UKC

Hi folks,
hope you are all good.

Looking to buy an in car dash camera as our insurance company have told us they will offer a discount of up to £50 if we have one.

Does anyone have any recommendations for one? Been looking at a Transcend DrivePro 200 which is quite cheap and gets a good review below:

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/accessories-tyres/85715/transcend-drivepro-200

It's the first one I've looked at so no idea! Can anyone offer any good advice?

Thanks in advance, Den

In reply to Denni:

It'll probably cost you a lot more than the fifty quid you save, then help incriminate you in any incident and put your insurance premium up. It's a lose lose.

In reply to Denni:

If you're getting it for the discount, bear in mind that the expression "up to £50" includes the number zero. And I bet it's closer to zero than it is to £50.
I bought a £40 one from Amazon, but it kept falling off so I gave up on it. Not very helpful I know but a warning not to buy cheap junk from Amazon!

In reply to Denni:

Is it worth buying a £90 camera to save £50 on your car insurance? You might be out of pocket if you change insurers next year for a better deal and they don't offer any discount for having a camera. I would only think it's worth it if you live in an area with a lot of insurance fraud, where having a camera might actually help to show your innocence.

I'm sure you can get apps for your phone that work as dash cams, not sure if an insurer would accept that though?

In reply to Denni:

Apparently, the vehicles most likely to be targetted by insurance fraudsters are sign written vans and luxury cars because they are very likely to be insured. I'd only consider one of I drove a lot of miles.

In reply to Denni:

I looked at the Transcend and decided it was a bit pricey for the spec. It's also quite bulky, and the screen could be distracting - I believe that might be a problem if the plod suspect that you might have been staring at it rather than watching the road...

I have one of these: https://dashcamtalk.com/mini-0801/ with the GPS mount. It's quite compact and, in my car anyway, can be mounted on the windscreen behind the rear view mirror so it can't be seen when driving. I have it hard wired in to an ignition live circuit in the fusebox, so it comes on automatically when I'm driving and turns off when I'm not. I use Samsung 32GB Class 6 micro SD cards in it, which give me about 5 hours continuous HD recording (in seamless 3-minute chunks). It doesn't need Class 10, and some users have reported problems with some Class 10 cards.

I tried the 0803 which is a newer version of the same device with higher video resolution but I didn't get on with the configuration options offered by the firmware at the time, and I decided that the higher video resolution wasn't worth the aggro.

That dashcamtalk web site is good for reviews of other dash cams. It also has fairly active forums where you can get help and advice and dash cams in general, and specific models in particular. Thanks to that site I was able to turn off the annoying sounds that the 0801 makes when it powers on and off. Another good web site for dash cam reviews is http://www.techmoan.com/blog/category/car-dvr-dashcams

You do need to be a bit careful where you buy the 0801 as there appear to be some poorer-spec clones out there. The dashcamtalk forums can be a useful source of information on reputable and less trustworthy vendors. IIRC I bought my from Amazon - fulfilled by them rather than through a marketplace trader so it arrived in days rather than weeks on the slow boat from China, and it's easy to return.

If you (or your insurance company) need a camera that will also protect your car when it's parked, with things like motion detection and IR illumination, then you will need to spend quite a lot more. A lot of the cheap cameras claim to have this kind of feature but they typically don't work well enough to protect the car if its parked up for an extended period. You also have to keep the thing powered on all the time (although their consumption is fairly minimal).

If I can find the time to do it I'll post up a video clip from my dashcam of the idiot in the white BMW who nearly took me out on the A701 the other weekend. It's that sort of incident where a dash cam could end up being useful for proving who was at fault.

In reply to Denni:

In the same way that some insurers are now offering a "discount" to drivers who install black boxes, surely it's only a matter of time before an insurance company uses the dashcam as a wheeze for attracting more business? i.e. you agree to fit a dashcam and we'll give you a "discount". (But we'll hike the premium up next year citing "increased costs and whiplash claims".)

In reply to Denni:

For only a £50 discount, I wouldn't bother - it doesn't seem worth it.

Probably get a better discount by changing insurer: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/car-insurance/