I had it sent direct from Korea where it is manufactured. (This is no bad thing as Korea and Russia are the main big markets for black box recorders, and it is NOT some chinese piece of tat) UK importers are selling them for up to £260 but I got mine including the hardwiring kit (normally an extra £30) for just over £150. When compared to the likes of the Roadhawk and the various other options IMO this camera trumps the lot of them for the spec it offers.
It mounts very neatly in the VX. I routed the cable behind the windscreen surround and to the back of the sill pockets where I placed the power control box. The wires for this Power Magic Pro are then routed to the engine bay where I put the excess wire and cigarette adapters in a waterproof box. If you did not have the hard wiring kit you would just plug the fag lighter adapter straight into the cars socket.
The sensitivety level is way to much even on minimum settings. This may be due to the harsher ride of the VX or the way I have it mounted. I have it set to record 1 minute incident files and 2 minute general driving and parking mode files. Rarely on B roads does it get all the way through a 2 minute file before being triggered, beeping an alert noise and going onto an incident file. This does not really matter as everything is still seamlessly captured it would just be nice that when you come to view the list of files in the player that any occurance would jump out at you and be easy to spot. On smoother roads the G sensors perform well responding instantly to harsh braking and sudden changes of direction.
I love the styling of it and the fact that it is so compact with no external aerials or anything. The voice prompts and customisable LED colours are a good feature too (you can select which ones you want on if the novelty wears off)
The free Android phone app works well effectively offering a scaled done version of the PC software. Could be usefull at the roadside as you simply plug the micro SD card into your phone and you are able to access the video files straight away.
The GPS speed, time and date are all spot on and the Google maps overlay you can have on playback is very accurate.
You can pause anywhere in a video and save an image file. You can also export any clip and save it to your PC with a single click.
Spotted!
Problems encountered -
Nothing really major. It did annoy me that I 'lost' some footage that I specifically went out to get including various tests with voice over explanations that I did.
Also missed out on showing you a seriously dangerous overtake by a car I was following, very nearly caused a high speed head on crash. Having the camera seems to attract such incidents, never seen anything like that before. The thing was that it was only addressing around 1.7gb out of the 16gb card so had started to loop over the oldest stuff hence by the time I got round to looking at it on the PC what I wanted had gone. This was my fault really as I should of formatted the card to start with. Having done that it works perfectly and uses all 16gb. If you use 15fps mode it does not seem to like LED shop signs, petrol station price boards, some street lights and some rear car lights. The issue being that it records them as a fast flicker. This does not effect the viewing of traffic lights or most cars rear lights which is the important thing as any descrepancy here could prove costly as evidence.
Some things I wish it did have -
Password protection of the files. This is something the roadhawk has which would be a good feature on the Blackvue. I don't like the idea of potentially incriminating footage being so easilly accessable to all who install the S/W. Maybe this may come in a future firmware update.
Street view on the Google maps playback would be very cool to have.
Locking of incident files. Given the sensitivty it is probably just as well it does not do this but it might be good if incident files could be marked as secure so they can not be recorded over. No real need to in practice though really as even on the highest quality setting with only a 8GB card you can still record for several hours after any given point in time before it will start looping over. So plenty of time to get home, also you would probably unplug it anyway if you did catch something really important.
The ability to merge or edit files before exporting them. This would be good if you where using it as a track day camera and wanted files of more than the maximum 4 minute duration. Nothing to stop you saving them individually and editing back together, it's just more hassle.
Overall if you're in the market for a black box type car camera I can highly reccommend the Blackvue DR400G-HD II. The previous models may also be worth a look if you want to save a bit of money and are happy enough with it having a lesser spec. Avoid the DR400G-HD I as this had minor issues that the revised version has addressed as well as having extra functions added. The two can be distinguised by the second edition having a black and chrome rectangle around the lense.
Click for video (crappy screen capture programme is a bit laggy and distorted)
Edited by -Dab-of-Oppo-, 28 October 2012 - 08:36 PM.
Might be worth messaging the seller to see?
