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What to look for when buying a dash cam

Abby Wingett | 6th May 2023 | 5 minutes to read

With a market absolutely teeming with different dash cam models at varying price points and offering many different features and characteristics, it can be difficult to choose the best one for you.

To make the job easier, we've ranked some of our favourite dash cam features, starting with the most important to make your purchase even easier.

Check them out below:

  1. Basic Dash Cam Features
  2. Premium Dash Cam Features
  3. Other Key Factors To Look for When Purchasing a Dash Camera

Basic Dash Cam Features

These are the features that you will find available in most dash cams.

Video Quality

The higher the resolution, the better the video quality and chances of capturing identifying features such as licence plates. The higher the resolution, the bigger the file size. Bigger file sizes will fill SD cards more quickly. Higher resolution cameras often need larger SD cards to provide the same storage time.

4K Ultra HD Video Recording

4K recording capability is ideal in all situations when it comes to using your dash cam or reverse camera. The extra detail is ideal for recording clear and precise footage of number plates, street signs and other road details.

4K ultra HD video recording

4K resolutions offer massive improvements in image clarity due to having 4 times as many pixels as full HD.

This comes in handy when you need to make a claim and important detail is out of range for lower quality dash cam units. The high resolution allows you to crop and zoom in on footage without losing detail and pixelating important information.

Alternatively, if you're keen to record your next road trip or take some happy snaps in photo mode, it's always nice to have a bit more detail and a cleaner, clearer looking image or video to show your friends and family.

If a 4K dash cam simply doesn't fit within your budget, we recommend opting for a unit that can record in at least 1080p, as anything lower than this severely compromises on recording detail.

Loop Recording

Loop recording is a feature which ensures that your dash cam won't simply stop recording when the memory card is full. Once it reaches maximum capacity, the recording process starts again, erasing previous footage to make space.

This means you won't miss a moment, and files which have been protected manually, with hand gesture controls or automatically by impact sensors will not be erased as they are protected.

Built-in GPS

GPS tracking allows your vehicle's exact location to be tracked and timestamped, overlayed onto your footage. With this information, you can confirm accurately the speed you or other drivers are travelling, which can be useful in legal battles or court cases.

Impact Motion Sensors (G-Sensor)

On-board G-sensors and motion sensors play an important role in controlling your dash cam and ensuring that footage is recorded and saved when you need it the most.

On most dash cams, motion sensors are used to mark in your footage when a collision or emergency braking event has occurred, which tells the dash cam to start recording or instantly save the footage of the event. This ensures that footage is collected to strengthen your claim and confirm details of the incident without data being lost or recorded over.

Premium Dash Cam Features

While a basic dash cam will get the job done, there are some bonus features that can add extra accessibility and functionality to your dash cam that’ll help you protect your vehicle from unfortunate incidents.

Wi-Fi Connectivity

In the digital age, where everything is instant, and hard-copy media is pretty much obsolete, it is imperative to have important documents stored safely and backed up properly.

With a Wi-Fi enabled dash cam, you can easily take footage from your dash cam and save it to your phone, computer, cloud storage or other storage options by simply connecting your chosen device to the dash cam via Wi-Fi. This limits the need for annoying memory card readers and means that you can access your footage instantly on the road without the need to head home to the computer, remove the memory card and load up your footage.

Image showing the Wifi system of a dash cam

Wifi is simple to set up on most modern dash cams and offers extra options for recording and viewing.

Some models even have the capability to control important functions and change settings via your phone, giving you full control of your dash cam from the palm of your hand.

Parking Mode

This is an elaboration on the previous point of motion sensors, as this function generally uses the same hardware to operate in parking mode. Parking mode is a major step up for vehicle security, as it allows the camera to operate in standby and it remains on and ready to record at the drop of a hat. However, it won't needlessly record stationary footage in the carpark or overwrite footage when in loop mode.

Image depicting region detection for a dash cam

Blackvue dash cams released since 2017 let you select specific regions for detection to lower the amount of motion recordings that are triggered due to the wind blowing trees or far away objects moving around.

