It was late 2013 when I bought my first dash cam. I used to commute from Reno, Nevada, out to Salt Lake City, Utah and once or twice a week at night. It was 502 miles door to door, and I could do it in about 7.5 hours. Let me tell you, a lot of wild stuff happens on I-80 across the great barren expanses of Nevada in the middle of the night.
What made me finally pull the trigger and buy one was when the semi truck I was catching up to suddenly jack-knifed for no apparent reason, taking up both westbound lanes as the tractor and trailer flipped onto its side, lighting up the desert in a shower of sparks 50 ft long. There was no one for miles to witness it but me. I pulled up onto the scene seconds after it stopped sliding and jumped out to tend to the driver … who’d muscled the driver’s side door up and open and popped out like nothing happened, still talking on his Bluetooth headset in a language I couldn’t identify.
He was fine, and now I have one more crazy story with no proof.
The very next day, I ordered a fairly inexpensive dashcam from Amazon. It was good enough. I think it shot in 480p, MPEG back then. After a few years of blurry videos, I bought a more “cutting-edge” Transcend dashcam that shot in 1080p. I had that dashcam up until just last year when it finally let out its smoke.
The dashcam market has significantly upped its game since 2015. Honestly, the choices are so overwhelming, I spent a lot of hours over a lot of days trying to decide what to get next before just giving up.
A couple of weeks ago, Vantrue contacted me and asked if I would like to review its flagship Nexus 5S dashcam. You bet I said yes!
JS @ New Atlas
It arrived neatly packaged with a few extra goodies. A circular polarizer filter (CPL) for the main lens, a hardwire install kit, and a microSD card.
The Nexus 5S isn’t just a single-lens dashcam that points forward. It’s actually two units connected via cable that have two cameras on each. One that shoots outside, and one that shoots the cabin.
With the field of view (FOV) overlap between all four cameras, Vanture calls it “True 360° Coverage.” I mean, technically it kinda is, but that’s a bit of a stretch, honestly. Maybe a vehicle with panoramic windows all around could get a better “360° view,” but in my SUV with 3rd row seating, the cabin facing cameras don’t see much on the outside. The front and rear outside coverage is fantastic with the camera’s wide-angle lenses, though.
JS @ New Atlas
And the quality of the footage is some of the best I’ve ever seen from a dashcam. It’s crisp, even at night, making most license plates legible. There’s no frame interpolating, so you don’t get that blur when you’re scrubbing frame by frame – trying to figure out if that was a dollar bill or a hundo you drove by earlier but didn’t feel like stopping for.
The audio quality is decent enough. You’re not dropping Carpool Karaoke bangers with James Corden with it, but it’ll capture every colorful expression that comes from your mouth while battling traffic. And each camera angle (A, B, C, D) gets its own audio tracks from the main front unit, meaning you can hear everything in every clip. I thought that was pretty neat.
Specs:
- 4-channel recording: front + rear + front cabin + rear cabin, including audio
- Front resolution: 2592×1944p @ 30fps
- Other channels (rear/interior): 1440p rear and 1080p cabin
- Sony STARVIS 2 sensors
- FOV: front 160°, cabins 160°, rear 165°
- Parking and motion detection features: 10-second pre-recording and supports full 24/7 monitoring when hardwired
- Connectivity: onboard GPS, 2.4 Ghz or 5 GHz Wi-Fi for file transfers/app control, voice control support, optional LTE accessory for remote viewing
- MicroSD support up to 1 TB
Install was a breeze. And by breeze, I mean it took me about an hour and a half of sweating and cussing, using the hardwire kit. Not because it was all that difficult, but mostly because it was really hot outside and I have a limited vocabulary. On the plus side, I broke exactly ZERO tabs or trim pieces.
The hardwire kit comes with absolutely everything you’ll need, including an array of piggyback fuse taps. You’ll have to tap two fuses – one that comes alive when you turn your vehicle on or ACC, and a second that has constant 12-volt power (for sentry/parking mode). A simple six-dollar 12-volt test light will tell you which ones to tackle. If you opt not to hardwire it, then the trusty 12-volt “cigarette lighter” socket (do they even have those heating elements anymore?) will do. I just didn’t want cables dangling everywhere.
JS @ New Atlas
Once I neatly ran all the wiring behind the dash, up the A-pillar trim, and under the headliner along the windshield, I started to install the rear camera by essentially repeating the process. A 20-ft (6.1-m) USB-C cable is included – plenty long in anything short of a limo. Headliner to A-pillar, then allll the way back under the headliner along the upper door trim to the rear hatch, where I mounted up the rear camera. Super clean, totally hidden, and permanent – partly because I’m not undoing all that hard work, and partly because of the genuine 3M adhesive backing. I did flick it and say “that’s not going anywhere” out loud once I finished, as is the sacred custom.
