VIOFO A229 Pro 4K HDR Dash Cam, Dual STARVIS 2 IMX678 IMX675, 4K+2K Front and Rear Car Camera, 2 Channel with HDR, Voice Control, 5GHz WiFi GPS, Night Vision 2.0, 24H Parking Mode, Support 512GB Max

I purchased this camera as an upgrade from an older single channel only camera and the difference in the quality is almost day and night. This review is a short term one. If things change, I will provide a revision.Among perks of this camera are the contents in the box, physical buttons, high speed memory card support, "live view" in the mobile app, and video quality.The camera comes with cables of sufficient length, extra adhesives, and an easy to understand instruction manual. The box also includes a handy schematic for how to wire the device properly and a plastic "pry bar" type tool to help push the cables behind the interior panels of the vehicle. There's also a 12v two-port USB adaptor but I already have ample USB ports with sufficient amperage built in the car so I opted to not use this one but the inclusion is a nice touch.I mount my camera in front of the rearview mirror where it's out of sight of me while I'm driving. Having physical buttons, especially with the "lock" button being sized larger than the others is a huge benefit for being able to reach over without taking my eyes off the road.Given that this camera can record in 2k in the front and 1080 in the rear, large memory cards are a must and this camera can support a microSD card up to 512gb in size.Aside from the physical buttons, the user interface is great. The various LED indicators seem as if they would be really helpful to indicate to the user what's happening, but as mentioned earlier my use case is a bit different. The voice commands work okay as an alternative to using the buttons, provided there is no music, conversing within the cabin, or road noise. My particular car makes too much road noise unfortunately for the voice commands to work well but other people's experiences may vary, of course. The voice playback when starting, stopping, and performing various other functions on the camera is excellent.The mobile app is available for both Android and iOS devices and has an excellent "live view" feature to help the user with angle adjustments. The inclusion of 5GHz wifi is faster than the traditional 2.4 GHZ spectrum that's included with other models of dash cams. Personally, I just pull the card and place it in an adaptor that connects to my phone when I need to pull footage, but again the option to use WIFI is there and does work, with some patience. The camera writes intuitive filenames which include the year, date, and time, as well as a way to easily differentiate whether the footage is from the front or rear camera. Files that are locked get copied to a separate folder so the user can easily find them. These features make finding a particular bit of footage a breeze.The footage quality itself is excellent, with or without the HDR. Virtually all standard sized license plates are legible in daylight as are most smaller sized plates that are used on motor cycles. Night footage is equally impressive, although sometimes headlight glare overexposes license plates making them difficult to read.The GPS is also an extra touch with the ability to stamp lat and long along with speed in either kmh or mph. The mobile app also allows for some custom fields so someone can add a social media handle, their own license plate, or whatever they desire.

Budget meets quality.This has some of the best if not best software tuning of the Sony Starvis II sensor out there. Yet, it remains affordable.This is still a great dashcam, but they came out with newer models. A329, they come with various features, but the same Sony Starvis 2 sensor, 4K front 2K rear. But I believe this was cheaper or some how better (based on reviewers).The newer add on camera's give you additional features, like the telephoto lens that does a better job reading text like license plates since it doesn't use a fisheye lens, also a bit more zoomed in or closer to the subject view. I believe the A329/s gives you extended parking mode and the A329/t is the telephoto version.They also have a record option built-in (software I believe) that allows you to have multiple cameras on one video, in a separate folder than the single camera files. Makes it easier for court, uploading online or showing friends/family what happened.Once you learn the buttons it's easy to use. Has voice commands if you like using voice commands.I like being able to see what it sees, no more having to open the app to see the live feed. The included polarized lens reduces glare and can sharpen images in daylight, may affect the night time camera. The same for HDR, but I believe there was an update for that (at least on newer versions possibly). Basically a auto HDR for day/night.Dual Sony Starvis 2 senors.Okay, not all sensors are the same. Sony makes multiple sizes of sensors some more sensitive than others. Think CPU or GPU chips in your computer, not all Intel i7 cpu's are the same even if their all the smae generation (14th gen), you can have a 14600K and someone else can have a more powerful 14800K chip.Then there is as mentioned software tuning, that improves the post image quality.IMX678 and IMX675. Simultaneously supporting 4K 2160P resolution for the front camera and 2K 1440P for the rear camera. Bigger number = bigger sensor = front camera sensor.What is 2K or 4K? (K = 1,000)Simplest explanation 720p (1280 by 720) is HD (1K if you like because it has 1,280 pixels)1080p (1920 by 1080) is Full HD (just under 2,000 or 2K pixels)What is referred to as 2K is actually double 720P (2560 by 1440 pixels)And 4K isn't 720p x 4, it is actually double 1080p (3840 x 2160)Somewhere someone referred to 3K as 2K and it stuck. This was probably because it was more like 2.5K pixals and they rounded down instead of up. And consumers have been confused ever since.