You can never be too careful while driving and especially with nearly 30,000 car related accidents per day in the United States.
Driving takes all of your concentration, but unfortunately, at least once in your life you will have to face some sort of accident, whether it’s yours or another’s fault. When there are no other cameras in the area and the only witnesses have driven off, it becomes a battle between your words and those of the other party.
An all-seeing electronic eye is what’s needed to help win the battle in court and prove your innocence or fight against insurance fraud all around the world or maybe just capture some bad drivers and post them on YouTube.
If you’ve been following my other reviews here on Tech Support Forum, you’ve most likely stumbled upon one of my many car dash cam reviews. These reviews are products from the BlackVue family, a Korean-based electronics manufacturer who has entered a rapidly growing market.
A quick Google search for a car dash cam reveals a few knock-off brands that sell a large bulky unit for a low cost that may appear to be worthwhile, but are not much better than a 480p camera. From my reviews, you’ll notice how BlackVue’s lineup is different from the rest by offering a unique shape, and from what I’ve noticed, the utmost attention to quality.
With so many in-car dash cameras to choose from, it can be an overwhelming decision, similar to when picking out the right PC for your needs. Features, design, image quality, and event recording are just a few things that need to be looked at. To throw all of the wanted features and other aspects of a dash camera into one, at the top of the BlackVue podium is their latest unit that offers a full sized touchscreen, a unique design, and a wide angle Sony camera to make sure every moment is captured.
Welcome to my review of the BlackVue DR750LW-2CH in-car dash camera. Throughout this review, I will discuss the following: the design, functionality, and my final thoughts of the unit. A special thank you to BlackVue for providing this unit.
Design
In the past, BlackVue cameras that I’ve reviewed are typically shaped in a pill-like fashion where a large cylindrical tube contains all of the internal hardware as well as the front-facing camera. This design was held to the windshield by a rotatable clamp that even allowed the camera to be detached if desired.
Having a display on a portable recorder is nothing new, especially when it comes to dash cameras. GoPro, Garmin and even knock-off brands like Mio all offer a dash camera that incorporates a display for video playback. However, these displays are typically small and low resolution; moreover, they also require physical buttons to be pressed when navigating the menus.
BlackVue’s DR750LW is something that I’ve yet to see in this dash camera market and that is to incorporate a four inch 800 x 480 display with touch right into the body of the dash camera. With a full-color display, the camera has the ability to playback recording film right on its screen so you can quickly recall what it just saw. Furthermore, the touch display means the menus can be navigated with your fingers, and don’t worry, the screen is fairly smudge-resistant.
The rest of the camera is built out of a plastic frame and uses a center-mounted, metal brace for support. The front houses the Sony 2.4 megapixel sensor that records a wide-angle view at a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080 @ 30FPS.
Located on the left of the camera is your MicroSD card slot that includes a 16GB card, status LEDs for GPS and Wireless, a microphone for voice recording as well as a large multifunction button for voice recording activation/card format. On the right is your DC power-in jack followed by the input for the rear facing camera.
This camera comes with a secondary camera that is a rear mounted camera to provide 360-degree recording for your car. As for the design for the rear camera, it’s black tubed shape allows it to be concealed from passerby’s on the rear window.
Finally, the physical size of the camera is quite large measuring 4.22 x 2.65 x 0.80 inches (107.2 x 67.5 x 20.5 mm), therefore, as I will discuss below, be warned on where you place it. The front of the camera also includes a textured finish to offer a neat design when viewed up close.
Functionality
Setup went smoothly, especially with past experience of installing these dash cameras. Preferably located behind, or in front depending on how you look at it, the rear view mirror is the best location for the dash camera.
The cameras come supplied with a super strong sticky gel pad that does require significant force to remove it, so ensure that you are placing the camera in the correct spot. As the gel pads are for one-time use, BlackVue includes two additional pads for both cameras, should you wish to change their positions.
You’ll want to make sure that you don’t make the same mistake as I did. Many cars will have an automatic dimming mirror that will darken the mirrors based on the incoming light from oncoming traffic. Since this camera has a large 4″ display on the front that emits light, placing it directly in front of the mirror’s sensor causes the mirrors to go very dark or no function correctly. Therefore, you may need to mount the camera off center.
Furthermore, ensure that you place the rear view camera upright and that the BlackVue logo is readable and not upside down as I mistakingly did. You will quickly notice this mistake as the main unit has the ability to play a real-time image of what it sees.
One important thing to remember is to check the full length of your car’s interior, as, when wiring in the rear camera, I nearly ran out of cabling even though it seemed like I had plenty to start with. Nearly every US sold coupe/sedan car should be compatible whereas SUVs and larger trucks may run into length issues.
The final stage for installation is acquiring power for the camera. One may choose to use the included car outlet plug adapter for the camera and seamlessly wire the power lines throughout the car’s bolsters, but I took a different approach and hard wired the camera into a non-essential fuse (Rear seat heaters) in the car’s fuse box by using a fuse tap. The reasoning behind is so that the camera is powered down when the car is shut off.
After installation is complete and you power on the DR750LW, your camera will begin to format the included 16GB MicroSD card and once complete will open up to the live preview screen that uses 90% of the display for the front view and a smaller boxed window in the upper right corner for the rear camera.
Without any touch input, after a set time delay, the display will turn off and become completely black, something that is very important when night driving. To wake it up only takes a light tap on the screen.
Like other BlackVue cameras, this one too is customizable to your liking with settings including the recording lengths for videos, whether or not to enable the in-car microphone, display date/time/MPH on the video clips, and even turn off things like the white security LED.
The user interface on the camera is fairly straight forward and within a few seconds you can already navigate throughout the settings menu and even view previously recorded videos.
Video playback on the screen is decent enough and since it has direct access to the clips, there isn’t any stuttering or buffering that you may experience when streaming the video to your phone via the BlackVue app. One advantage it does have over other models is the ability to quickly show someone the last recorded video.
The rest of the DR750LW’s features follow the other models in the BlackVue lineup with videos being recorded as Normal driving, parking mode and event mode (Crashes and Turns) as well as using the BlackVue Windows app for editing or downloading video.
One annoyance I had with the camera was the inability to disable sounds. The camera turns on and states a message through its speaker “The BlackVue is powering on” and vice versa for turning off. Typically this is the first thing I disable alongside the security LED, but sound disable on this camera does not appear to be doable.
One final feature of the DR750LW is that this camera has a built-in Power Magic Pro, which is a self-voltage monitoring system for car batteries. As I have discussed in other reviews, an always powered circuit to your camera system will eventually drain your battery if your car sits for more than a few days. Not only does that cause the car no longer to start, but you could actually harm your battery and even shorten its lifespan. The Power Magic Pro is a secondary accessory for camera systems that is a monitoring system that automatically cuts power to the device it’s monitoring if the car battery drops below a certain voltage. While this is a secondary option with other cameras, it’s a built-in feature on the Dr750LW and certainly helps maintain a healthy car.
With the exception of the installation hiccups, the functionality of the DR750LW has been flawless after setting it up nearly a month ago. It starts up and begins recording without any problems and just waits there, recording over the oldest recordings for when the time is needed to show that you aren’t at fault or maybe even share the funny car video online.
My Final Thoughts
BlackVue has provided me with some outstanding cameras to review and this one is surely unique. However, finding a strong compelling reason to choose this unit over the other models is a hard challenge. The built in screen is a neat feature that I’ve yet to see on other models and if it’s worth the $304 to you then you certainly will not be disappointed. Being at the top of the leaderboards for cameras, this feature-rich dash camera can truly be your ultimate driving assistant.
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