Dashcam experts, I'm looking for a portable dashcam that I can carry around in my luggage when I travel and rent a car. The recommendation I can find so far all seems to be suction cup based dashcam that mounts high on the windshield.

When I'm renting a car, obviously I'm not going to pry the trims and do cable management. And mounting a dashcam with the power wires hanging down from the windshield is not ideal imo. Having a hanging wire swinging in the cabin is a distraction while driving at best, and invitation to a smashed window at worst.

Is there any product out there that I can mount either low on the windshield, so the cables drape on the dashboard instead of hanging down, or suction/clip on the dashboard itself without being on the windshield? Does this type of camera/mounting mechanism even exist?

I feel like every best dash cam post that goes through "what to look for" in dashcams has either been removed from the sub or is written entirely by chat gpt. So I'm trying to get a human version out here, let me know if I need to edit and add more things to this.

TLDR: Don’t buy cloud storage, install the dashcam properly, don’t buy garmin, buy blackvue and price sheet for dashcams 

First thing to figure out:

WHY do you need the dash cam?

It's gonna change what you prioritise because no model is gonna have everything (and if they say they do, the resolution is probably shitty)

So if you're mainly going for accident evidence for insurance claims (first, stop driving the wrong way on the taconic state parkway iykyk) then you need a really good front and back cam with night vision. and the resolution of the video footage needs to be high enough for license plates to be visible in motion. So, splurge on 4K ultra HD dashcams, only ones that won't get motion blurred.

When you live in a dodgy neighbourhood, that's when you need parking mode and a cabin camera too in case of robberies. A 360 degree camera view would be the definite plus here. Also, if you're an uber driver, please please get the interior camera, learning the hard way.

Second thing to figure out:

WHAT to look for when buying a dashcam?

1. FAKES. There's a lot of fake 4K res dash cams  on amazon now, so first, try not to buy random ones from the site, only if they're a good brand. And if you can, go to a dashcam store because they can show you the actual resolution and turn off all the lights to show the nighttime resolution.

2. Speaking of night vision, you need good resolution here the most or else all the license plates are going to look like blobs if the camera can't adjust for exposure from headlights in the dark. If you can't test this in person, whatever brand you're buying there's probably gonna be a youtube video testing it and they show footage there. Vortex Radar on youtube has a hyperfixation on them clearly and reviews every model that comes out 

3. If you can spring for one with GPS connectivity then go for that, especially if you're likely to go on road trip a lot or drive through suburbs or forests. A lot of people drive like maniacs there because it's deserted a lot of the time, and it's good to have a third party device recording location. But if you have a newer car, it'll do it anyway so not very important. Important if you still drive a honda accord from 2009.

4. the install. you need to make sure you can install it yourself, and mount it properly. The mounting style varies from model to model but you need to get it right and test then retest or else you'll be leaving blind spots on purpose. there's a bunch of youtube tutorials to watch for the install.

• How To Install A Dash Cam by lens of james
• How to SAFELY Install a Dash Camera in a Car with Airbags by chrisfix

1. STORAGE. Do NOT get cloud storage. It's convenient but a) you have to pay a subscription fee and b) to me, it's unreliable. Get a good quality SD card, format it as regularly as you can and store the footage in the cloud you're already paying for like icloud or google1.

Third thing to figure out:

WHICH dash cam to buy?

So obviously there's a lot of answers for this. So now that you know what you need and what you need to keep in mind, you can look up relevant specs yourself. I've made a little sheet here with  the most popular ones that I'd recommend with their basic res specs and prices. 

Check sheet here

Top pick:
My top pick out of all of these has to be the BlackVue Elite 9. It is very expensive but imo Blackvue is still the best in the game. you get rear and front with really good night vision video resolution, and it's a very popular brand so really easy to find install tutorials.

Bottom Pick:
I know everyone is expecting me to shit on Viofo because their units have been glitchy and the customer service makes you want to tear your hair out but at least you can get those in under 200 bucks. But the single camera garmin X310, PLEASE. It's 400 bucks for one camera and it can't read license plates from 2 feet away in parking mode even. Will also put rove here because it’;s not the best but it’s cheaper and so i don’t think it does any harm on a tight budget. 

So let me know if this was more/less helpful than the AI slop that's in this sub now. Open to your top/bottom picks and anything else I should add here.

I live in the south, and every summer, when my car sits in the open, the cabin temperature easily goes off the charts.

Recently I've noticed my dash cam keeps beeping errors on startup, saying memory card error or stopping the recording on its own. I pulled the card and tested it on my computer, and it was completely dead. Couldn't read or write at all. That's the second Samsung high endurance card I've killed this year. Those cards shouldn't be that fragile.

I used an infrared thermometer and found that after baking in the sun, the black shell of the dash cam stuck to the windshield reached nearly seventy eight degrees Celsius, about one hundred seventy two degrees Fahrenheit. The memory card is inserted directly into the side of the unit, which means it's working nonstop inside an eighty degree mini oven. Of course it's going to die.

As long as the camera is stuck to the glass in direct sunlight, this is an unsolvable physical loop.

I've been researching those hidden cams that don't stick to the glass, like the Mangoal vehicle specific ones. I noticed their card slot is located on the lower side of the replacement shell. The whole unit hides behind the rearview mirror, basically sitting in the physical shadow of the headliner and the mirror itself, away from direct sunlight, and it doesn't touch the burning hot glass at all.

I want to ask the guys who have used these hidden housings. After baking in the summer heat, do your memory cards still freeze up or die frequently? Are the heat dissipation channels in there enough? I really don't want to spend two hundred yuan on a new memory card every summer.

So I have the Viofo 229 plus from last March but I see its unavailable on Amazon, and I see that what I assume is a newer model, the A329, also Unavailable. In fact all the A229 models and newer seem to come up unavailable. Its only showing Viofo Dual and 129 as available. Theres a deal for $235 for the a129 plus Duo and a 256 SD CARD but I thought this model was getting kind old?

I like my current model and with storage being so high Im looking to get a good 2k that will still get good photos of plates in an accident.