- 16:9 Wide vivid 720P / 30 FPS / 1280 x 720p high resolution video recording / 2 M pixel CMOS image censor camera
- LED indication / Red and Blue LED shows the current mode and status / Easy to use through LED and voice guide
- 360 degrees angle rotation / choose the view at your preference
- 150 degrees of wide angle / all accidents occurred from front to side view can be recorded
- Built-in Mic for audio recording / record audio with a high quality microphone
Well I loved it until it froze on me, attempted to troubleshoot it through Cowons website, NO HELP!
left an email about a week before my return period was about to expire and did not get a response, so safely returned the camera.
To this day almost 2 months later I have yet to receive a response?
I strongly suggest not purchasing this based only on their support!
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I've been using this Cowon AC1 for about 3 months. The picture quality is superb that I can see little details of the car running in front of my car. It is a true HD video recorder with low price. I have another car blackbox on my other car, but this unit is much superior in video quality, file size, and operations.The unit has 4 separate folders, realtime recording, events, and so on. The Realtime folder stores video files while you are driving. The events folder stores files with any shocks or impacts to the car such as crash and bumpy roads. Each file is one minute long, around 45 MB of size.
Someone wrote that the unit suffered from heat, but I've never experienced such issue. I installed it during August in the Southern California. Some people pointed out that this device does not have built in GPS. It could be useful on certain occasions, but I believe the video itself is enough to prove how the accident occurred in front of my car.
The device can record events while your car is parked. It continuously monitors activities in front of your car, and stars recording if it detects any movements. If no movements, then it stops recording. This feature needs an optional cable to hook it up to the car battery. I haven't used it yet.
There is no phone support, only instant chatting is available. I contacted the support to correct the time stamp issue. Overall, it is a good product for the money. I highly recommend this unit.I have been using this device for 10 days or so. There is a good review over on cnet. The only issue I want to add is that it appears to have problems starting up if it gets too hot. Three times when parked in the sun for lunch, the device did not boot up. All other times parked in shade / a garage it has fired up perfectly. Use the supplied software to update the configuration (turning off the voice prompts for example) on the MicroSD card while it is in a supplied MicroSD to USB converter hooked up to your computer when you install the card back in the device the new settings will work. I have not yet found a way to update the date / time there is no data link to the device itself all you can do is remove the MicroSD card, read the videos, and change the config settings. It appears to maintain the date / time from the factory which I believe is in Korea (the other side of the international date line from me all my videos are from the future...) so the timestamps are not "local" unless you are in that city.
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Just a few comments that may be helpful:Unit is solid and quality built. Comes from Korea but they sell via their US company JetAudio.
GPS functionality is pretty useless on these cameras. Think about it, if it says you weren't speeding, they will just say that this is not a calibrated and certified speed measuring device (required to be admissible as evidence). If it says you were speeding, same thing, but it could prejudice the viewer against you. Personally, I wanted one without GPS, or at least one that lets you export the video without the speed displayed on it.
First thing to do is update the firmware on the camera. Instructions are on their site, but put the files on the flash card, put it in the camera, let it go for a while til you get solid blue light. Then take the card in to your computer, install their latest PC software (also on the site) and now you can do all the settings INCLUDING THE DATE AND TIME! I set the shock sensitivity to lowest as my truck is very bumpy and the roads around here are bad. Still triggers some but not nearly as bad. You can also disable the sensor completely and just let it run as a regular camera (all the sensor does is tell it to move that 30 second file to a different folder to prevent overwrite). With the included card you'd get over 2 hours before it starts to overwrite, but if you toss in a $20 32 gig card you should get 10-11 hours. Camera defaults to non-wide video, you have to go into the settings on the PC and tell it to view wide (I also turned off the voice prompts as they're a bit annoying). You can also change the sensitivity for going in/out of parking mode etc.
They do have a dual camera version coming out but not expected in the US til apparently mid summer. Most stuff you need to see is in front of you, but would be nice to see behind in case of accident during lane change or someone hits you while you're backing up etc. I may upgrade when it comes out.
Overall I think the unit is a very good value, it is more expensive than some of the ones out there, but lots of those have reviews of poor quality and reliability. This is the sort of thing you want to work all the time. I am planning to buy a 2nd one for my other car.
