70mai’s New 4K Ultra-High Definition Dash-Cam Shoots Movie Quality Videos

This wonderful trinket to add to your vehicle as a safety feature is probably one of the smartest things you can do this year. Now, I'm not saying that anything else isn’t as smart or smarter, I'm only saying that this makes a wonderful addition to your car because...and here they come.

Reason number one. A dash cam can be an absolute bonus in case of any sort of surprise accidents along the way. The 70mai A800 also comes with a rear cam too, so no questions about why you stopped and the guy behind didn’t.

Reason number two. To make sure the clarity of the situation is unquestionable, this setup offers 4K clarity on both cameras, and most importantly a FOV of 140 degrees. This galactically large resolution count allows you to tell if the driver behind didn’t stop because he may have been looking down at his phone instead of focusing on the road. Oh, and it can do this even at 50 yards (45m) or more away.

In front-vision recording mode, the max resolution is 3840*2160. In dual-vision recording mode, the max resolution for front and rear view will be 2560*1600 and 1920*1080, respectively.

The importance of such a FOV allows you to record an accident as though your peripherals were as good as your forward-facing vision. But as most wide-angle cameras, the image should be warped on such extreme angles. Not here. Using seven different layers of lens, and built around Sony’s IMX 415 CMOS, the 70mai offers straight lines with no curvature even at such soliciting angles.

Reason number three, and here we have a big one, the A800 comes equipped with ADAS (Advanced Driving Assistant System) software. This software enables the A800 to offer warnings to the driver in the event that a lane departure is detected, or a possible front-end collision. If any of the two events are triggered, an alarm signals the driver of the danger.

Now this may seem like something ordinary, but it’s the first step to implementing driver assistance software and hardware that isn’t directly built into the vehicle. It seems to be a prodigy for a long list of soon to be manufacturers of such devices.

Coming in with reason number four is the A800’s always active software. 24/7 sensors are running to detect even hit and run accidents. In the eventuality that your vehicle is parked, and someone hits it, the cameras just start recording. Simple.

Now, to make sure that clarity is optimum even in a dark underground parking lot, 3D DNR (Dynamic Noise Reduction) software clears up the image using an F/1.8 aperture lens that auto adjusts the exposure balance, offering a night-drive image rivaling that of movies.

With 128 GB internal storage allows you to store quite a high number of trips, and the system does this automatically on a loop. By loop I mean that if the internal memory is full, new trips will simply delete the oldest available trip to make room for the new recording.

Oh, and all of this is linked to an app on your phone that allows you to control all functions of the camera even if you aren't in your vehicle, and even back up selected trips. If you need to just quickly have a view, the A800 has a 3 in. (7.62cm) screen that allows you to playback the event on the spot.

Yeah it doesn’t look like much, and it doesn’t need to. Here, functionality is key, and the A800 performs masterfully well.