I think my Nextbase 412GW has croaked so I'm on the lookout for a replacement but not a Nextbase this time - I've been very unimpressed with it ever since I bought it. I particularly don't like the touch-screen buttons which only seem to work when they feel like it .

I know people on here have recommended various makes and models but doing a search just brings up threads mostly relating to wiring one in so I'd be grateful if any of you good people could share your experiences of other makes.

I have been a Viofo user for several years now. I had the A119 for a while then upgraded to the A129 duo, followed by an upgrade to the A139. The A129 duo is now in my wife's car and going strong after 6yrs. I've found each one of them to be bullet proof and great value. 

The best thing to do is decide what you want from a dashcam; 2k, 60hz, GPS, parking, Bluetooth remote control, voice prompts, screen or no screen, cloud storage, local storage, the list goes on. Oh, and decide on a budget. £200-250 will get you a Viofo with all the features I've listed and more (no cloud storage though)

My priorities were an internal capacitor and not a battery, sharp picture quality to capture number plates and small footprint. It also had to be front and rear, the A139 has 3ch and runs 3 separate cameras. 

I highly recommend the A139 if you want front, rear and internal. Or the A129 duo if you just want front and rear. The good thing about the A139 is that you can attach the internal camera with stick on stick velcro, and in the event of an accident or someone approaching your car (road rage, police etc) you can grab the camera and point it in any direction. I have mine by the centre courtesy light with myself and the drivers side window in view. 

Hopw some of that helps. 

7 minutes ago, Jonro2009 said:

The good thing about the A139 is that you can attach the internal camera with stick on stick velcro, and in the event of an accident or someone approaching your car (road rage, police etc) you can grab the camera and point it in any direction.

I have a very cheap NextBase, pretty cr*p really, but it does have a magnetic mount. A while back I had a very aggressive driver pull up beside me screaming and gesticulating wildly. I simply snapped my dashcam off it's mount, and pointed it straight at him. He immediately stopped his shenanigans, and sped off. Not what a dashcam is designed for, but stil, even a rubbish one was a good deterrent...

I've had a look at the Viofo website and as I suspected it's a Chinese company which rules it out for me, I'm afraid, however good their products are.

I wanted to review an incident that occurred on Saturday and found my 412GW had not recorded that part of the journey. In fact it only recorded the last 20 minutes of a 1½ hour trip. When I looked through the card there were still recordings from several years back. It's supposed to work on a 'first-in-first-out' rolling basis so something's screwed. For the moment I've reformatted the card - Nextbase recommend doing that at regular intervals and I'd neglected to do it - so I'll see if that makes any difference.

12 minutes ago, mjt said:

...  as I suspected it's a Chinese company which rules it out for me, I'm afraid, however good their products are.

A lofty principal, though I have no idea how you'll manage as China has infiltrated every single bit of developed world manufacturing! It's hilarious that even the 'green' nutters advocating renewables will not admit that the manufacture of our wind turbines, and solar panels are all made in China, so actually contributing to the pollution they profess to be against. 

Oh, and yes, I reformat my NextBase card every month or so as if ignored, it becomes very glitchy!

I was under the impression that our wind turbines were mostly manufactured in Europe though I suppose some components could be Chinese.

Anyway, if everyone woke up to the danger of China becoming so dominant maybe we could all do our bit and collectively make a difference.

With all the shenanigans going on in Whitehall over the last few weeks maybe there are some on here who think an autocratic regime would be an improvement - I don't!

23 minutes ago, mjt said:

...With all the shenanigans going on in Whitehall over the last few weeks maybe there are some on here who think an autocratic regime would be an improvement - I don't!

Sadly, when a government legalises the locking down of it's citizens in their own homes, and the official opposition to that government agrees, we are already in an autocratic regime. In addition, when you have a government that legislates it's illegal to buy a pint in your local pub, BUT, if you order a Scotch egg to go with it it's all good, you also know you have a government who has not only lost the plot, but hasn't a friggin' clue what they are doing 

1 hour ago, mjt said:

When I looked through the card there were still recordings from several years back. It's supposed to work on a 'first-in-first-out' rolling basis so something's screwed. 