You can get the "wise power" thing that will hardwire to your battery and shut it off automatically if your battery starts to run dead, but I just cut off the lighter plug and hardwired it to come on whenever the vehicle is running. I also installed a switch to an always on circuit so I can turn it on in parking mode if I want, but honestly the red light on it is too much of a "steal me" beacon so I don't find myself doing that much.
Speaking of theft, I cut a small piece of electrical tape and put it over the shiny "HD" on the front of the camera. Stuck out like a sore thumb and begged to be stolen (in my opinion), that little piece of tape makes it much more stealth.
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I purchased this COWON AC1 car recorder this week and have been experimenting with it the last few days. I am very happy with my purchase.--INSTALLATION ---
It couldn't be much easier to install:
I took the COWON, the 8 GB card, and the device holder out of the box.
I put the 8 GB card in the COWON, and put the COWON in the device holder
I set it on my dash and plugged in the power cord, both to the COWON and to my cigar jack
Ready to go! I played with it like this for a day, then I installed it behind my rear view mirror (also very easy to do)
--USAGE ---
The instruction manual that comes with it is close to useless, but luckily it is so easy to use I didn't need it.
When it is plugged into the cigar jack, it boots itself and tells you when it's ready
By default, it records all the time (puts 5 minute AVI videos in the REAL TIME directory)
When it detects an unusual event (hard braking, huge bump) it chimes to let you know it was detected and creates a short AVI clip (starting 15 seconds before the chime, and going 15-30 seconds after chime and puts it in EVENT directory)
When you see something you want to record, simply hit the button on the left end of the unit and it creates an AVI clip (starting 15 seconds before you press button, going 15-30 seconds after you press button, and places clip in MANUAL directory)
There is also a mode for recording only when the unit detects motion in the lens field of view, but I have not played with that mode yet.
It is easy to tell when the unit is recording events or manually there is a red circle that glows around the button. Otherwise, the circle glows blue when the unit is on.
All behavior discussed above is default out of the box, you don't need to play with any settings.
--VIDEO EXTRACTION AND VIEWING ---
I took the MicroSD card out of the COWON
I placed the MicroSD card into the supplied MicroSD card reader
I inserted the MicroSD card reader into the USB port on my Windows 7 computer
I used Windows Explorer to browse the REAL TIME, EVENT, and MANUAL directories (the MOTION directory was empty)
I used Windows Explorer to download the AVIs I was interested in to my hard drive
I used Windows Media Player to play the AVIs
The quality of the video is very good in daylight.
Very crisp when the car is still (stoplights, etc) and if the car in front of you is stopped you can read the license plate up until the car is about 20-40 feet from your front bumper. If the car in front of you is moving, it will be difficult to read the license plate at all.
Picture degrades quickly after dark. It is virtually useless on a residential suburban street (can only see porchlights and an area about 20 feet in front of your headlights) but is much better in downtown areas where there is much more ambient light.
There was no need to load the COWON supplied software that came with the COWON since I could easily view the video files with Windows Media Player. The COWON supplied software can also be used to change settings, but I don't have a need to do that so I'll probably never install the COWON software on my computer.
Note that when the card fills up, the COWON will automatically overwrite the oldest files on the card with new files.
--MEMORY CARD REFORMATTING ---
I decided the 8 GB card that came with it should be upgraded, so I bought a 32 GB SanDisk MicroSD card. I plugged the 32 GB card into the COWON and it took video just fine. When I inserted the card into the MicroSD card reader and then into the USB port of my computer, I started running into problems. My Win7 machine did not like it, and strange things started happening in Windows Explorer. Eventually I was able to get the video files off the card, but it was not easy and required restarting Win Explorer (and my computer!) at least a few times.
I decided to reformat the 32 GB card to see if that helped, and it did. Once I reformatted the 32 GB card (FAT32, Quick Format) it worked just fine in the COWON and on my Win7 computer.
--CONCLUSION ----
Easy to install, easy to use, high quality video, what more could I ask for? Well longevity, but I won't know that for a long time.
Anyway, buy it, use it, enjoy it!
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