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Customer Review
Thomas E. Berrigan
4.0
Good device, but camera has BAD white balance issue. Hard to read Plates even in daylight.Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2018
Been using the N2 Pro for a little over a week now, latest firmware, everything is working as described. However, there are some serious problems with the cameras white balance. Most people might not be bothered by the blue tint, but I'm starting to notice it's affecting the ability to read license plates clearly.As a photographer, almost immediately I noticed the camera looked as if it were locked into a Fluorescent white balance. To see this, just set the white balance to fluorescent on your phone/digital camera and then compare the screen with the N2Pro. The colors will be exactly the same (see sample photo below) ... This white balance setting is pointless in anything other than fluorescent light, and is especially bad in sunny conditions.Figured I could just deal with it, but then the other day I was going through some footage, and noticed I couldn't even read the plates on the car that was 5 feet in front of me!!! You also couldn't read a single plate of any passing car, and this is on a bright, sunny day at 2 in the afternoon (see sample pics below) If anyone had hit me and taken off at that moment, I wouldn't have even been able to capture their plate number... This is a big problem.In another one of the sample photos, you can see a comparison with my rear dash cam, which is a cheap $25 camera I found on ebay. Was totally upset to see that my rear cam absolutely blows the $200 N2Pros quality away.The sample video clip is a clear, sunny day and the footage looks absolutely HORRIBLE. Can't even read license plates until I am right on the other cars bumper. Then at 1:47 as I start to drive into a garage with fluorescent lights, you can see the footage immediately change, it gets cleaner and the color becomes more natural looking, just like it should under a fluorescent white balance setting.From what I see, the old Vantrue N2 doesn't have any of these issues, and I have seen cameras with the same sensor (OV4689) on Youtube and the image quality is just AMAZING. So fortunately, this is something that should be able to be fixed with a simple firmware update to an "AUTO" white balance setting. Hopefully the developers can look into this serious issue ASAP.Now to be fair though, most of the time the footage doesn't look THAT bad (those examples are the worst of the worst) but there is still always that chance I could get nailed in broad daylight and this $200 camera won't pick up the plate 5 feet away.At night these issues are nonexistent, the camera actually looks great! Was pleasantly surprised at how good it looks at night after being so disappointed with the daytime footage.Besides that... love everything else about the device. The Interior camera is great, the infrared is awesome! Easily lights up the whole cabin even in complete darkness. Audio is also very clear! In daytime the video can get a purple/pinkish hue due to the infrared but overall it still looks great. Also it's a wide enough angle to even pick up people walking by the doors.Hardwired parking mode is one of the main reasons I bought this camera, and it works awesome! If anything it's almost too sensitive, but to me that's a good thing! It really does pick up EVERY movement around my car. This morning it even picked up a bird landing on a branch haha. Parking in the city it will just constantly go off though, I had over 500 separate 15-20 second clips just yesterday alone. Can be a pain to look through them all and most of them will just be people walking by, but it definitely would catch any vandalism. So just keep that in mind because your card can fill up pretty quickly.G-Sensor works great, nailed a pothole and file was locked and saved!Very easy to setup, install, and use. Menu is pretty simple & straightforward.Overall I would say it's a great device, and I really want to like it, but I just cant get over this annoying white balance issue and it's effect on the image quality... really starting to get to me, especially when comparing it to my $25 rear camera. Hopefully they can look into this issue and roll out a firmware fix in the near future, would gladly give it 5+ stars.
