70mai A510 front and rear dashcam review
11 mins read

70mai A510 front and rear dashcam review

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    70mai A510 front rear dashcam review.     70mai A510 front rear dashcam review.

Credit: Future

70mai Dash Cam A510 is front and rear dashcam set. The front camera can record video at a resolution of 2592 x 1944 – that’s a useful step up from Full HD (1920 x 1080), but a little less than 4K (3840 x 2160). The rear dash camera records 1080P Full HD images. The kit comes with a 64GB microSD card for on-board video recording, and the camera can be connected to your phone and controlled by 70mai’s accompanying app. This enables adjustment of settings, along with live video monitoring and playback of recorded footage. But the outstanding appeal of the A510 is that you get all this for a price that, not so long ago, would have barely gotten you a single forward-facing budget dash cam.

Let’s see if the A510 is value for money and not just cheap…

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

Key features

At the heart of the A510 front dash camera is a Sony STARVIS 2 IMX675 sensor. Designed specifically for security cameras and dashboards, these sensors are engineered to have high light sensitivity while generating low image noise. According to Sony, STARVIS 2 sensors can “exhibit sensitivity beyond the human eye as well as outstanding low-noise characteristics. These sensors can accurately reproduce colors and textures of targets that are difficult to discern in dark locations, drastically improving their performance in low-illumination environments”. The sensor can also record in HDR – useful when driving in bright sunlight or at night. Factor in the generous 2592 x 1944 resolution and the front dash camera should, at least on paper, deliver respectable recording quality.

The rear dash camera does not use the same sensor. It maximizes full HD image quality. As we’ll discover later, these lower specs have a profound impact on the rear camera’s actual video quality.

If you buy the optional cable package, the camera is also capable of 24-hour smart parking monitoring, so it will detect a collision even when the engine is switched off and you are away from the car. The system will then automatically record a 30-second video of the detected event and can notify your phone via the included app, as the hardware kit is 4G enabled. The kit can also be used for on-demand monitoring of your car, allowing you to remotely control its surroundings from your phone whenever you want.

Build and manage

The A510’s front dash camera feels solid and well-made. Its boxy shape means you get a practical large LCD screen on the back, while the camera lens sits in a protruding cylinder on the side. This can be turned up and down to aim the camera at the correct area of ​​the road ahead, compensating for the angle of your windscreen. As with many dash cams, both the front and rear A510 cameras use an adhesive pad to attach to your car’s glass, via a clear anti-static sticker.

The rear dash camera is much lighter than the front cam and feels almost hollow as a result, but it’s likely just the sensor and lens in a plastic housing – the front camera is the business end of the setup, containing the processing and power circuitry.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

As with all dashcams, mounting the cameras is relatively easy – it’s the cables that are the tricky part. We installed the A510 cameras in a 2010 Renault Grand Scenic – a relatively long 7-seater MPV/minivan. 70mai generously supplies long cables to connect the front camera to your car’s 12V socket, and to connect the rear camera to the front cam – there was enough cable for our installation. Power is supplied from a double USB adapter that connects to the car’s 12V/cigarette lighter socket.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

If you then want to hide all the dashcam cables in the car’s interior panels and headliner so that it is not visible, it will take time and patience. At least 70mai provides a plastic tool to help you hide the wires out of sight. If you have a hatchback (where the rear screen will move when you open the tailgate), it takes even more care to route the rear camera cable from the main body of the car to the tailgate, to ensure it doesn’t get crushed every time you close the boot. This isn’t a problem unique to the A510 – it’s something you need to consider when fitting a rear dash camera to a hatchback.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

Once you’ve got both cameras installed and connected, the cameras will automatically turn on and start recording when your car is turned on (the engine doesn’t need to be running, at least in our test vehicle). The front camera screen can be set to show either the front or rear camera feed, or you can display the front view with an inset thumbnail in the corner showing the rear camera images.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

Performance

A manufacturer can cram a dash cam full of extra features, but what really matters is the camera’s video quality — after all, that’s what will matter most to an insurance company in determining who is at fault in a collision.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

In daylight, the A510 front panel camera’s image quality is very good. When set to the maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944, the video is sharp and fine details are well-resolved. It is easy to read license plates on cars in front of the camera, although plates on cars driving by on the opposite side of the road are more difficult to read. This is a problem with most cameras, because fast motion combined with video frame interlacing and digital compression causes moving text on the periphery of a video frame to suffer from motion blur. The camera’s automatic exposure metering is accurate and reliable, and I was pleased with the dynamic range captured by the STARVIS 2 image sensor.

A potential disadvantage of this high-definition recording is the size of the video file: each minute of recording consumes 172 MB of card space, so a 1-hour drive will require about 10 gigabytes of storage space. And don’t forget that the rear camera will also record at the same time and consume even more storage space, although not as much as the front camera (61MB/minute). This means the included 64GB microSD card fills up quickly – we recommend upgrading to a 256GB card if you drive frequently and want more than a few days worth of archive footage before the camera automatically overwrites the oldest videos.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

While the front camera’s image quality is commendable, the rear one is much less impressive. Judging by its relative lack of detail and higher digital image noise, it uses a significantly smaller image sensor than the front-facing camera. A following car needs to be within about 3-4 car lengths of you for its license plate to be readable, and the rear camera doesn’t have the clarity for the license plates of cars passing on the opposite side of the road to be easy. readable. Dynamic range is also noticeably worse than what is captured by the front cam, with highlights much easier to blow out and shadows lacking definition.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

While the rear camera’s image quality is disappointing during the day, it’s downright bad at night. Video from the rear camera is severely lacking in detail, video compression artifacts obscure what fine detail remains, and the dynamic range problem becomes even more apparent. If your car is rear-ended at night, the images from the rear camera will only be useful for simply identifying that a car has hit you – it will rarely be clear enough to identify the make/model, let alone number plate details.

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

70mai A510 front rear dashcam review

Thankfully, the front camera performs much better at night, thanks to its higher resolution and much better dynamic range. License plates are still legible, albeit less than during the day, but it still gives you a chance to identify the details of an oncoming vehicle immediately before a nighttime collision.

We did not fit the optional hardwire kit as this involves further modification to the car’s electrical system and fuses, which I did not feel comfortable doing on my car.

Judgment

A dashboard should really now be considered an essential part of driving safety. If you are involved in a collision, the ability to prove through video evidence that you are not at fault can be invaluable. I say this not just because I work with cameras, but because my own car was recently rear ended and consequently totaled/written off. Had it been fitted with a front and rear dashcam this would have irrefutably proved my innocence.

And it is thanks to dashcams like the 70mai A510 that we can now say that a dashcam is truly “necessary”. Its low price is relatively insignificant when you factor in all the other costs that come with driving – fuel, insurance, etc – but you still get two cameras and a host of extras.

I was impressed by the performance of the A510’s front camera – its day and night video quality is excellent for the money. I have been using the camera in my daily driver for over two months now and it works flawlessly. The rear camera, however, is more of a token effort. Its video quality is much worse than that produced by the front-facing camera, but it’s better than having no camera at all. Considering the A510 kit costs about the same as an entry-level, front-only dashcam, think of the rear cam as more of a bonus. If you really want top-notch video quality from your rear camera, you’ll need to spend the extra money on a more premium product.

Overall, the 70mai A510 is excellent value and ideal if you want a low cost front and rear dash cam.