Ultimate Dash Cam Comparison 2024

A dash cam is the best, and maybe the only way to protect yourself from insurance fraud and overzealous law enforcement. It can even provide peace of mind when your car is parked, but the big question is how much better is a $400 dash cam than one that costs $70? Today I’ve got ten dash cams from all different price ranges and we’re going to test their audio and video quality, field of view, parking modes, and impact resistance to figure out which dash cam is best in December of 2024. As always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel.

Video Quality Testing – Budget Picks

Starting with video quality testing, I set up four cameras at a time side by side seeded by price and I evaluated them based on their field of view, overall clarity, and their ability to capture license plates both during the day and at night. 

First is the budget category. The least expensive dash cam we’re going to test today is the $69.99 70mai A500s with a built-in display and single channel 1944P camera using a Sony IMX335 image sensor.

Then for $98.99 is the Viofo A119 Mini 2, which is also single channel with a built-in display but uses a 1440p Sony Starvis2 IMX675 image sensor with HDR.

After that for $139.99 is the 70mai X200 OMNI which is a unique 1080p single channel dash cam with a motorized panning lens, built-in display, and compatibility with 70mai’s 4G UP05 Hardwire Kit for remote monitoring.

The last camera in this budget round is the $159.99 Vantrue S1 Pro which is a two channel dash cam with a built-in display and the same 1440p Sony Starvis 2 IMX675 image sensor as the Viofo A119 Mini 2, but also adds a 1080p rear camera and compatibility with Vantrue’s optional LTE Module for remote live view and parking alerts.

First, when looking at their field of view, the Viofo A119 Mini 2 has the widest view with both the yield sign and one way sign visible, while the 70mai A500s has the tallest view showing both the top of the tree and down into the interior dash of my car.

Second, you can see that the A119 Mini 2, 70mai Omni, and Vantrue S1 Pro all have high dynamic range images that avoid blown out highlights and crushed shadows, while the A500s has clipped highlights in the clouds and less detail in shadowy areas like tree limbs and distant black objects.

I usually say that almost any dash cam can capture license plates on stationary vehicles, but the A500s struggled more than any camera I’ve recently tested and captured blurry images of even the easiest to read plates, and its focus was overall just kind of a mess.

During the day, the Vantrue S1 Pro and Viofo A119 Mini 2 where almost identical, which makes sense given their identical image sensors, and I gave the Viofo the slight edge for capturing these pedestrians on the side of the road, but the Vantrue did an ever so slightly better job with plate capture on this passing car, though neither produced a completely legible plate.

At night though, the Viofo’s HDR seemed to be better tuned for capturing plates and didn’t blow out the reflective coating even when illuminated with my headlights. Again the S1 Pro, A119 Mini 2, and OMNI all worked their HDR magic on passing license plates, producing an image that looks like the plates are jumping off the car, but I thought that the Viofo A119 Mini had the best overall image quality, which means that combined with its large horizontal field of view and low price, it is the easy winner in this round. It will move onto round 2 where it will be up against the midrange cameras.

Video Quality Testing – Midrange Picks

Starting with the $162 SJCAM M60 which is a two channel front and rear dash cam with the top of the line 4K Sony Starvis 2 IMX678 sensor in the front and a 1080p camera for the rear. 

Also in round 2 is the $199 Wolfbox X5, which is a three channel camera with 4K resolution in the front with that same Sony Starvis 2 IMX678 image sensor, a 1080p cabin camera built into the main unit, and a 1944p resolution rear camera, and in addition to a built-in display, the Wolfbox also has the first touchscreen we’ve seen so far.

The last camera in round 2 is the Rove R2-4K Dual which also claims to be 4K with a Sony Starvis 2 front sensor, but it uses the same IMX675 image sensor as the Viofo A119 Mini, which is only a 1440p resolution, so they’re likely just upscaling it to 4K in software. But that deceptive marketing seems to be working for them because Amazon shows the R2-4K Dual sold over 10,000 units last month alone.

