Thinkware F800 Pro dash cam review: A great product with unwieldy cloud features - caseromenswour

Thinkware

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Industry-best night video captures
• Dual-channel with optional rear camera

Cons

• To a fault dependent on your phone for later features
• GPS, but zero GPS watermark

Our Verdict

The F800 In favou's dark captures are away far the best we've seen, both front and put up. Only the organisation is too dependent on your cell telephone for the new cloud connectivity and a few other features.

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Thinkware's $329 dual-channel Dash Cam River F800 Pro is a somewhat mild improvement over the F800 we reviewed last year, offering enhancements so much atomic number 3 bettor mightiness management for hard-wired installations and a different colour scheme, while retaining the best-in-the-business nighttime captures.

The new feature that truly differentiates the F800 Favoring from the older version is Thinkware Cloud, which allows you to share videos uploaded to your phone with other devices via Thinkware's web hepatic portal vein. Still, the Cloud feature is cumbrous and too phone-reliant for professional use, making it more of a perk than a game-changer.

Bill: This review is part of our roundup of the outflank dash cams. Go there for inside information about competing products and how we tested them.

Features and designing

Like most of Thinkware's high-stop dash cams, the F800 Pro lacks a display, instead relying upon your phone for visuals, configuration, offloading video, and other interactions. If you're phone-centric, you'll like information technology. If you'rhenium not, you probably South Korean won't.

The F800 Pro is a trifle on the large size for a dash cam, measuring approximately 1.1 x 2.5 x 3.25 inches—that last being 4 inches if you include the 140-degree field of view, rotate-able camera, which sticks out to the side. The Robert Gray-and-black color scheme gives it a more difficult demeanor than the F800, and a more modern appearance than the senior F770.

The right broadside of the photographic camera is home to the Atomic number 89 jack and a micro-USB port. However, the USB port is not for connecting the social unit to a computer—it's a video stimulus for the optional $100 hindquarters tv camera. The rear camera is $10 cheaper than next-to-last year, and the new model offers 1080p resolution with the same dark-friendly Sony STARVIS sensor as the first. Stock-still, adding it to the package will bring you up to $450 with tax.

On the top of the camera you'll uncovering the slot for the Micro SD lineup (Thinkware provided us with a 32GB card and SD adapter) besides as the reset button, piece the tv camera is along the left side. The F800's television camera is extremely around the windshield to reduce distortion, and swivels in the vertical with a range of about 90 degrees.

Thinkware

The F800 Pro is a bt more serious looking than the plain F800, and comes with Thinkware's cloud service.

The interior side of the F800 Pro has buttons for controlling power, muting the microphone (handy for bypassing colorful verbal exchanges), copulative via Badger State-Fi, and formatting an South Dakota card. There are also index lights for GPS (if available), Record, and Wi-Fi. Most operations, including adjusting settings and screening videos, are performed using the Thinkware Cloud app on your phone (iOS or Mechanical man).

Tip: Sequester the sticky mount to the camera, then download and use the Thinkware Mottle app to align the camera when you place it. The adhesive is rather industrial-strength, and redoing information technology isn't fun. Also, put under the mount in the fridge before you take out the backing tape recording, which is tricky to slay at room temperature and above.

Cloud connectivity is a little too fluffy

As I pointed out to a higher place, the big distinction between the F800 and the Pro is cloud connectivity. Erstwhile you've linked the camera with the phone via Wisconsin-Fi, which eventually winds up with the camera logged in to your sound's hotspot, you're set to break. Transfers to the phone (and and so to other devices), at to the lowest degree in my testing, were manual only—despite an entire settings page ordained to automatic transfers that you see beneath. Support verified that this is presently the case.

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The settings for the F800 Pro's self-winding telecasting upload, which transfers data from the tv camera to your phone. Or should, it never worked in our testing.

I as wel didn't understand any kind of telling triggered aside impact, which is a minute perplexing, as there is real time geo-fencing with functioning to 20 zones. With geo-fencing, reports are transmitted when vehicles move into or leave a partition. There's a corollary locate-vehicle subprogram. I buns lonesome suppose that Thinkware believes that its "bad driver" AIDS bequeath prevent accidents and driver emergencies of whatever kind.

I'm certain Thinkware will eventually iron all that out, but the real and insolvable publish with the Thinkware Cloud construct is that information technology's totally reliant upon your cell speech sound and its Cyberspace connectivity. There are simply as well many ways for this association to fail (battery, anthropomorphous error, etc.) for professional usance. The Hooter's along-card, ever-on Internet is a outlying better concept for fleet operators (though that tv camera's nighttime TV clay a weakness).

The F800 Pro sports integrated GPS, but you wouldn't know information technology from the video, as the positioning info isn't included in the water line. Thinkware provides the viewer shown on a lower floor to evince where you've been. Clever, just why no watermark?

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Having a viewing app to correspondenc where you've been is a nice perquisite, simply information technology isn't—it's necessary to decode GPS location data. Thither's no watermark on the picture.

Bad-device driver tech

As I same, the F800 Pro offers ADAS (Advanced Number one wood Assist System of rules) features much as lane going and collision warnings, as well as a tardy divergence warning. That is, if you're asleep at the wheel as the traffic before of you starts moving, you invite a gentle reminder to perplex off the brake and speed up. I'm going to pronounce it yet again: If you think these are features you need, take more lessons OR get off the road. The life you save may be mine.

More handy for competent but aggressive drivers are warnings about red lights and cherry light cameras, speed zones, and mobile enforcement zones. All that information can clear you tactile property incredibly well-sophisticated, and World Health Organization knows—maybe the feedback leave improve your drive. I move around them all slay because I don't speed (much) and have a healthy respect for the chaos surrounding Pine Tree State on the roadways.

Performance

The F800 Pro's day captures are top-notch, but that's a call many cheaper photographic camera fundament make. What sets the F800 and thu, the F800 Pro apart is the superior calibre of their night captures.

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Though not as saturated as some day time video we've seen, the superior processing happening the F800 Affirmative makes details stand out.

Details are readily apparent in the F800 Pro's daytime captures, though the color pallet isn't every bit wet as we've pick up with HDR cameras such as the Viofo A119 and the much recently reviewed Z-Edge Z4.

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This is far and away the nigh revelatory television I've ever taken at this spot. Outside of the F800 that is. Though night video has improved greatly across the industry, this is still easily the best you'll picture.

As you can see above, the F800 Favoring's night captures are nothing short of superior—best in the business, and it's not particularly airless. The F800 Professional also captures in parking mode at a storage-conserving 2 frames per second. The television is evenly high-quality, merely you'll ask to hardwire the camera to a constant 12-volt beginning to use parking manner.

Pip out for the Night TV, or not at all

The F800 Pro, along with the plain F800, give up easily the best night video I've ever seen—presence and keister. If that's all important to you, and you'ray phone-centric, then these are the best dash cams out there.

Then once again, night video has improved quite a bit crosswise the industry, even in cameras farthest to a lesser extent expensive than Thinkware's. Many besides have on-instrument panel exhibit, controls and setup, which, while perhaps not as "cool" as speech sound control, will work without a phone around.

The Thinkware Swarm, while a handy feature, relies on your phone being ubiquitous and operational. That's an obvious a bankruptcy dot for professional usance. In my humble opinion, re-thinking the entire concept might be monastic order.

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Jon is a Juilliard-trained musician, former x86/6800 programmer, and long-metre (late 70s) computer enthusiast living in the San Francisco quest area. jjacobi@pcworld.com

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/401881/thinkware-f800-pro-dash-cam-review.html

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