SkyGenius 1080p Night Vision Uber Dash Cam Review
This dashcam is very well priced at around $30. It has received decent reviews on Amazon. I used this dashcam to record the interior of the car, especially at night due to the large IR leds that is used in night mode. This camera only has one lens so it only records the interior of the car. This is one of those Chinese OEM cameras that gets relabeled by a bunch of different companies. You can purchase the camera from Amazon with the link below.
Here are the features of the camera (as written on Amazon):
- 1080P Full HD Recording at 30 FPS with Infra-red LED Night Vision and Automatic Motion Detection
- 170 degrees ultra wide angle lens, even in a small space can have a greater depth of field
- 2.7 inch TFT LCD screen; With motion detection and cycle recording
- Support high capacity micro-SD card
- G-Sensor technology
Here are my thoughts about the camera:
- This camera was meant to be a dashcam so the screen faces the driver and the lens faces the road. Because of its night vision capability, I was going to be using the lens to capture the interior of the car, especially at night.
- The camera was much smaller than I thought, so it won’t get in the way of your view on the road.
- Installation of the dashcam on the windshield was fairly easy. The suction cup attaches to the windshield. The tricky part was to put the dashcam in the middle of the windshield towards the bottom so it wouldn’t block my view of the road. The bad part is that now the screen faces the windshield, so you won’t be able to see how the camera is aimed. The best thing to do is center the cam and aim it towards the middle of the backseat so it has an equal view of both rear seats. Depending on how far the bottom of the windshield is, you can see both the front passenger and the driver.
- The mount needs to be reversed so that the lens can be pointed towards the interior of the car. It can be twisted to accomplish this installation.
- The power input is a mini USB port (cable is provided). It is a straight USB cable so it may cause issues when installing it into the dashcam when it is mounted high up on the windshield. Cable management would be needed to keep the cord from the view of the camera (as seen in the video below)
- A micro-SD card is not included in this purchase, but you can buy cheap micro-SD cards elsewhere.
- Night vision needs to be enabled each time you turn on the camera by pressing power while the camera is on but not recording. Make sure to do this each and every time you drive, which is fairly annoying.
- Image quality: The night time image quality is quite good, even in complete darkness. You can’t see the faces very well, but you can make out how many people are in the car. Just make sure to have your interior lights on when the doors open. This will help the camera capture faces as they are getting in/out of your car in case you need this data later. With the interior lights on, everything can be seen clearly in the car (along with many other dashcams). This has one of the best night time performance of any dashcam I have tried so far.
- Audio Quality: it is also very good, but I did not have a chance to drive at high speeds to review road noise contribution to the recording. Other reviews on Amazon noted road noise affecting the audio due to the camera’s size, but should be sufficient for Uber and Lyft drivers.
- Other Amazon reviews noted that this dashcam does not delete the oldest files. It just comes up as SD card full. You will need to periodically format the card to make sure the card has room for the new videos. You can format the card directly on the device.
Summary
I really liked this dashcam for its night time interior performance. With the lights on, this camera captures clear images of the interior of the car. It is very well priced at under $30. My only concern is reliability and the fact that it doesn’t do loop recording. This is a generic camera made by a Chinese OEM and other companies relabel it to sell on Amazon. Most people are satisfied with their purchase (3.7 stars out of 5 after 55 reviews) and I was fairly happy with the performance of the camera. I can’t comment on how long it will last, but for $30, it is worth the risk.
My recommendation is that this camera is best used as an interior facing camera for Uber drivers, and would be a great combination to the Zeroedge Dashcam. Some noted that it works well as a dash cam so if you don’t need to record the interior, you can face it forward and only capture the audio from the interior of the car. For the price, it seems to be the best dash cam.
Below is the night time test video.
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