The included trim tool was super helpful, so thanks, Vantrue, for adding in that one extra little detail. Much appreciated.
I took about 15 minutes to set up the camera with all my favorite settings before I connected to it with the app via its 5Ghz Wi-Fi internal network. It immediately prompted me to update to the latest firmware, which I did … and then the dashcam reset to factory default, erasing all my settings in the process. Not appreciated.
Ultimately, the dashcam is super easy to use. But realistically, once it’s in and set up, it’s good to go, and all you have to do is nothing – as it should be.
JS @ New Atlas
When I start my vehicle, it boots up the screen, which I have set to auto off after a minute while it does it’s loop-recordings. There’s no reason to see it while driving. And because I hardwired mine to constant power, when I park and turn off my vehicle, it looks like the dashcam is off, but I have it set to motion detection, so it’ll discreetly record all four camera angles when it detects movement. That’s how I figured out which neighborhood kitty it was that left little bean prints on my hood the other night.
It separates the motion detection files into its own folder on the microSD card as well, which is a nice touch. It’s easy to grab whatever you’re looking for without having to watch 200 identical looking thumbnails.
Because it has an interior cabin view (my first time having that), I’ve noticed I’ve cut down significantly on nose picking. I haven’t belted out any tunes at the top of my lungs either. I definitely feel like someone is watching me at all times. That will likely fade with time (or during allergy season).
Because of the Big Brother vibes – and quite frankly, my distrust of large unknown corporations using my nose-picking data against me – I don’t connect my phone to the dashcam if I don’t have to. If I want a file off of it, I’ll pop out the microSD and chuck it in a card reader. If I just want to review something really quick and I don’t need the file off of it, the screen is fairly high resolution – nicer than I feel comfortable leaving in the blazing sun all day long, as my car bakes in the driveway – even if oddly shaped, and I can review footage right on the dashcam itself. If I don’t connect my phone to it, then the dashcam remains effectively “dumb” with no way of connecting to its homeland servers.
Vantrue Nexus 5S 4 Camera Dashcam Video Footage
You’ll want to have your volume up for the video I posted above … I’m sure many of you can relate to those moments.
I did connect the app just to test how fast it downloads files from the dashcam, and it’s fast. I copied a 3-minute clip to my phone in about 20-25 seconds or so. I tried downloading 8 GB worth of files, and the app yelled at me to “try another way” because it was going to take a long time. I forced it anyway, and it took just under 20 minutes.
The Nexus 5S responds to voice commands like “take photo!” or “start video!” And I use an exclamation point because it’s not always responsive unless you’re quite assertive.
It will automatically lock recordings so they can’t be over-written if it detects a higher than normal G-load, e.g., a crash or a particularly unfavorable speed bump. The entire left side of the dash cam is one big button as well, making it super easy to backhand in a moment of excitement when you want to save a file.
One thing I REALLY like about the Nexus 5S is that it has a built-in supercapacitor. That means that if something truly bad were to happen and the dashcam loses connection to power suddenly, it has enough juice in it to safely finish saving those vital video clips. Not to mention, supercapacitors handle heat and cold much better than typical lithium batteries. The Nexus 5s is rated for -4 °F to 158 °F (-20 °C to 70 °C) operation, and we all know how hot a parked card can get … less s’plody-s’plody with a supercapacitor.
The dashcams I’ve had in the past (and GoPros, *groan*) that have taken a jolt or gotten too hot will often end up with an error’d video file when you needed it most, making it entirely useless and defeating the whole purpose of having a dashcam in the first place.
Vantrue has a 12-month warranty on the Nexus 5S, and they’re constantly making improvements to the app and firmware, so it seems like it’s a company trying to make the best product they can.
So is it worth it?
I mean, there are a trillion different options on just Amazon alone. Many of which are far cheaper than Vantrue’s $399.99 offering on Amazon, but in the end, a dashcam is basically a form of cheap insurance. Having video proof with a GPS verified speed readings has saved me once before from the clutches of law enforcement. It would have been at least a $250 ticket had I not had proof. And I’ve heard tons of horror stories where having similar proof saved people from cases of mistaken identity. Or the scammers that back into you, saying you rear ended them. Not to mention the hundreds of hours of dashcam crash videos I’ve watched over the years (don’t judge me).
The Nexus 5S is a good quality piece of equipment unlike many other models I’ve looked at. It feels more like my DSLR in my hand versus a cheap point-and-shoot camera. It feels like a nice, heavy piece of silverware versus a plastic spork. I think $400 is a lot of money. I would have a tough time forking over that much for a dashcam to just quietly live in my car in the hopes I never actually need it … but at the same time, it is a high-quality piece of hardware. And has four separate and potentially important angles that could save me tens of thousands of dollars in the future.
Product page: Vantrue Nexus 5S
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PS – Did you spot the Easter Eggs?