Were they entire days or just the odd clip?  Some cams permanently save a recording if there was a 'shock' in it.  Meant to be for impacts but a jarring pothole can trigger the sensor as well.

The Nextbase does do that. It's too late to check back on that now but I seem to think there were concurrent sets of files from earlier years. Thinking about it some of that could be explained by the lack of use during the pandemic and the fact that in retirement it gets less use anyway. I don't have a feel for how long it can record before it starts overwriting earlier files. There was one file that was several years earlier and that might have been due to being saved as permanent although none of the cars it's been fitted in have been involved in a collision.

None of that would explain the missing footage from Saturday's trip, though. Also I forgot to mention there were a couple of recent files that were unreadable. I'll give it another chance with the card reformatted and see how it performs.

54 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

Sadly, when a government legalises the locking down of it's citizens in their own homes, and the official opposition to that government agrees, we are already in an autocratic regime.

I think this is where you and I have to agree to disagree. I don't think you are prepared to accept the seriousness of the situation we were in. Admittedly it was made more serious by the reluctance to act quickly enough but to me that shows the government didn't want to impose such draconian measures.

2 minutes ago, mjt said:

I think this is where you and I have to agree to disagree. I don't think you are prepared to accept the seriousness of the situation we were in. 

I entirely accepted the seriousness of the 1st lockdown, no one knew what we were dealing with. However, after the 1st month. there was enough 'scientific' evidence, worldwide, that the most vulnerable were the elderly. The average age of death was 84 years old, which to this date has never changed. We could have protected the elderly & most most vulnerable without enforcing such a blunt tool as a generic lockdown. Still, this isn't the place to debate such an issue, (way off DashCam topic LOL) and the current public inquiry into our leaders actions will vindicate the view that the government could have made such a better job than they actually did...

I wasn't defending their competence, since they clearly didn't have any, just their motives.

Well I have to put my support in the Nexbase camp, I have used them for years in both my private vehicles and on my company ones, I use the 412 but recently fitted the 522Gw to my wifes little KIa+ great quality with fron and rear camera fitted, with all the modern gimmicks like Alexa SOS call.... 

I have had cause to submit a number of dash cam incidents and can confir the clarity of the footage has secured some good results. 

 

 

I made the mistake of buying into the NextBase hype, I got the 622GW package offer with the 256gig card, and now wish I didn't as it's useless for my needs, don't get me wrong I don't doubt their way up in the field, and their CS has certainly always been helpful, but the practicality of it is a joke, I paid for the install as well as such things are too much for my ability now, trusted the guy knew his job as they were appointed by NextBase, took maybe 20 minutes or so (that made it hard to swallow paying for it's install), but he pointed out the features generally speaking and went on to his next job.

When I got in the driver's seat to move the car back to it's proper spot, I couldn't even see the camera, it was hidden by the rear-view mirror, so got hold of the installer to say and he said it's only a sticker so move the camera to somewhere more convenient, unfortunately I couldn't as 1 cable was too short (I wanted it on the right hand side of the mirror), so just had to settle for raising it above the mirror, but I can't see a flaming thing on the display, in my mind I pictured being able to have the rear camera displayed to give me better vision, as the rear windows have the privacy and on this car make it very dark, my previous car was perfect, but as I can't even see it how would you ever know of a problem.

So, I am now looking to the rear-view mirror cameras you can get, much bigger display, easier to see than any NextBase unit, so I offer that as a thought, I just wish I got one of these instead, but others may have far better info than I do as it's my first camera, but I spent a long time watching for such devices, so I have seen many options, but I keep going back to the rear-view mirror style as they are so easy to see etc, not sure it helps much, but that's my experience so far.

