My BlackVue DR400G-HD DashCam Review

[OZONE]

*For Updated Info See Bottom of This Post*

So I have tested my BlackVue DR400G-HD and so far I love it. Much better than the previous GoPro HD I was using. But there are some cons when it comes to this camera but the pro's out weigh them as far as I'm concerned.

First off here's a video showing the comparison between day and night driving.


Remember to select 1080p for best results.

(please ignore the elastic band, it has been sitting on the dash for the past week :/ )

Pro's:

-Loop Recording

One thing I love about this dashcamera is the fact it auto deletes the oldest files. So if you ever have an accident or an encounter it automatically will delete, and continue recording.


-Options

This thing has tons of different settings to fiddle with that make the product more customizable. For example, you can set the colour of the LED for normal recording, parking aid as well as the mph or kmph. There are more settings that I havent fully checked out but as of now I am happy with it.


-Day Time Video Quality

It has good quality video during the day. About the same as my GoProHD but this one doesn't require me to empty it every 2 minutes.


-GPS

The GPS is one of my favorite features that allows me to show my exact speed on the video's plus the time and date stamp. This was one of the main reasons I bought this was for this feature.


-Night Time Video Quality

This dash cam BLOWS AWAY my go pro HD. There is no comparison between the two. I had a lot of trouble recording anything at night because you couldn't see very far in front of you. With this dash cam the video can see MUCH further. When I first read about the dashcam being good at night, I didn't think it was. But this thing blew way past my expectations.


-Parking Mode

At first I didn't think I would use this option, but it really works. To an extent. If you are in an area where there is not a lot of traffic, go for it. If there is motion infront of the car, this camera will record it. But if you are downtown and have traffic going by constantly, I would suggest just turning it off or you can just have it recording for however long your gone.


-Price

I picked mine up for $250USD shipped from Korea. It took 3 days to arrive considering I live on the West Coast. I don't think I could have spent my money any better and am extemely happy I bought it.



Con's:

-Light Flickering

Once in a while the camera will adjust the brightness of the video. Making the picture look better but then will suddenly dim the brightness again. It is hard to explain without me showing you but imagine dimming the lights in a room, then 10 seconds later, undimming them. It happens once in a while. When I say once in a while I mean maybe once or twice for an hour of video. The video still looks perfect but seems like a con I wanted to mention.

*Update* The flickering still happens even on the newest firmware, it is mainly just light adjusting but the frequency of the adjustments has gone down considerably.

-Sound Quality

Compared to my GoPro, the sound quality on the BlackVue is crap. The sound isn't terrible but it was one of the first things I noticed when I reviewed the video's. It was decent quality but wasn't close to my GoPro's sound quality. I wouldn't consider this a major issue but maybe something that should be fixed later on by developers. As you can hear in the video you can still hear alerts as well as music with ease, but just not the same as my gopro.

-Poor Instructions

The instructions that came in the box are Korean. Which can be a problem for people that can't read Korean. I received an English manual in an email from the seller when I bought it. The link he sent me to upgrade the BlackVue didn't work and had to figure it out on my own. Which wasn't difficult but a inconvenient.

Final:

All in all I love this camera to death and am extremely happy I bought it. There was the option to buy some sort of battery conserver for an extra $40 but so far I don't foresee my battery dying from the BlackVue and wouldn't suggest this extra piece of equipment. The combination of having a dashcam that is worry free when it comes to deleting memory, as well as battery life is the biggest plus in my books.

For people wondering how to mark encounters for easy access later, I personally just press the parking aid button which marks the file when you go back as being a parking aid flag. Or you can bump the BlackVue enough to cause it to flag it as an event. Either seems to work fine.

If anyone has any questions about the BlackVue feel free to post them and I will be more than happy to provide any answers. I hope my little review wasn't too bad

*Updated*

After a few months of owning this camera I can suggest a few modifications and adjustments

First thing needed is to buy a class 10 MicroSD card as the one supplied will give you "Check the SD card" error and requires a reboot.

Second thing is for better audio you can attempt to modify a small hole right above the microphone to allow better audio quality

See pics[Pictures courtesy of mrkookm]:





Also a Matte Black Modification to the BlackVue done by myself:

http://www.radardetectorforum.org/showthread.php?t=11444

[Andrew21]

Thanks Ozone for the review. I'm going to pick this up soon.

Question though. It was bought out before on another thread about this camera. In the daytime, if you look at the corners on the bottom, they are pretty dark. Was this the camera or your car?

[Riptide]

Thanks for the review, I think I'll be purchasing this as well. When you mark and encounter as parking mode, or flick the camera, does it store the file in a different folder safe from getting deleted?

On a side note, the power saving addon is to be used, from my understanding, if you have the camera running all the time. Even when the car is off.

[Salty]

This has got to be the same company that made the CR-200HD. Thats bascially what this cam is with added benefit of GPS. How come you didn't change your speed stamp to MPH? Are you sure its possible to do that?

[StealthPilot]

Capturing your Speed seems like a drawback to me.

[Salty]

Capturing your Speed seems like a drawback to me.

How so? I view it as nothing but an advantage.

[Andrew21]

Capturing your Speed seems like a drawback to me.

What if the LEO hits you with LIDAR when you were actually doing the speed limit and you had no camera. You vs LEO in court=Your loss.

What Salty said...big advantage to have this on your side

[OZONE]

This has got to be the same company that made the CR-200HD. Thats bascially what this cam is with added benefit of GPS. How come you didn't change your speed stamp to MPH? Are you sure its possible to do that?

There is an option in the settings to change to MPH or km/h. I'm Canadian so I'm leaving it km/h.

[OZONE]

Thanks Ozone for the review. I'm going to pick this up soon.

Question though. It was bought out before on another thread about this camera. In the daytime, if you look at the corners on the bottom, they are pretty dark. Was this the camera or your car?

The corners are slightly dark but nothing I find overly annoying. The bottom left black spot is the rear view mirror mount. Just my bad camera mounting skills.

[OZONE]

Thanks for the review, I think I'll be purchasing this as well. When you mark and encounter as parking mode, or flick the camera, does it store the file in a different folder safe from getting deleted?

On a side note, the power saving addon is to be used, from my understanding, if you have the camera running all the time. Even when the car is off.

Ill post a picture of what I mean when I get home. It labels the file as an event if there is a large enough jolt. And it can be saved for an extended period of time.

*sorry for triple posting, I'm on my phone and can't really copy and paste :/ *