I am no stranger to dash cameras. I’ve reviewed plenty here at Qwerty articles and have used and recommended tons more. However, Acumen offers something new and unique. Something that I’ve only ever seen on top end automobiles.
About a year ago, Doug Demuro on YouTube reviewed the 2019 Cadillac CTS-V and one of the latest features this car offers is an electronic rear view mirror. Cool car aside, this new technology is the wave of what is to come in the automobile.
All of the luxury cars that Doug has reviewed as of late all have some fancy new technology inside and this electronic mirror is one of them.
Unfortunately, it could take decades before this technology trickles down to the average consumer. It’s commonly known that if you want to see what your Toyota will have in 10-years’ time from today, just look at what a Mercedes S-Class has to offer today.
Luckily, Acumen is ahead of the time, offering something new and unique for any car of any age and at a price that is affordable.
Known as the XR10 Mirror Dash Cam, Acumen’s dash camera takes what Cadillac spent a lot of Research and Development and trickles it down to you and I in our cars. Welcome to the future.
Welcome to my review of the Acumen XR10 Mirror Dash Camera.
Design
The Acumen mirror dash cam is all-in-one mirror, display, and camera. The 10-inch touch display is the picture window into what the dash camera has to offer.
Shaped like a traditional mirror, the XR10 is more of a strap-on replacement of what you currently have in your car. It uses two rear flexible rubber straps that tightly hold onto your traditional mirror in your car.
From there, the straps can be tightened down to prevent the dash cam from sliding or wiggling while driving on rougher roads.
The body is made from entirely plastic with a strong reflective mirror covering nearly the entire front. Speaking of, the front of the XR10 contains only the touch display, no buttons or switches.
When the unit is turned off or not powered, the dash camera’s front display becomes a reflective mirror. You can use it as just a normal reflective mirror if you desire for that configuring. More on this later.
On the back of the mirror, there is a speaker behind a grill that bounces the sound away from your car’s current mirror back at you.
Additionally, on the left of the dash camera, is the adjustable 1080p @ 30FPS front facing dash camera that will record all of the events happening in the front.
Positioned facing upwards, the connectivity of the dash camera includes an external GPS antenna, micro SD card slot, AV-IN for the rear camera, and microUSB power.
With sizing of 10 inches long, half an inch thick, and about 3 inches tall, the Acumen mirror dash camera had no problem whatsoever attaching to the multiple car mirrors I tired. It fully covered and looked well positioned on all of them.
Powered over micro USB, the included power cable is long and could even be user replaced if something were to happen to the original power cable. Also included in the box is a rear dash camera for the mirror display, a 16GB micro SD card, and general mounting hardware.
Functionality
It doesn’t take a whole lot to get started with the Acumen mirror dash camera. Once positioned onto the mirror, wired for power, and the rear camera ran, it’s as simple as turning the unit on. All without any tools.
Starting off, you are brought to a primary home screen that allows you to navigate all of the dash camera’s features. Remember, everything is done locally; no smartphone connectivity here.
Your red Ferrari car (as shown in the home screen) takes up most of the home menu, but you can access the streaming mode, video recordings, ADAS, still picture taking, playback of previous recordings and events, and other generalized settings.
By default, the XR10 will display just the rear camera on the display. The picture of the rear camera is taken up by the entire display to give you that full rear-view vision. Gone are the days of seeing out of your rear window or getting blocked by rear headrests.
The response time on the rear camera to display time onto the XR10 is snappy and nearly real time just like it would be with a traditional mirror.
For me personally, this is the view I prefer. Seeing everything happening at the rear of my car as if I am outside and sitting on the truck. It does take a little bit of getting used to as objects seem far closer than normal since the camera is recording closer to the object.
In addition, if there is a lot of snow and ice on the rear window, as that happens in Wisconsin, it can hinder the camera’s view. Sometimes, a quick switch back to traditional-mirror mode by turning the device off is both helpful and a great move on Acumen’s part.
Picture modes continue past full picture mode. You can split screen the front and rear cameras or you can have the mirror function as a traditional mirror and have the rear camera be a small hovering screen in one of the mirror’s corners.
I should also mention that you can display the time and date on your mirror too.
As this is a dash camera, the XR10 saves all of the footage that it records to the 16GB microSD card. Seeing that the footage is 1080p @ 30FPS, not a whole lot can fit onto the microSD card, but user upgrades are good up to 128GB.
Additional features of the XR10 include quick, on-the-fly adjustments to the rear camera’s picture, ADAS which is an advanced driver assistant system, backup driver lines, and built-in motion and G-sensors.
The ADAS system built into the XR10 is meant to alert the driver if you are getting to close to a car in front of you. It will display multiple loud beeps when driving up onto someone too quickly. However, the system is quite poor and one of the only bad features of the XR10.
It will go off constantly and the beeps are incredibly loud, in case you are tired and perhaps falling asleep. I left my ADAS disabled and plan to indefinitely.
My Final Thoughts
Priced on Amazon for $129 (take off $30 when you apply the Amazon coupon today), the Acumen XR10 mirror dash camera is an excellent device that modernizes any car with some inexpensive, yet functional technology.
The front and rear dash camera recording is in itself a worth wild upgrade to protect yourself from other bad drivers and help prove your innocence in accidents. Throw in a mirror that constantly displays that footage to give you a crystal-clear view of what is behind you and it tops it off.
I find the XR10 to be for selective drivers, but anyone will enjoy what it has to offer and how it could help you upgrade an aging car. It gets a recommendation from me.
Buy it now:
© 2019 Justin Vendette