Looking at the same intersection as before, you can see that in this grouping the SJCAM has by far the widest field of view, with the yield sign visible on the left and tons of space behind the one way sign on the right, while the Wolfbox appears to have the tallest field of view showing the most space above the skyscrapers, though it could just be a matter of aiming since the SJCAM shows more of the dash.

Also, in this freeze frame you can see that all the cameras did a decent job capturing the license plate of the passing truck, but the Wolfbox was easily the best while the Viofo, SJCAM, and Rove were much closer together in quality. That pretty much held true throughout the entire daytime test where the Wolfbox had the best captures, and the other three cameras fought for the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th positions.

At night the Viofo A119 Mini 2 had the most HDR like image and in low light situations it seemed to do a much better job resisting motion blur which you can see here on this capture of a couple walking their dog. But specifically for license plates the Wolfbox was consistently on top again capturing plates in situations where I was stationary and other cars were moving, where other cars were stationary and I was moving, and when I was traveling at roughly the same speed as other cars in traffic, which means the Wolfbox X5 is going to move on to Round 3. It is worth mentioning that the $99 A119 Mini 2 put up a pretty good fight in this midrange grouping. 

Video Quality Testing – Flagship Dash Cams

This last group has all the highest priced flagship dash cams, starting with last year’s winner, the $299 Vantrue N4 Pro which is a three channel dash cam with a built in screen, the 4K Sony Starvis 2 IMX678 image sensor up front, a 1080p aimable cabin camera, and a 1080p rear camera.

Next, also for $299 is the Vantrue E360 which is a pretty unique take on dash cams that uses two fisheye lenses to provide a full 360 degree panoramic view of not only the road in front of you, but also the entire cabin and everything in between. But for testing I’m going to have the E360 output two separate video files for the front and rear facing cameras which are each 1440p resolution and, like the Vantrue S1 Pro from round 1, the E360 is also compatible with Vantrue’s optional LTE Module for remote live view and parking alerts.

Last, the most expensive dash cam in this video is the new $399 Viofo A329 4K, which has a 4K Sony Starvis 2 IMX678 sensor up front and a 1440p rear camera. Some notable upgrades from the previous A229 Pro are a 4K60fps mode that can be enabled if you disable HDR, the ability to record to a USB-C connected external solid state hard drive instead of the internal SD Card, and a HDMI micro out for connecting external displays.

As we start out this round, the only other thing to know is that both the Vantrue N4 Pro and Viofo A329 4K have circular polarizing filters installed which significantly reduces reflections from the dashboard and the Vantrue’s CPL is a $20 optional accessory, while the A329 4K includes a CPL in the box. For all the cameras I made sure they had the latest firmware installed, and you can see that on the N4 Pro it shows the PlatePix icon in the bottom corner indicating it is on the highest quality recording available.

Heading to the field of view intersection you can see that the Wolfbox X5, Vantrue N4 Pro, and Viofo A329 4K have a basically identical field of view, which is sort of to be expected since they’re using the same image sensors, while the Vantrue E360 has a comparatively ridiculous horizontal and vertical field of view, which is great for making sure you can see your entire surroundings but not great for capturing detail. You can see that all four cameras are perfectly synced here as the traffic light changes, but on the E360 everything looks so much further away.

As you can imagine, that’s not good at all for capturing license plates, and for the other three cameras during the day, there was a clear and definite order to their picture quality despite all of them having the same sensor with the Viofo A329 Pro in first place, the Vantrue N4 Pro in second, and the Wolfbox X5 in third when capturing images of plates on parked cars as I passed them, on cars that zipped past me while I was stopped at a stoplight, and on cars that were travelling roughly the same speed as me in traffic. Also, just for general footage, the Viofo A329 Pro was also the least artificially sharpened image which is easy to see in the thick white lines surrounding power lines that are the result of the sharpening algorithm.

