There seems to be a massive community of tattle-tales driving around out there and now they have the video evidence to back themselves up.
The Navman MiVUE780 dashcam makes recording, saving and sharing your journeys easier than ever before.
This was my first experience with a dashcam, but being a typical New Zealander I ignored the accompanying instruction manual and just plugged the thing in.
Navman makes this process as easy as possible by including a very long charging cable and ample stick-on cable clips to tidy the cable safely away. I don't know why car manufacturers don't include charging ports either on the roof (preferably by the interior light) or on top of the console close to the windscreen. Instead, you're usually stuck with the completely obsolete "cigarette lighter" which, positioned in the centre of your console, is about as far away from any of the accessories you want to power as it could be.
In the case of the MiVUE780, the ideal location for a charging port would be in the back of the rear-vision mirror, because Navman recommends you mount the device just to the side of your mirror.
The suction-cup bracket is very versatile and sturdy, assuring secure placement, regardless of the exact angle of your windscreen.
The device itself is tiny - much smaller than I was expecting, less than 9cm across. This means the monitor display is a mere 2.7 inches - still colour, still big enough to see what's happening but not too distracting when you're driving.
So setup is literally just sticking it on the windscreen, bunging a micoSD card into the slot, plugging it in and away you go.
What impressed me most was how the MiVUE780 started working straight away - I didn't even need to switch it on. The moment I started the car, it came to life and started recording my journey automatically. Then it shuts itself down once you switch off the ignition.
While there are settings you can adjust, the only one I really had to was the time zone... very important to have the right time recorded on those vids... which brings me to the real reason we should all probably use one of these things.
Unfortunately, traffic accidents do happen and it's not always clear exactly what went wrong and whose fault it was. I managed to total my car once and I still have absolutely no recollection of the event. Would have been nice to be able to review the footage to find out how the hell I ended up upside down, facing the wrong way.
Whether it's for insurance purposes, police reports or just your own piece of mind, having crystal clear footage with the time, speed and exact location all recorded should probably be mandatory.
And the footage really is super clear - I couldn't believe how good it was first time I watched one of the files back. I don't know how they do it, but even nighttime footage is easy to see. The default setting breaks the recording into 3 minute chunks, but this can be adjusted, along with other options like recording quality and whether to include sound or not. The MiVUE780 keeps recording until your memory card is full, then starts recording over the top again. (Supports cards up to 128GB)
You can pop your microSD card out to transfer videos to PC, but the MiVUE780 also works as a WiFi hotspot, so you can easily transfer videos and images to your phone using Navman's MiVUE app. Once you've transferred your footage to your phone or PC, you can then share instantly to your favourite social media stream. Believe it or not, there are even entire websites out there dedicated to outing stupid driving - like http://www.comroads.com. I don't pretend to understand the fascination, although I have to admit, once you start watching, it's weirdly addictive.
To be honest, there are more features packed into the MiVUE780 than you'll probably ever need. You can set driver fatigue and speed alerts and there's even a helpful lady who chimes in to remind you to turn your headlights on when it's dark.
Oddly, there are red light and speed camera locations preloaded and you can add others with the push of a button. The odd thing is, while you can turn off the audio warnings about safety cameras, you can't stop them hijacking your display as you approach them. This is especially annoying when you're on the motorway and you pass over an intersection controlled by a red light camera, because you still get the warning even though you're not driving through the intersection. Something for Navman to work on in future models maybe.
Back to the real reason behind this device though; in the event of a collision, the MiVUE780 usues its 3-Axis G-Sensor to record the direction of the impact and instantly saves a protected recording of the event so you can look it up later.
That really is a pretty good insurance policy for just $279.
Click here for more information and pricing on the Navman MiVUE780 dashcam.
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