With the traffic density and crazy drivers around now, I decided to get a small, cheap dash cam for accident evidence purposes (not good for documenting trail adventures). It’s an “Apeman” C500. and was $45 with a coupon at Amazon. It works amazing well for the price, certainly good enough for what I need.
The cameras record at 1080p front and 720p rear, compressed. Nighttime performance is about what you’d expect. The front camera has a lot better dynamic range than the rear, but still good enough to see who’s at fault.
It can use a maximum 32GB micro SD card which is about two hours of recording, in up to five minute files. With loop recording selected (default) the files are replaced, oldest first.
I went to order another for my wife’s car but they are not in stock and the price went up. So I ordered a Crosstour CR600 which looks to be the same unit with a slightly different case.
These cheapies don’t switch between driving mode and parked mode very well so I don’t use the parked mode. It seems the more expensive units, like $200, work better.