The HP F800G aims to set itself apart from the growing ranks of low cost car cameras available by offering a premium design with some additional tricks to set it apart from the competition.
The unit looks and feels like a quality bit of kit, unlike recently tested dash cams the F800G has a good sized touch screen on the rear and this keeps the design clutter free. It comes with a 140 degree wide angle lens and records in full HD.
The F800G comes with a suction cup mount for your windscreen, making it easy to remove when not in use or when you’re packed in a particularly dodgy area, and has a nice long USB power cable with a car adapter. At the time of review the F800G was available on Amazon UK with additional accessories not normally included, a USB cable for transferring data off the camera and a case to pop the F800G in when you don’t want to leave it in the car.
As standard you’ll also get an in car power cable. This is a long cable designed to be cable tidied, if you leave it dangling you’ll have a very long, very messy, cable in your car.
The touch screen is a great addition, other car cameras reviewed tend to make use of buttons and the multitude of menu options is a real chore. The F800G has a clean, simple to use menu system that is much nicer to use than other car cameras.
One of the features you might want to try enabled is the Lane Departure Warning System. Once activated this attempts to warn you if you are drifting out of your lane when driving above about 30 miles / 50 kilometers per hour. As this is based on the camera ‘looking’ at the road and it therefore triggers when you are changing lanes. If that’s too annoying the feature can be turned off.
The camera also has GPS built in, this allows it to record the co-ordinates of your trip along with an approximate speed, all of which is displayed on the recorded footage. GPS data is also stored on the memory card in .nmea format, a standard file that can be loaded into websites such as GPS Visualizer to display your route on Google Maps.
The F800G records video chunks of around 400MB and the GPS data is recorded in chunks that match the video chunks so you can see where you were when a particular bit of footage was recorded.
If you do happen to capture an incident you’d like to keep there is an on screen button that stores recent footage in a separate folder. If this isn’t pressed you still have access to your footage, you’ll just need to find the relevant section among a large number of files before the unit records over it (it loops and records over the oldest footage).
Recorded footage is great quality, both during daylight and in lower light levels. The camera can record sound as well, useful to pinpoint exact time of impact, not so great if you happen to be an in car singer who isn’t very good.
This is a premium product, but for those who travel a lot it offers all the features of a lower cost model with a far superior interface and onboard GPS.
Available now on Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/1wlgS80 and Amazon com: https://amzn.to/1JImS0l
