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Customer Review
Raphael Avital
3.0
Severe design flawReviewed in the United States on June 29, 2019
A very nice product, with a severe design flaw:What do you want to use this for? For most people, the value in this product is the ability to document an accident, to prove whether or not they were at fault. Well, this product will do that, as long as the built-in Lithium battery has a charge, and as long as the accident did not disconnect the DashCam from the car's battery.That is for a simple reason: This is a digital product, not analog. In an analog product, say, a VCR, the minute it loses power, it stops recording, but what has been recorded up to that point is preserved and reviewable. Not so with a digital system. The video/sound is recorded in FILES. You get to determine, on this product, how long you want the video to be, and it creates a file for each video. The DashCam is very good at stopping one recording and starting a new one, in a chain.This means that each file needs to be PROPERLY CLOSED when reaching the end of the time interval you've set. Without power, the file will be LOST AND INACCESSIBLE.So think about it: You are, Heaven forbid, in an accident, and the impact has interrupted the power to the DashCam, somewhere along the line. Maybe even disconnected one of the cables from your car's battery. That point of impact is THE MOST CRITICAL data you want. It could be anywhere between 1 and 5 minutes long (depending on how you set it up), but IT IS LOST, if the DashCam loses power.How can it lose power? It has a built-in lithium battery. Yes, it does, and about 2 years after you've installed it in your car, the battery will have swollen and lost all ability to recharge and store power. That is because, as anyone would expect, you've left it on your car's windshield, exposed to the sun and it heated up and damaged the battery. On top of that, they made the product black, which absorbs more heat than any other color, and have built no heat-shield into it. And the product itself generates a little heat of its own.But...But...But you didn't spend $200 just for the ability to document accidents. You also want all the other features the manufacturer advertizes as selling points -- record entire trips, record inside the car, record whoever shoved a supermarket cart at your car and dented it, and such. In my case, I installed the hardwire kit to provide power to the unit all the time, whenever it is triggered by any car passing by when the car is parked.So what do we have here? The manufacturer advertizes that you can, with the hardwire kit, record any kid who wants to key your car, any car that dents it when you're not there -- all of which depends on the unit's battery providing some power in order to gracefully close files -- because without that small amount of power, the last files open will be lost -- and then the manufacturer tells you, in the manual, don't leave it exposed to the sun? Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?So that was my experience with the first N2Pro I bought. This is my second one. I do not intend to buy a new one every couple of years, because the manufacturer couldn't see the obvious and plan accordingly. I've already found the replacement battery (it really doesn't require much, about 250Mah), and when necessary, solder the bad battery out, solder a new one in. And tape some kind of heat-shielding material around the Dashcam, with white tape.It's such a silly thing. Plus the world-wide craze to slap lithium batteries in everything from electric cars to hearing aids, when a regular, replaceable battery would do -- in this case a pair of AAA with voltage-adjusting circuitry would have done it, and avoided the problem altogether.You may never have this problem, just be aware of it before you buy.
