Recently I had the oppurtunity to review the Sharper Image 720P Dash Cam. So there are a few pro's and a couple of cons to this Dash Cam.
Pro's:
Rechargeable Battery
270 Degree Swivel Screen
Extra Long Charging Cord
32GB SD Card Compatible
Standard Android Micro USB Cables Work With It
Nite Time Recording Mode (untested in this review)
720P Recording (up to 3MP video capture)
Con's:
Sound Quality is HORRIBLE
Color is Poor
Only Accepts Standard SD Cards Not Micro SD with SD Adapters
NO Internal Memory
Here is a demo video. Please turn your sound down. The sound recording is from me listening to the music at a normal level, it is only on volume level 6 on my stock 2007 Subaru Forester system. I did not set the internal time or date nor any other functions.
As you can see in the demo video, the color is a bit off and the sound is really horrible. Outside of those to issues, I really love this Camera. Coming in under $35 this would be a great camera. Now if you are really into video and sound quality and want to use it to create some B Roll for YouTube (like I wanted) then you are going to be upset with it, and this is not the camera for you.
The whole set up is pretty intuitive. The other draw back I didnt care for is the fact that you have to use a "traditional" SD card not a Micro SD card with adapter. It will not read them. I tried several sizes and just wouldnt work. I slapped in my SD Card from my camera and it began recording instantly. There is no internal memory at all with this camera.
Now that all being said, if you mess with some of the options you may be able to clear things up and make the picture and sound better. However, this was right out of the box, and suctioned to my windshield.
So what are your thoughts on this? Would you get one for yourself? Like I said its really nice and easy to use, just the quality is a bit lacking. Also it records in 5 minute increments. But there is no loss between each video, so that is pretty amazing. Each video file came out to be about anywhere between 178mb to 450mb for each segment. I do not know if once the card is full if it will begin rewriting files or not. But for about 2 hours of driving all the files total came out to 5.88gb on a 8gb card. The output file is AVI and it doesnt look as if there is another encoder that can be used.
