Garmin 010-02504-00 Dash Cam Mini 2, Tiny Size, 1080p and 140-degree FOV, Monitor Your Vehicle While Away w/ New Connected Features, Voice Control, Black

Very small and sleek. Great video quality. I hit a bump to hard and it fires up

Just installed it in my car, played around with the app a little bit, and so far so good! One thing that surprised me is just how small it is!! I read reviews of people complimenting the size and discreetness but I didn’t realize HOW small it was until I opened the box and was pleasantly surprised. It mounts well and is pretty well hidden behind my rear view mirror. I have just enough space to hit the save/mic button if needed or I could use the voice commands. I checked from outside and it is difficult to see it especially because it blends in well with the black mirror backing and also the sun glare on the windshield. I agree with another reviewer who said it’s hard to see unless you’re looking for it.As for wire management, I had to snake the long wire around the side of my windshield using those tiny Command hooks but I had a bunch on hand because I recently hung up some fairy lights using them as well. They’re clear so they don’t stick out too much, and the wire is able to hide snuggly along the window like in my pictures. I ended up routing it all the way to underneath my glove compartment and stuck all the excess wiring between the passenger seat and the middle console.In terms of functionality, I’ve only tested it a little so far but it starts recording about 5-6 seconds after I turn on the car, and stops right when I turn off the car. I tried the “ok Garmin” voice commands to turn on/off audio recording, and also take a picture. In the live view on the app the video isn’t as high quality, but I read on other reviews once you save video it uploads to correct quality. Also the picture I took via voice command showed up crystal clear in the app when I viewed it. Could perfectly read my mom’s license plate that was sitting in the garage in front/diagonal left of me. I imagine it would be as good on the road to take a quick pic.Also the beeps it makes are very subtle and satisfying to know that it recognized something. It beeps to turn on/off, also when you say “ok Garmin” and then once again after the command following. I could see it getting annoying if you use it a lot but for me it’s very comforting to know that it heard 1) me calling it and 2) what I wanted it to do.I’ve read people complaining about the app and while it’s a little slow, it’s not that bad. Like another review said, give the camera a minute to connect to your phone when you’re pairing it. I haven’t tested video download/upload speeds yet but I don’t think it’ll be that hindering, even if it is slow, because the only case you’d want to download videos is when something happens. By then you just gotta be patient, the whole process of an accident is going to be stressful and video download speed is not the top of the worry list I’m sure.