At night, the Vantrue E360 faired a little better and its large field of view allowed it to collect more light than the non-fisheye dash cams, but it was still really bad at capturing fine details like license plates. However, the Starvis 2 dash cams were all excellent at capturing plates and for stationary cars while I was moving the Vantrue N4 Pro made the best capture, not only of the plate, but it also had the least distortion and motion blur on the car itself. When I was stopped and the other cars were moving, the Wolfbox made the best capture and when both cars were moving, I thought they all did a very good job, but that the Vantrue N4 Pro was slightly better than the rest.

Really the differences all come down to how the camera’s software handles the combination of the two exposures for HDR, because too much reliance on the longer exposure leads to motion blur, and you can see that the Vantrue N4 Pro seems to be the best at avoiding streaking in the brightest areas of the image. The biggest issue with the Wolfbox is that the mount itself allows for a little bit of bounce, which then results in misalignment of the two HDR exposures and a lot of motion blur, bouncing, and distortion in the video.

I also tested their rear cameras, and you can see that the Vantrue has the highest field of view and also slightly better HDR implementation, while the Wolfbox’s more zoomed in lens did a better job at capturing fine detail and the Viofo A329 was somewhere in the middle with less field of view, but also higher resolution leading to pretty good detail.

Video Quality Results

So that means that the top four cameras when it comes to daytime video quality were the $98 single channel Viofo A119 Mini 2 in 4^th place, the $199 3 channel Wolfbox X5 in 3^rd place, the $299 3 channel Vantrue N4 Pro in 2^nd, and the $399 2 channel Viofo A329 Pro in 1^st. For night video quality the Wolfbox X5 came in 4^th, the Viofo A119 Mini 2 came in 3^rd, the Viofo A329 Pro came in 2^nd, and the Vantrue N4 Pro finished in 1^st place.

Parking Mode Testing

And now that we’ve got it narrowed down to those four cameras, it’s time to get a little more in depth to test their other features starting with low power parking modes. The first important thing to know is that to use parking modes, you’ll need to have your dash cam hardwired into your car’s electrical system using an optional hardwire kit. The way those work is that you’ll connect two separate power wires to your car, one for constant 12V power, and one that’s only powered when the car is on, and that lets the dash cam know when it should enter and exit parking mode.

The next thing to know is that there are four different parking modes available on most dash cams.

The first, and most commonly used mode is impact detection which uses the dash cam’s accelerometer to trigger recording if the car is hit, a window is broken, or even if a door is opened or closed. Of these four top performing dash cams, the Vantrue and Wolfbox have an impact specific mode, while the two Viofo dash cams detect both motion and impact in their “auto mode” but don’t have an impact specific mode, which does lead to higher power consumption.

To figure out how long these dash cams can run off of your car’s battery I measured the average power draw over a 10 minute period and found that in impact mode the Wolfbox used by far the least power, and basically went into a deep sleep mode drawing less than 0.01 watts in collision mode, while the Vantrue drew 0.64 watts in 2 channel and 0.99 watts in 3 channel mode, and the Viofo dash cams were roughly double that due to also detecting motion. But in my testing the Viofo dash cams were also significantly better at capturing entire events and you can see that the Viofo dash cams were triggered roughly 15 seconds before the impact, while the Vantrue triggered after about 4 and a half seconds, and the Wolfbox didn’t turn on until after I had already left the frame, which was around 30 seconds later.

The Vantrue also has a motion specific mode which uses over three times as much power as the impact mode but acts very similar to auto mode on the Viofo and does have a pre-roll buffer to show what happened before an event. But the N4 Pro has a specific warning message that pops up saying you should only use the low power impact detection mode in hot conditions, because otherwise the camera could overheat. You can also see that in its parking modes the Viofo A119 Mini 2 uses a lower resolution and cropped field of view and unfortunately the Wolfbox doesn’t have any motion detection mode at all.