Motion sensors will detect the need to start recording in the event that your car is hit, bumped, scratched or even if someone is attempting to break in. The use of parking mode usually requires the dash cam to be hardwired to the car; if your dash cam did not come with a hardwiring kit, most popular brands offer this separately.

Two-Channel Recording (Additional Cameras)

With a basic dash cam set-up, you can have eyes on the road at all times, recording everything that unfolds in front of you, but what happens if you get rear-ended at a stop sign or are being aggressively tailgated on the freeway?

Since most dash cams only record what's in front of you, events unfolding behind your vehicle can be difficult or even impossible to prove when filing a report. A two-channel dash camera system comes with a front camera just like other set-ups, however, it also includes an additional camera which is mounted to the rear window to record events occurring behind the vehicle.

According to a report from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration states that rear-end, crashes are the most common type of traffic collision and makeup approximately 29 percent of all car crashes, which is why you need to have a dash camera covering both ends of your car.

Discreet Design

Providing you with low profile designs offers a factory-like finish, often hidden from the driver without compromising on video quality. With a discreet designed camera, it will not affect the appearance of your car and will not stick out to everyone that you have a dash camera watching their every move.

Other Key Factors To Look for When Purchasing a Dash Camera

When buying your dash cam, make sure to keep an eye out for all of the other super handy features which make these the ideal companion for your daily driver and classic weekend cruiser alike. Deciding which features are best suited to your application makes choosing a dash cam for you much easier. Here's a quick run-down on some of the other features you can expect to encounter when selecting your dash cam.

Cloud Compatibility

Dash cams which are cloud-enabled can automatically upload footage to an off-site cloud-based storage system which means your recordings are safe even if your dash cam becomes damaged in an accident, lost, or experiences a hardware failure. Some dash cams will require you to upload this footage manually, however some offer this as an automatic function

5G Capability

We've spoken about Wi-Fi connectivity already, but if the best possible upload speeds are important to you, keep your eyes out for a 5G enabled dash cam. 5G technology offers fast download speeds when exporting dash cam footage to your phone or other devices.

Angle of View

Also referred to as field of view, this is the number measured in degrees which indicates how much your dash cam can see. For example, a 160-degree field of view will see further outwards (wider) than a dash cam with just a 100-degree field of view.

Audio Recording

Built-in ultra-sensitive microphones can be used to record audio from within the cabin and vehicle surrounds in the instance that a window is lowered.

Hand Gesture Control

Fiddling around with tiny buttons on a dash camera can be a pain, that's why you should look out for a dash cam with hand gesture control. This allows you to take photos, save recordings, start recording and actuate heaps of other functions with the simple wave of a hand without taking your eyes off the road.

Built-in Screen

Dashboard cameras with built in screens are a great piece of in-car technology, and offer a lot of benefits, including ease of set-up and no guesswork with how the camera is aimed as you can see in real-time what the camera will see. Easy play-back of footage on the device and a more user-friendly photo-mode are some of the other great features of built-in displays. Some units even offer touch screen displays for easy navigation of menus and set-up screens.

Included SD Card

Your dash cam is useless without an SD card to store the footage on. Some units are supplied with an SD card, however without one you will have to factor this in at an extra cost. For 4K units you will need a larger SD card as this footage will take up much more space. We recommend an SD card with at least 16GB capacity for most units and at least 32GB for a 4K enabled dash cam.

Tamper-Proof Cases

Prevents unauthorised access to the dashcam memory or critical power cables.

Keep Up With Dash Cam Tech With Repco

Dash cam technology is constantly improving, so it’s important to stay up to date and get the best resolution, data storage, and remote capabilities available to protect your vehicle. At Repco, we stock the best dash cams from major brands like XView, BlackVue, and more, so head into your local Repco store or shop online to pick up a dash cam and secure yourself in the event of an accident.

Repco's In-Car Tech Categories:


Reverse Cameras
Reverse Cameras

GPS Navigation
GPS Navigation

Throttle Controllers
Throttle Controllers

Car Audio
Car Audio

UHF & CB Radio
UHF & CB Radio

Connectivity
Connectivity