I’m fortunate!
Despite the hours spent driving, I managed to avoid being involved in a road collision. Driving in the UK is safer than in most countries, but it only takes one distracted driver to ruin your day. I fitted a dashcam to my car some time ago, but the most eventful video recorded so far was one with a deer trying to cross the road just in front of me. While I’m still waiting to record that viral dashcam clip that will give me millions of views on YouTube – I hope that deer was the most serious incident recorded by my dashcam.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at the new hardware I just installed in my 12-year-old Audi Q3 – a 70mai A810 Dashcam (AmazonUK|AmazonUS). You can use the 70MAIBFCM5 code to get an extra 5% off on top of the sale prices.
70mai A810 Dashcam
Just from looking at the package, I appreciate the 70mai A810 Dashcam for the form factor. It offers a more compact footprint than the last dashcam I used. That’s important, as the space taken by the dashcam subtracts from the overall view available to you as a driver. That’s not the only feature that stands out. I will certainly test 4K video quality and HDR-enabled footage, but 70mai also sent me another box that enables mobile connectivity for this kit. Between access from your phone (and phone notifications), dual camera and enhanced resolution – 70mai A810 Dashcam seems like a great deal on paper – as all of this is priced just under £200 (with the 4G hardware kit being available for an extra £49 as an accessory).
Is it worth your money?
Retrofitting my Audi Q3
My car isn’t the youngest. I have been driving it for several years. The car is 12 years old, and it seems like a perfect model to test a dashcam like this. With the smaller footprint, I was able to fit a 70mai A810 Dashcam in the centre of my windscreen without obstructing my vision and hiding the camera behind my rearview mirror. I’m avoiding installing on the sides, as my wipers don’t extend this far, and the last thing I want is to obstruct the camera view (let’s face it, the odds of crashing in the bad weather are greater).
The most hated part of the process is hiding wires. I had the pleasure of driving a Skoda (2022) with a USB-C port near the mirror, but my old and trusty Audi had none of these pleasures, and I was forced to jam the wires between the windscreens and the column. I wish the default USB cable was about 0.5m longer, as I failed to reach my rear socket, but until I get a short extension lead, the front 12V socket has to do.
As my kit contains the rear camera (which also can be used to monitor the interior), I had to connect that too (it plugs directly into the dashcam, and the cable is long enough to comfortably route it to the back of my Q3). As I own the 4G connect kit – I have options – as the main box plugs into the car’s electronics/fuse box and offers a USB-C power port to aid the installation of 70mai A810 Dashcam (AmazonUK|AmazonUS).
The installation was straightforward, the complicated part was hiding the wires.
Audio/Video
Before I cover the image quality, let me preface this with a statement. Dashcams are inherently disadvantaged at recording details due to a number of compromises: wide-angle optics, space-saving compression and generally the nature of fast-moving objects around. To use 70mai A810 Dashcam, you must decide what works best for you: 1080P60 or 4K25 with HDR. Both settings come with their disadvantages. 4K offers better resolution and HDR to improve the video quality in less favourable conditions at the expense of motion blur caused by limited frame rate. The 1080P60 doubles the frame rate – making each frame sharper, but at a quarter the resolution and without HDR support.
Personally, I found 4K25 to offer better chances to capture details like registration plates from further away. Test how the footage feels before picking one of these settings. You also have options to display/hide overlays like time, speed and coordinates.
Audio
I’m actually impressed with how good the microphone pick-up is, despite me blasting some tunes, singing badly and having a jolly good time. For privacy reasons the camera defaults to the microphone being off – but I strongly recommend turning it on to record possible horns and other important environmental sounds – especially when parked.
Day Driving
I tested 4K25 with HRD and 1080P60 (no point in testing 1080P30) to see what the quality of the recorded footage is. The image from the rear camera is locked to 1080P25 and cannot be changed in dashcam preferences. It offers a nice wide-angle look at what’s behind you, but it’s impossible to read fine details like the reg plates of the cars unless they tailgate you badly.