All four cameras have timelapse mode which constantly records at a lower framerate, and the Vantrue and Viofo let you choose the frames per second, while the Wolfbox always uses 10 FPS, and here are the power draw numbers for those modes.

And last, the Viofo and Vantrue cameras have low bitrate mode which records a lower quality format that reduces file size, so it doesn’t take up too much space on the SD card and here are the power draw measurements for that mode.

So, for parking modes the Viofo A329 4K is the clear winner with the most available modes, best flexibility, best event capture, and the best field of view, all with reasonably low power draw.

Impact Testing

Lastly, this year I’ve added a new test after a fellow YouTuber, LifeHackster’s, wife was in a car accident and her Viofo A229 Pro froze after impact. So, to test their ability to record during accidents I set up a jig to test impacts from the front, rear, and both sides, and while I wasn’t able to replicate any of the video freezing, what I found was definitely concerning.

Starting with the best performer, the Wolfbox X5 recorded nonstop through all 16 impacts and only fell off of its mount on one of the driver’s side hits, but since the power supply isn’t integrated into the windshield quick release and the secondary quick release seems to be more rugged, the dash cam kept recording through the entire test.

Ultimately those quick release mounts were the weaknesses of all the other dash cams, and you can see that both Viofo cameras were easily knocked off of their mounts on all the side impacts while the Vantrue failed in both front and rear impacts, and this seems like a major issue that needs to be addressed in future hardware revisions, especially since it would be trivial for Viofo to add a small sliding switch to lock their quick release in place.

In the meantime, a Band-Aid solution is to move your dash cam’s power cable from the windshield mount onto the main unit so that if and when it falls off it will at least continue recording the event. Fortunately, on the Viofo dash cams you won’t lose any functionality by doing so, but on the Vantrue N4 Pro the only other way to supply power is through the rear camera port, and the rear camera doesn’t work when connected through the windshield mount. So instead, I designed this 3D printed clip that press fits around the lens assembly to prevent the quick release from detaching, and I’ve of course shared that file below for free, but again I’d really like to see this issue taken care of with some kind of locking tab in future hardware revisions.

Conclusions

Despite some of their shortcomings I still think these four dash cams from Viofo, Wolfbox, and Vantrue are the best dash cams you can get in December of 2024.

If your budget is under $100 and you’re okay with just a front facing dash cam, the $98 Viofo A119 Mini 2 is miles ahead of other cameras in the price range and has excellent 1440p video quality with great HDR implementation, a wide field of view, good parking modes, and an incredibly compact and discrete form factor.

If you want more cameras, the three channel Wolfbox X5 is a crazy deal for $199 and has the same sensors and most of the same options as the $299 Vantrue N4 Pro. The Wolfbox was also the only camera that survived all 16 impacts without stopping the video feed. Its only weaknesses are fewer and less functional parking modes, weaker HDR video processing, and a mount that tends to bounce on bumpy roads leading to a bit more motion blur at night.

Last year’s winner the Vantrue N4 Pro is still the king of nighttime image quality, and the recent PlatePix firmware update seems to have improved it even more, but you’ll need to decide if the slightly better image quality and better parking modes are worth the extra $100 over the Wolfbox, especially since the Wolfbox also comes with a 128 gigabyte SD card, while the Vantrue’s is sold separately.

Last, the $399 Viofo A329 4K had the best daytime video quality, the 2^nd best nighttime quality, and the best parking modes, but for $100 more than the Vantrue and twice the price of the Wolfbox, you get one less channel and marginally better performance. So, unless parking modes or one of the more niche features like USB-C SSD recording, or HDMI video output are important for you, then the Vantrue N4 Pro or Wolfbox X5 make more sense.

As always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, but I’ve got links for all the dash cams below and as always, I appreciate when you use those links since as an Amazon Affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.

I’d also like to thank all my patrons at Patreon for their continued support and if you’re interested in supporting my unsponsored reviews, please check out the links below. If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel and as always, thanks for watching The Hook Up.