Not long ago, I mentioned that I would be reviewing this Asus Reco Classic Car Dashcam and this is what I think after two weeks of using it. Before I go into more details, let me recap on what is inside this box. It comes with a car camcorder, car charger, GPS mount holder on suction, self-adhesive mount holder, self-adhesive cable clips and instructions. Setting up is very straightforward. I do find it strange why they would provide two holders, one with GPS and one without. Instead, I think a neater solution would be to have the GPS built into the camcorder with an option to turn it off.
This has a built-in screen so you can see what you’re recording and it also allows playback while in the car. This is a really nice feature as our old dashcam required us to install an app on our smartphone if we wanted to see a live feed and make any adjustments (not while driving). I love the wide field of vision which allows you to see further to the sides.
I have bought a 10x speed 32 GB micro SD card to record the video. If you are wondering how big the size of your micro SD card needs to be, it all depends on your own needs. The bigger the size, the longer it can record without wiping off the old data and also depends on the video resolution you would like. There are four video resolution to choose from: 720P/30FPS, 720P/60FPS, 1080P_HDR/30FPS and 1080P/30FPS. If you want detailed images in limited visibility or high-contrast environments like dark tunnels or bright sunlight, you would probably need 1080P_HDR/30FPS.
These are the footage images I took during the same journey (grey, raining day afternoon) for:
720P30FPS
720P60FPS
1080P30FPS
1080P30FPSHD
The 1080P_HDR/30FPS appears to provide the best quality footage. Using this setting over the others allows you to see the number plates clearer and they are sharper from further. The 720P/30FPS image is alright but you would need to be quite close to the vehicle before you could see the number plate as clearly.
The night footage can sometimes can be quite blurred due to the weather or when there’s too much dazzle from the lights. But when you’re driving in and around town at 30 mph or less, it comes through quite well.
It also comes with a built-in G-sensor which triggers an emergency record function in the event of an accident, saving and locking down the latest footage in a separate file. So far I have not used this yet.
Another feature is the built-in safety features like forward collision and lane departure warning systems. I put it on the low settings and it is still quite sensitive and picks up random events even when there is no car in front of me or when I’m driving straight on a straight road etc. I decided to turn this feature off.
I like that I can select the setting on the dashcam itself instead of using a laptop to access all the settings including date and time. The menu settings are intuitive and are easy to navigate and apply changes. The one option that I wish there was a setting for is to turn the screen off. It is always on in operation and some people might find this distracting.
Overall this is very easy to set it up and use. The quality of the footage is very good. As well as recording the video content, it also records the audio too though this is a setting which can be turned off. I would recommend it if you are looking for an inexpensive dashcam. For more information, check out Asus website. You can buy it from Amazon and other stores.
Check out my video review here: https://youtu.be/k-Z9cFnGjW8
Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review however all thoughts and opinions remain our own.