6 minutes ago, Alans Car said:

...trusted the guy knew his job as they were appointed by NextBase, took maybe 20 minutes or so (that made it hard to swallow paying for it's install), but he pointed out the features generally speaking and went on to his next job.

That's sad, but TBH, isn't really a fault with 'NextBase'. I have installed 4 DashCams over the years, all myself, and the 1st thing I do is locate the unit on the windscreen to ensure it is in easy view, and easy reach to access the buttons. Once that is done, then you spend the time laying, hiding the cable. It's just a shame that this wasn't done to ensure the location, which is absolutely critical to it's use, wasn't done with your consent...

I would bite the bullet, and get it re-done. You'll never be satisfied with it otherwise.

Well, it is a fact they have reg's to follow, complicated by the massive mirror surround seriously reducing options, I would have put it on the right of the mirror, but the regs restrict just how much that can be, something the fitter would have known as part of his job, there is a small space allowed on NextBase's search results, noted for if you have a cabin cam as well, I don't blame NextBase for that, I simply don't rate the unit at all given the restrictions of it for my needs, but this is taking away from the Op, but Thanks for the thought.

1 hour ago, Alans Car said:

Well, it is a fact they have reg's to follow, complicated by the massive mirror surround seriously reducing options, I would have put it on the right of the mirror, but the regs restrict just how much that can be, something the fitter would have known as part of his job, there is a small space allowed on NextBase's search results, noted for if you have a cabin cam as well, I don't blame NextBase for that, I simply don't rate the unit at all given the restrictions of it for my needs, but this is taking away from the Op, but Thanks for the thought.

I had front and rear cameras on my Mk5 and it was easy enought to have it in a position where it could be seen. Granted I didnt use it as a reverse camera, but in all honesty that is not what they are designed for. 

There are one or two things you can do with your current set up. You could follow the advice above and have it moved somewhere of your choosing. Keeping in mind what you said about the fitter, you can just ask him to lay the wires and you stick it into position. The other option would be to use the AV out function and connect it to the back of the Sync head unit, then it would display on the unit when you select the AV input. 

The final option would be to use the Nextbase app and have your phone in a cradle, using the phone display to show the rear camera view. 

Do you have the camera screen on all the time then, if you want to use it as a reverse camera? 

You can retrofit a camera to the Mk5 very easily, if you have the ability which I see you don't unfortunately. Depending where you are though there are people that can fit it for you. 

22 minutes ago, Jonro2009 said:

The other option would be to use the AV out function and connect it to the back of the Sync head unit, then it would display on the unit when you select the AV input. 

The final option would be to use the Nextbase app and have your phone in a cradle, using the phone display to show the rear camera view. 

Do you have the camera screen on all the time then, if you want to use it as a reverse camera? 

Whoa, these are questions I asked directly to the fitter if it was possible, and he said No, I don't know if he was actually bound to do\say this, maybe because it involved a 3rd party device, so would (or could) affect the NextBase warranty, or if a problem came up, he would have to sort it or something, as opposed to saying it's a NextBase issue, even if it was simply used as a cop out on such basis maybe, but this is taking too much away from the Op (apologies), that was not my intent, just highlighting my experience and regret so far and suggesting rear-view mirror camera as an option, I have shed loads of questions about the car, I will cover this in my own thread rather than here, may be a while though, but Thanks for that. 🍺

6 minutes ago, Alans Car said:

Whoa, these are questions I asked directly to the fitter if it was possible, and he said No, I don't know if he was actually bound to do\say this, maybe because it involved a 3rd party device, so would (or could) affect the NextBase warranty, or if a problem came up, he would have to sort it or something, as opposed to saying it's a NextBase issue, even if it was simply used as a cop out on such basis maybe, but this is taking too much away from the Op (apologies), that was not my intent, just highlighting my experience and regret so far and suggesting rear-view mirror camera as an option, I have shed loads of questions about the car, I will cover this in my own thread rather than here, may be a while though, but Thanks for that. 🍺

I sent you a message.