Dash Camera-AKASO-AKASO DL12 2.5K Mirror Dash Cam Voice Control 12″ Touch Screen Front and Rear Dual Dash Camera for Cars Night Vision Backup Camera with Sony Starvis Sensor GPS G-Sensor Parking Assistance

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1. R S Verified Buyer – 30 June 2024

   Overall I love this dash cam. The view on the 12″ mirror is a very large size viewable screen. Touch screen works well, and settings are pretty straight forward. I did struggle a bit with the time settings as for the eastern time zone it has to be set to minus 4:00 from whatever Hong Kong Phooey time it shows from God only knows where. That part makes no sense. The 1-3-5 minute loop is how long it records a segment, breaking it off into one file. It does continue on flawlessly from one file to the next. The cameras have great wide angles, but this also has a few issues. This affects the distance you are actually away from things. The rear camera does not have a great vertical view. I have to use the camera in my Honda Fit’s dash for the close items when backing up as it does have a great vertical view to the ground. See photo for both views, with car in reverse. The rear camera does do great on seeing vehicles in your blind spots as it shows you better view of anything close to your corners. It does a great job in low lighting, but gets grainy if real low and headlights are blaring and overpowering in video, especially in rear camera of course. Things wash out some in low lighting 2 lane roads when headlights approach you in front camera also. It really isn’t the fault of the manufacturer on this, just a result of having good ability to see in low light, with cameras that don’t have infrared. I would strongly suggest getting a U3 (for speed), 128GB micro sd card to have plenty of room for recording as the files sizes with this much resolution are huge. This brings me to another thought. The micro sd card is a pain in the rear to get in or out. You have to bend it way down in the car as it’s in the top of it, use something pointed and just the right size to push hard enough to get it to release, or put in to get it to click, lock into place. This is a real negative as it’s not designed well for access comfortably. I know you don’t need to remove it much, but this is a VERY BAD ISSUE! Formatting works great, and setting motion detection to low seems to work well and will trip if I shut the door on the car most times. Wind can also trip it even on low, so this is my suggested setting. Install was easy, pretty straight forward, but a bit tough on my Fit’s hatchback. The wire for the back up light isn’t long enough so I had to splice in extra to get to reverse light. I have 2 Honda Fit’s and my other one I learned the hard way to route the cable from the front to the back of the car instead of back to the front of the car. I had so much wire left to put over the headliner in the front of the other car that it was tough to get it all up there and hidden. On my other one, I simply rolled it around and zipped tied it inside the hatchback, much easier! I mounted the gps module on top of car near the door opening, but I wondered if it could be put inside the car maybe at base of windshield, but can’t find that answer. The rear camera also has issues with rain. It almost wipes out the video at times. I have it angled down more so it will show lower toward the ground which don’t help at all really with seeing objects on ground your backing up to, but hoped it would help run the water off better also, but it don’t. The rear camera video you see here is after I adjusted it to a lower angle. I wonder if I could use a little paste wax on it and wipe it clean so maybe it will run the water off of it better, but have not tried this yet. I didn’t want it inside the rear window as I have a rear window defogger and would cause a higher mounting point than I wanted, and didn’t want the bad reflections from the glass either. This is an issue with the rear camera that isn’t much so on the front camera. I bought a hard wire kit (not included with this dash cam) for it and highly recommend doing so. This eliminates any issues with the dash cam losing power, and clears your 12V socket for other needs. The install is pretty simple, but with my hatchback it was more work. I had to take the rear panel off to get inside hatchback, and had to drill a 1/4″ hole to route the cable inside. My friend bought one of these Akaso’s also and he didn’t have to drill any holes at all in his Chevy Volt to install. It really depends on the vehicle and how you wish to install the rear camera. I also had an area that the wire had to be exposed for a little bit around the hinge for the hatchback which was unavoidable. I have had installed for well over a couple of months now and it’s working flawlessly. I have included some photos and video here. Bear in mind this mirror cam is also an actual mirror if you turn it off and a negative at times. I learned the hard way to bring it down below the view of the rear window to keep the reflections away from seeing the screen. It does NOT photograph well because of this, but is good to the naked eye, so take warning. I can only upload 1 video and I chose one that has the issue with rain on the rear camera. This will also show the very good resolution it has, and the front being 2K is even better. I am in hopes that Akaso’s people read this and maybe learn a thing or 2 that has not come to their attention. I also welcome any questions anyone may have on this. I did install a different brand on the other Fit I have, but they both are extremely comparable, and same basic setup. I very highly recommend this product 100% and would not hesitate to buy again if I ever need another one.
   UPDATE:
   After waxing the lens on the rear camera, there isn’t any difference on the rain laying on the lens washing out the view on the rear camera. When you look at the curvature of the camera lens glass you see that it does not have much raise to it. With the fact that when you drive your vehicle and break that wind, it creates a vacuum in the rear of the vehicle. This fact tells me that if the curvature of the lens was greater, a higher degree of roundness and not so flat, this would allow the rain to be blown off of the lens. I do hope Akaso’s people see this and maybe do something about this issue. Even at very high speeds I notice that it stays washed out many times with rain on the lens. I do believe this would correct the issue.