UPDATE 4: Throughout several phones and app updates, this thing continues to have problems. Updates don't fix things, and Garmin does not seem to care if updates break stuff. My current phone is a Samsung A54, hardly an obscure thing, and it has the endless "connecting" problem when trying to see the live view or access videos.UPDATE 3: I reinstalled the app, and now it won't connect until I go to my wifi settings and "forget" the camera "DC Mini2". Problem: there is no such thing in my wifi list. So I can't remove a thing that isn't there, and the camera refuses to do anything until I do an impossible thing. This. Is. Junk. Do not buy it.UPDATE 2: I took the risk of updating the app to see if they fixed the constant logging-out problem. Now it disconnects from the wifi every 5 seconds, so I can never get any videos off of it. It loads all the thumbnails, and then connects to wifi when selecting one (because it's still too stupid to connect when you open the app), starts loading the video, and then says wifi connection lost. This thing is a useless brick now.UPDATE: In addition to everything below, the app periodically logs you out of your "session", so if you have an accident and want to manually save a clip, you might open the app and be told you need to log in again, so you have to dig around to find your password. AND you need to receive a verification text message code.Overall, it doesn't seem like a good deal for the hardware you get. I kept this camera mostly because I had to. The dash cam market is a mess. I don't want the kind where the display and camera are both hanging down in the middle of my view of the road. I don't know why the standard dash cam design isn't a separate camera you mount to the window and the wire runs to a display/setting device you can mount under the dash.I am going to use the next few paragraphs describing what I think it the worst thing if you plan to use the auto-save features. It seems like an absolute failure from a data-preservation point of view.Marking video to be saved (done by save button, voice command, or crash detection) saves a separate 30-second video file, centered on the time the save was triggered. So if you have a crash at 1:00:15pm, you get a saved clip covering from 1h:00m:00s-1:00:30.BUT!......there is now a period of 7 seconds missing from the main video recording, right from the point the save was triggered. If 15 seconds on either side of a point in time is not enough and you want to manually select a larger clip to save, there will be 7 seconds of reality missing from that new clip. It's like the camera can't handle copying the previous 15 seconds to the new file and also continuing to record new video to the main string of video, so it just gives up on one of its jobs for 7 seconds. There is a clock displayed on the video, and you will see the video skip ahead and the clock will jump forward.Everything is still recorded SOMEWHERE, but 7 seconds of critical time will exist ONLY in the auto-saved clip... which the manual trimming feature of the phone app can't splice in. If you try to manually cut a longer clip, in the middle of playback the video will jump ahead 7 seconds. It will not be possible to save a new continuous clip which includes more time before or after the auto saved 30s clip.Suggestion to Garmin: Why not just have the save function mark the current file as protected (along with either the previous or next file, if the current time is too close to the beginning or end)?The camera also includes a handy voice command to "take a picture". This saves one frame of the video as a separate picture, which is much easier to transfer to your phone if that's all you need. BUT!... this ALSO interrupts the recording process, though for only about half a second. While this is much less than the 7 second skip from saving a video, you now have a fraction of video fully missing which does not exist anywhere!OK, now some various comments:I like having display and controls separate from the camera. It's ridiculous how most dash cameras force you to have the camera and the controls in the same location. I don't know why there aren't loads of dash cams made which have the main good camera on the end of a wire and a display/button unit mounded on your actual dash (or under it, etc).App instructions are unclear. To connect to the camera, you need to turn on 3 things on your phone:1. Wifi (NOT your phone's hotspot feature, wifi like you don't have Internet service, but used to transfer videos)2. Bluetooth (uses for basic commands)3. Location (I have no idea why, but it won't connect if you don't)The app is mysteriously slow at establishing the wifi connection to the camera, but it does not bother trying to connect when you open it. It waits until you do something which NEEDS it. Why not start working on that in the background as soon as I open it?Initial setup was confusing because by default, it was set to only use a wifi connection (not cellular data) to upload to the vault. If I am in a crash, what are the odds I happen to be connected to an existing wifi spot? I was not prompted to choose this when starting it the first time, it was just set to this absurd option in one of the menus.Video quality is medium. Not great for night, OK for day. Expected for a midrange 1080p sensor.The included USB cable is for power ONLY. Annoyingly, you can't unplug it from the power block and connect it to a laptop or USB OTG adapter to transfer stuff to your phone without wifi. To do that, you will need to disconnect the cable at the camera end and use another USB cable.When saving a video clip, it is not always clear what is happening. FYI, the export screen's status bar means loading to phone. Upload to cloud status is not shown and happens in the background.The clip-cutting setup of the app is great (as long as you haven't lost 7 seconds of time from an auto save). Videos are all grouped with a single icon per day. A day is then displayed as a single timeline, and there are sliders you can use to select start/stop points for a clip to export. Tapping and holding the sliders will zoom in on the timeline so you can be precise.Something which makes up for the terrible auto save feature (which I disabled) is that this camera supports HUGE 512GB SD cards. Buy as much memory as you don't mind paying for, and you don't have to worry about critical footage being overwritten any time soon. A 64gb card holds about a week worth of driving for me.Accessory note: Garmin sells a separate polarizing filter which reduces glare. For what Garmin wants for this camera, they should have included it for free.Cloud storage: If you upload a clip to Garmin's cloud storage, they save it for free for 24 hours. You can generate a shareable link to the file and email it to people. They have a monthly subscription option if you want to store videos on their server longer, otherwise there is no fee for any features.App warning: You need to be logged into the app to connect to the camera (yikes). Save the password somewhere on your phone.App warning 2: There is an option in the app to set the camera to delete video after only 3 minutes! Make sure this is not turned on. I have no idea what kind of wannabe secret agent is using a phone/web-connected dash cam but also thinks their driving history is so secret it must vanish after 3 minutes.