SMARTY BX1000 PLUS 170 Smart Black Box Car Drive Recorder

This camera is my second purchase for my second car. I paid $170 for this one. I have a BlackVue DR-400G-HD in my first vehicle and love it. I was looking for a lower cost option, as the BlackVue camera is about US$270, and didn't want to spend as much for another camera. Actually, I was going to mount this camera as a rear facing unit for my primary car, but decided to put it in my Miata, instead. That said, how do I like the Smarty?

Plain and simple, here's the Pro/Cons:

Pros:

Easy install, long power lead for wire tidyness.

Good software, comes on the 4Gb card included. Up and running in 5 minutes, no tech skills needed.

Decent image quality, it sets to either 1280x960 or 640x480 only, but for insurance/fraud type applications, it does the job

Indicator lights on unit let you know its working, recording, etc.

Angle of view is satifactory, 170 degrees is ok.

Color accuracy, light/dark environments are all acceptable

Instruction booklet was well written, if not needed.

Very simple to use software, map locations on screen, telemetry, etc. It does beep when it starts to record, but software selectable.

Basic feature set, it doesn't do anything terribly well or terribly bad.

Price/Value ratio is pretty good. It's a sub-$200 camera, so don't expect highest-end performance, but it does the job

Standard SD card (4Gb) included. About 1 hour recording time, before rolling FIFO style.

Park mode, i.e. it will stay recording when you park and wake itself up if your car is bumped or moves

Cons:

A bit bigger than I wish, about the size of an aspririn bottle, hides nicely behind the mirror though

Can't adjust the recording file size 5 minutes is the default length.

I'll go ahead an whine that it's not HD, but I knew that up front.

I'll also whine its only 15FPS, which I also knew up front.

Slow startup time... about 30 seconds or longer, again, alot could happen that first 30 seconds.

It's obviously an import product, which lends its website and instructions a bit of a challenge for Americans.

So, there you have it. A good sub-$200 camera, good feature list, GPS, small size, easy install. Not HD, some parameters are software fixed, but if you don't want to jump to a $300 camera, this is a satisfactory choice! I'll be making a video comparison of this camera, next to a BlackVue, a Contour Roam, a Panasonic HDC-SD900 (pro) camera and an iPhone 5 in video mode to show the differences in video quality, should be intersting... look for it in a couple of days.

This dash cam is amazing! Here's the proof, I shot this video on the first day I owned it. Easy to use, amazing diagnostic software that you can't see in this video that provides all kinds of data if you ever need it. I'm buying another one for my second car as soon as I have more disposable income. Nice long, thin power cord that you can stuff in the windshield rubber material and seamlessly run down the side. Probably the best thing I've ever bought at Amazon.com.

Update 5/16/13 I just purchased a second one for my other car. This is a great value, love having this video if I ever need it, and I even post funny stuff that happens to me on the road. Every car should have one of these! :)

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I've had this working for a week now. After getting burned by an insurance company, I decided to install a dash cam & settled on the Smarty. I bought it because it looked small & the feature list is impressive. When I got the camera I was a little disapointed on how big it really is (about the size of an asprin bottle). Regardless, I followed the install instructions & found that I don't even notice this on my windsheild (mounted in front of the rearview mirror). The software is a little cludgy but works well. The video quality is very good & it is very easy to read signs & license plates. The only negative I can find is the cycle time of the camera. I have mine setup to take 10 minutes of video & then the file is saved and a new one started. The camera does this very fast (

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