Nextbase 612GW Dash Cam review: A touchscreen, stylish design, and features galore - pryorcabon1983

At a Glance

Adept's Rating

Pros

• 3-in touchscreen reveal
• Nice styling and overall design
• Warm, detailed day video

Cons

• Weak unrefined light captures

Our Finding of fact

Everything about the 612GW. including the touchscreen and 4K UHD day telecasting is top-notch. Everything that is, leave out the low-incandescent video which is enervated. With the headlights on, it's fine, but you stool pronounce that of many dash cams. A great camera for many users, a non-starter for roughly.

Nextbase's 612GW dart cam successful rather the impression when I popped it outer of the box. First off, it's the only dedicated panache cam I've tried with a touch display. Skin senses makes using the camera super-simplified. Eliminating the buttons lends a clean and uncluttered aspect to what is easily one of the more chichi dash cams to ill-natured our portal.

The 612GW as wel has GPS structured into the bestrid, takes very bye-bye and night video (capable 4K UHD!), has a battery that allows it to run for a some transactions away from the 12-volt, and even offloads via a phone app.

The solely negative is the low-light captures, which are extraordinary of the weaker I've seen recently when it comes to peripheral detail.

Design and features

When it comes to looks, the 612GW is the real deal. The brushed atomic number 13 case, the 3-inch, wide-aspect color touch display with a polarized blaze reductions separate out, and mount with integrated GPS are wholly prepossessing and very functional.

Nextbase

The 612GW is a cut above when IT comes to appearance and styling. Though its lighter color will ward off fire u, it also makes the camera more detectable.

Arsenic I aforementioned up top, there aren't the usual clusters of buttons, only power on/inactive on top and the protect video button on the right. There are three ports: the miniskirt-USB power connection along top, the SD card expansion slot along the remaining, and the mini-HDMI display output connected the right lateral of the unit. Eastern Samoa you can offload and watch picture from the Nextbase phone app, that makes the 612GW one of the most various viewers around: straight USB connect, card reader, phone and direct output to displays.

Nextbase includes some sucking and semi-permanent sticky mounts, which come with the GPS unit via a protean-imperativeness (via a circular nut) ball socket. Likewise bundled are auxiliary power to mini-USB, and miniskirt-USB to Character A cables.

Nextbase

All the goodies in the box: suction mount, semi-permanent saddle horse, power/USB cable length, data USB cable.

The on-board camera is equal to of taking 4K UHD (3840 by 2160) and 1440p video at 30 frames per second, too Eastern Samoa 1080p at 60 fps or 30 fps. Fair warning: The file sizes for 2160p are rather large—the company and I both urge at to the lowest degree a 64GB SD card for the 4K UHD. The docs talk about a 7-lens with a 150-stage field. I'll subscribe to Nextbase's word for the lens numeration. Whatsoever is being used, it's quite a good—credibly the best optics I've seen in a scare away River Cam foreign of Thinkware's.

Nextbase forgoes bad number one wood tech such as lane departure and hit warnings, sleep alerts, etc. What IT does provide is audible feedback, or announcements such as recording, not recording, video mode, etc. There are different playback modes. One of my exclusively complaints is that there's no way to hold a snapshot without switching to photo mode. You can always grab a screenshot later, but…

The 612GW likewise has two parking modes: standard (for hardwired installations), and intelligent. The latter relies on the battery with the camera in standby mood and the g-detector powered up. If the g-sensor detects an affect, information technology powers on the camera and records for five minutes. If not disturbed excessively, Nextbase claims raised to several days of coverage. Vava's Dash Cams are the only other cams I'm aware of that do this trick.

Nextbase

The 612GW display is precise and supports touch, but is perhaps not quite arsenic high answer as this picture would come through seem.

As I said up front, using the 612GW is really slow out-of-pocket to its touchscreen. While I might've opted for somewhat higher vertical resolution than 960 by 240 (the fonts have whatever jaggies), the menus are nicely thought out and a breeze to pilot.

Other features let in time-lapse photos and registering the camera to a particular license plate number. As mentioned, in that respect's an app that provides a live view and the power to view videos.

IDG

The Nextbase Cam Viewer software's main screen with a live view and options.

Note that to gravel both settings to take charge (the screen recoverer/off function for instance) you must turn the tv camera off then on once more.

Performance

By default, the 612GW saves both depression- and countertenor-resolution versions of all capture. The high-resolution day video was precise nice indeed, with plenty of point and a warm color palette.

IDG

We have zero complaints approximately the 612GW's daytime video. This is the 2160p and the detail is a testament to superordinate optics. We static recommend 1080p which provides enough contingent with 25% of 2160p's file away size of it.

The camera defaults to 4K UHD (3840 by 2160), and it does actually have the optics to  bewitch at least more or less of the extra detail that resolution is capable of. But filing cabinet sizes are ALIR larger than those of 1080p, and the 2160p gave my PC a slightly hard clip during playback (Hint: You need a pretty modern GPU). I'm guessing that device playback has something to make out with the low-resoluteness files. Sharp, detailed 2160p is a nice capability, only 1440p operating theater 1080p might be a better stake for everyday habit, despite the 64GB SD visiting card Nextbase includes.

The 612GW's night telecasting when the headlights are happening is also quite expert. It's the reduced-deficient captures (parked with the headlights off) that's questionable. Though you can easily make out the diction on signs nearby, that's sole because of mirrored street incandescent. In that location was little point in the darker areas, and adding brightness in post production, which increases detail with some cameras, resulted in a washed-unsuccessful, grainy image. You can see it in the pictures below.  Palpate free to download the image and stress processing IT yourself.

IDG

What give notice we enjoin? This is the darkest video we've seen in a piece, and furthermost darker than the actual scene. We've seen much better from Sony EXMOR sensors, so it may be the superfluous resolution future day into play.  You hind end see details, but only where the streetlight directly above the elevator car is reflected.

IDG

This is a rock-bottom-light night charm after the Nextbase-advisable microcode update—nobelium improvement to speak of. For capturing a general picture of what's leaving happening totally some you, the 612GW is imperfect, though details connected surfaces reflecting light are clear.

While I've been telling you in my most past dash cam reviews that the night scene is not American Samoa light as the camera makes it look, in this case I have to tell you that it's not nearly as dark as the 612GW's capture makes IT seem.

The kicker is, we've seen superb night and low-light video from the Sony EXMOR sensors. Nextbase explained to me that it has to do with the higher resolution. That whitethorn be, but it does limit the camera's utility in some surveillance situations.

The 612GW runs only a tad warm, and is rated for performance between minus 40 degrees and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It's warrantied for a single year.

Great for day, suppress your headlights on at night

For the near part, the 612GW is a fantastic dash cam. The touchscreen and extra-detailed 2160p television are certainly worthwhile design flourishes and best of breed. But the low-incandescent captures bequeath be an outcome for few.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/402573/nextbase-612gw-dash-cam-review.html

Posted by: pryorcabon1983.blogspot.com

Share this post