFi functionality, you can easily connect it to your phone to playback, download, and share the videos recorded by the dash cam. If there is no WiFi, you need to use a dedicated card reader to copy the video to a computer for submission as evidence. Currently, dash cams have two WiFi bands, 5GHz and 2.4GHz. If the dash cam you choose does not indicate 5GHz WiFi, then it must be using 2.4GHz WiFi. There is a huge cost difference between the two WiFi bands. FOCUWAY's 5GHz WiFi chip is compatible with 2.4GHz, meaning it is dual-band. 5GHz WiFi can effectively solve stuttering and latency issues when playing back or viewing dash cam live streams on your phone because its transmission speed is more than twice that of 2.4GHz WiFi. Downloading recorded 4K videos will be more than twice as fast as with 2.4GHz WiFi and greatly reduce the failure rate of transmission.
   • Dash cam vendors should provide clear video installation tutorials. For a novice, installing a dash cam is indeed a challenging technical task, so many people will spend a lot of money to have professional installers install it, which may cost you over 100 USD. FOCUWAY provides professional installation video tutorials for customers. By following the steps in the video, you can also become a professional installer.
   • 4G internet connection: Imagine, do you want to remotely check the status of your beloved car at home? Do you want to receive warning messages immediately if someone collides with, steals, or damages your car when you are not in the car? These needs can be solved by 4G technology. FOCUWAY's latest technology products will strive to meet this demand, and the new products will be launched within a few months. If you really need this feature, please pay attention to our website or subscribe to us.
   • Consider whether the dash cam uses supercapacitors instead of lithium polymer batteries. If you pay attention to consumer electronics and cars, you should easily understand that putting lithium polymer batteries in the car is a very dangerous thing, especially on dash cams. Because dash cams are mounted on the windshield, the summer sun's exposure can easily heat up the dash cam to 80°C, which is very unfriendly to lithium polymer batteries and may cause battery explosions, thereby burning your car. This is not groundless. You should be able to find such news. Therefore, FOCUWAY's entire series of dash cams use supercapacitors instead of lithium polymer batteries to ensure that the dash cam does not cause any serious accidents to your car.
   • The product should be small and compact. No one wants a huge obstacle blocking the driver's line of sight. FOCUWAY's dash cams have a compact design to avoid obstructing the line of sight, and they also have an excellent appearance that showcases your aesthetic taste both externally and internally.