My old dash cam from 2015 cam died and after my initial feelings of frustration, denial, and disappointment passed, I realized just how incredibly vulnerable I felt without one, so...after doing some research on prices, reputation, features, and reviews, I went with blackboxmycar's recommendation to get the FA200. I always find that installation manuals are...interesting because of translations, a lack of clear instructions, or being complicated. Thankfully, having the old dash cam stuff still in place (and a friendly neighbour) was a big help. Unless you are quite handy with installing things and know a bit about fuses and electricity, I'd recommend getting it professionally installed the first time around.
The size is not big at all and they give you extra mounting adhesive (which is nice - in case you move it to another car or need to move it). Note that the front video is 1080p while the rear is 720p. Not such a big deal, given that most potential issues would likely happen in the front. It also helps with data (see below).
I personally opted to get the glare reducing polarizing lense which, based on my limited observations, seems to minimize glare good but the installation instructions were horrible. I took off the covering tape and didn't know which side to install and you only really get one go at it. That said, don't let my personal complaint distract you. This is a very good entry dash cam and I'd recommend it.
It's neat that it records the audio and that you could, with a GPS tag, get location and speed data. The 16 GB memory card should suffice for daily needs, but you will likely overwrite your data very quickly (within hours if you go on a 2 + hour drive) so unfortunately, by the time you discover someone keyed your car or what not, it will likely have been overwritten. If you get this for a newer/expensive card, consider investing in a high memory card for that reason. It's awesome going over a hard bump and hearing the beep-beep, knowing that 10 seconds prior and afterwards to that have been recorded into an events folder on the card.
I'm still tweaking a variety of settings, including motion recording detecting when parking. It does well in this sense but if you parked in a busy area, it would likely eat up a lot of data. I'll likely tweak things more as I go along with it.
You can fidget with your dash cam via an app for smartphones, but you'll need to connect to your wifi each time. Not a big deal, as I am more comfortable doing it on my PC anyway. Honestly, I'm not one to really check things often, so that's fine too
I assume with better models, you could view your car while not being connected to wifi (e.g. you parked your car at a restaurant and wanted to see what was happening in front of it) but for my needs and I think, for the average person, it's good. You can also change language settings too, which could come in handy for others.
If you are concerned about getting better video quality or have an expensive car, I would suggest a higher quality model so you can get more details if need be, but for my 8 year old entry level car and for someone's first dash cam, you really can't go wrong with this. We'll see how it fares here in the winter (I live in southwestern Ontario and we can get up to -35 a few times every few years or so - this was a major concern I had, as I was trying to think about why my previous cam died so quickly) but I'm assuming it can handle it (manual says up to -20, I think).
As a reliable entry level dash cam, I recommend it for peace of mind and I would definitely consider this brand again for my next car. Who knows what a budget dash cam's quality will be then? Perhaps we'll have 16k quality? :D
Thanks Blackboxmycar!