The main camera when set to 1080P60 provides nice videos to watch despite the challenging light conditions, but I was not able to read any reg plates from that footage. In both cases, the cars were just ahead of me.
Switching over to 4K25, I had much better results despite running half the frames. I was able to read the reg plate from approx 15m away from my car (granted the car was moving in the same as mine direction).
The light was low, as the sun headed towards the sunset, but this was probably as good as dashcams go in these conditions.
Running this setting will cost you approx 500MB of SD card space for each 2min of the footage recorded. 70mai included a 128GB microSD card which at these settings should store approx 8h of footage before complaining about it or starting to overwrite it (depending on your settings).
Night Driving
The dashcam offers advanced colour video during night journeys and in both modes (1080P60 and 4K25HDR) it offers pretty decent image quality considering the limited light sources. Unfortunately, the situation repeats itself with 1080P60 making it extremely hard to read details at close proximity, while 4K provides readable plate at approx 5m-7m.
After reviewing the footage from countryside roads using my car’s beams and motorways when streetlights were present, I was able to make out the car’s type/colour and brand from the video. Unfortunately, reg plates are only readable in close proximity.
I fully expected the rear camera to provide a potato image at night, but in certain situations, the camera can surprise you and I got a decent read on the car plate even against their dipped beams.
Features
Other than making sure nothing runs past your car unnoticed, the 70mai dashcam provides extra features that you can use to complement your use case!
Smarts
Aside from the 70mai mobile app which lets me stream the video footage over the WiFi spot created by the camera, setting all the settings (which is more convenient than using buttons on the unit) – the dashcam comes with some sort of video AI that warns me about lane departures and cars that could potentially cause the danger in front of me.
After 5min video calibration, the system (must be enabled in options) was ready to give me voice prompts. It works pretty well, but it’s not foolproof. Lane departure aid requires clear road markings and doesn’t fare well when used against the sun and HGVs are not always recognised as “cars” when approached at speed. In theory, it can spot humans too, but no pedestrians attempted to verify if the feature is working as it should. The system may set your eyes back on the road when you are distracted but it won’t prevent every mishap. Anyone who isn’t a fan of the audio driving instructor can simply turn this off.
4G Hardware kit
The optional gadget enables 70mai dashcam to be accessed remotely. After inserting a data SIM, you can use the 70mai app to receive notifications and see what your car is up to. To get this working, you’ll have to connect the hardware kit to your car’s power system which may be a little tricky if you have never done this before. On the positive side, the dongle comes with a USB-C port which is used to power the camera – which means that your 12V ports in the car remain unused. 70mai has pretty good tutorials on the page about it. As this is provided as an optional accessory, expect to drop an extra $60 on it.
The kit measures the voltage of your car’s battery and you can select the minimum voltage level which is required for the kit to be powered on to prevent your car battery from being completely discharged.
The hardware kit enables other extra features like parking time-lapses, routes and active car location. These may be especially useful for anyone sharing the car with family. Routes bring a complete map of the journeys taken with times, distance and max speed monitoring.
With a data plan enabled, the kit also sends phone notifications when parking settings are triggered and lets you sneakily launch the dashcam preview remotely if you want to see what’s going on around the car.
Troubleshooting tip
Almost everything went well during the installation. If you get stuck with a hardware kit unable to detect settings for your SIM card after the firmware update – unbind it and start again. That worked like a charm for me.
Final thoughts
I swapped my previous dashcam and I’m sticking with the 70mai A810 Dashcam (AmazonUK|AmazonUS) – it offers fun features while providing that extra security against claims if one should happen. At just under £200 (and even cheaper during Black Friday sales) you can nab yourself a piece of mind and perhaps even film something interesting to share with your friends and family. So go ahead – treat yourself to a shiny new upgrade to your car. If you have any questions, let me know in this Reddit thread.
🆓📈💵 – See the transparency note for details.
