Car and Driver Road Patrol Touch Duo dash cam review: Versatile, attractive, flawed

Best Prices Today

I used to be impressed by the bodily design of the $180 Car and Driver Road Patrol Touch Duo sprint cam. It’s tall and extensive, but comparatively skinny and sexily curved. In different phrases, it’s engaging. The seems to be, the 3-inch coloration show, and versatile second digital camera that can be utilized for inside or exterior rear captures, appeared to vow a improbable expertise.

Alas, whereas its fairly face and design made an excellent first impression, when it got here to efficiency, the Road Patrol Touch Duo fell effectively in need of improbable.

Design and options

The Road Patrol Touch Duo, as I discussed, is on the massive aspect. It measures roughly 4-inches extensive by 3-inches tall. It’s a bit beneath 2-inches together with the lens our bodies of the outside and inside cameras. The dimension is to accommodate the massive 3-inch extensive show. You want a show that giant in the event you’re going to make use of contact, although the Jomise K7 cleverly made do with solely 1.5 inches and bigger icons.

The Road Patrol Touch Duo’s onscreen interface is straightforward to make use of, however the principle display screen icons require a good quantity of focus and precision. It’s high quality in the event you’re parked, however not conductive to fast changes when you’re at a cease gentle or in movement. Otherwise, it’s nice. Not that you ought to be adjusting your digital camera settings whereas underway. Let the passenger care for it. You’ll each stay longer.

The entrance digital camera is 1080p with a 150 diploma discipline of view (Sony IMX307) whereas the bottom-mounted, swiveling inside digital camera is 720p with a 120 diploma FOV (SC2363). Said backside unit may be unplugged (it employs a 3.5 mm connector) and used in your rear window through a second suction mount, adapter, and cable, all of which come within the field.

As the 3-inch touchscreen is used for management, there are solely energy and menu buttons on the underside of the digital camera. You truly don’t want the latter as touching the show brings up the menu icons.

Uniquely, the corporate gives a strap that lets you mount the secondary digital camera on the again of your headrest to make use of as a child cam (proven above). The Road Patrol Touch Duo is well essentially the most versatile dual-channel digital camera setup.

There are a number of causes you may want the GPS that the Road Patrol Touch Duo lacks. One of these causes could also be monitoring your travels with mapping software program, for example. More importantly, it’ll present your charge of velocity and show the precise location the place an incident occurred. While the mere existence of sprint cam footage tends to settle issues rapidly, GPS information seals the deal.

Also, higher sprint cams use GPS to routinely set the time and date. I forgot to set the date and time with the Road Patrol Touch Duo earlier than testing, therefore the inaccuracies within the photographs beneath. Yes, I’m fairly used to GPS lately. On the opposite hand, kudos to Car and Driver for offering one of many nicest assist guides I’ve run throughout with a splash cam.

Performance

Generally talking, the Road Patrol Touch Duo’s exterior day captures have been first rate, although you’d need to be fairly shut distance-wise to pick license plate numbers. Probably their nicest facet is the colour saturation, which is up there with the most effective.

Look intently (open in a brand new tab) on the passenger’s seat proven beneath and also you’ll see poorly aliased and blocky colours from the inside digital camera. I’ve seen significantly higher from cheaper cameras.

Though it was a wet evening and it was tough to maintain the windshield dry, that may’t fairly clarify away the poor element on the parking indicators or the license plate solely 15 toes away.

Though the blockiness from the day inside captures is gone within the inside evening seize seen beneath, it’s fairly blurry in comparison with most inside cameras I take a look at lately.

There was a motive that these evening captures have been taken beneath lower than optimum situations. The earlier night when it was dry, I didn’t wait till a full 3-minute clip had been completed earlier than eradicating the digital camera and the recordsdata weren’t saved. While Car and Driver acknowledged that the digital camera has a battery, the digital camera goes darkish instantly upon shedding energy which was doubtless the trigger.

That stated, I additionally observed that the daytime video didn’t begin till the automobile was in movement, a few seconds after beginning the engine. I’d already turned on the inside energy to regulate settings earlier than beginning out. There could also be a problem with over aggressiveness on detecting low voltage which is finished by cameras to keep away from draining your battery.

Conclusion

As I stated up entrance, the Car and Driver Road Patrol Touch Duo’s idea and bodily design are high notch. However, the captures aren’t as much as right now’s requirements, it’s dear for not having a GPS, and never saving recordsdata when the ability fails is a serious fake paus. It’s a workable digital camera system, however wants some high quality tuning and to cowl the fundamentals higher.