The homebrand Supercheap Auto SCADVR18 Full HD 1080P dash cam offers a very compact unit with a suction cup mount. There are buttons on the side – it’s not a touch screen – and it was very easy to position in the car. Just be careful if you’re adjusting the angle, as the top clip section broke on our test unit without much pressure at all.
It shoots in 1080P high definition, and the lens has a 120-degree viewing angle. That’s good for the money. But you miss out on features like GPS location logging and tagging on this unit, so you’ve got to know where you are in order to make a claim with insurance. There is no parking mode, but it has a G-Sensor on board that will capture an on-the-road event and log it.
It uses a “continuous recording” setup so it will constantly override old footage, but it won’t override anything saved by the G-Sensor, which partitions to a different file. It is capable of using microSD cards between 8-gigabytes and 64Gb.
Daytime impressions:
You’ve probably heard the old adage that you get what you pay for, and in the case of the SCA dash cam you’re getting a pretty decent little unit for the money. It’s cheap - there’s no doubt about it - but the quality of the image that you get during daytime driving is actually pretty darn good. There's a good wide angle to the lens and it’s easy to see your surroundings and even make out number plates when you pull up to park.
During high-speed driving it’s possible to discern the signs on the side of the road to give you evidence if you need it, and even to pick up number plates on passing cars. There is absolutely no doubt that this little unit hits above its weight when it comes to daytime driving. It’s just when it comes to night time driving that it falls short.
Nighttime impressions:
As you can see from the screenshots of the footage, this camera makes it look like we’ve got gas lanterns on the front of the car, not some of the best LED headlights in business. The contrast is all out of whack and it’s very difficult to discern passes by pedestrians and even what makes all models you’re driving past in really dark streets
It gets a little better when the streets are well lit, but even then with it set on its highest definition there’s a graininess to the vision that just isn’t competitive with the more expensive rivals. But I guess you are paying a fifth or less for this one, and that’s gonna be enough of an argument to buy wannabes over the others for a lot of people.
At traffic lights on well lit streets there’s enough detail for you to make out what’s happening around you just not as much detail as you might want.
On the freeway again everything was just too dark.