August 13, 2019 / in Gadgets, Information Technology / by Jason Terry
Last December, one of my stories was, “Gift Ideas: Ten Things from Jason’s Favorites.” I was surprised how many people enjoyed this article. One of my blogging clients told me they ended up buying a few things from the list as Christmas gifts. Others told me I should start a YouTube channel reviewing tech products.
This week I thought I would share the Roav DashCam with you. Why? This summer I’ve seen more road rage than any previous year. It could be because there were so many more construction zones… and sometimes the results of impatient drivers are tragic.
It’s been nice to know that all the craziness I’m seeing in front of me is being recorded, every second I’m driving. Especially if there’s a wreck… even if I’m not involved in it. If I see something happen, I know I have a recording of it and I would pull over and provide my contact info.
The Roav DashCam by Anker is a device about the size of a deck of playing cards that you mount on your front windshield. It costs $89 at the time I wrote this and took me about 15 minutes to install. The camera is so small… it’s hard to notice from inside or outside your vehicle that it’s even there.
The camera has a 1080P HD camera with a wide angle lens, so you can see everything going on in front of your car. The coverage is pretty much pillar to pillar in my Explorer. And the S1 version I recently upgraded to has an even better Sony camera with better night recording. You can definitely make out the letters and numbers on the license tags in front of you.
Mine is set up so that when I turn on my car, it immediately starts recording. (Yes, I have plenty of footage of the inside of my garage.) And it keeps recording until I get to where I’m going.
Once the memory card is full, the DashCam starts overwriting older files. But if there is any bump during recording, it will lock that video file for future review as a potential accident.
The model I bought came with a 32 GB memory card, so it has hours of capacity. If I get in a wreck, I will be downloading the videos from my DashCam THAT DAY, so I’m not worried about important video getting overwritten.
For those of you wondering about the legality of having a dashboard camera on your front windshield, here’s the Kansas statute, and Missouri has no restrictions as far as I can tell. The Roav Dash Cam is smaller than just about any radar detector or GPS, so I would be surprised if this was an issue for law enforcement. I’ve had a dash cam in my car for years and have never had any issues. But I’m not your lawyer. :)
I hope you enjoyed this gadget review! Thanks for reading. Please let me know if you have a dashboard camera in your vehicle, and if you find these kinds of stories engaging. (If I get a few unsubscribes and no comments, I will do less of these.)
Blue Gurus is an excellent company to work with.
We love our website. Jason did an excellent job and has provided many updates over the last few years.
Brad Justice
Co-founder and Principal, Team Office
