Viofo A329 Review: Does The Best Dashcam Get Better?



Here’s a first look at the brand new Viofo A329 dashcam, an upgrade to the popular A229 Pro. Read my A229 Pro vs A329 …

source

Transcript

  • 0:00 | hey what’s up guys so vfos just announced their new a329 dash cam and this is essentially an upgrade to what’s
  • 0:06 | been my favorite all-around dash cam the a229 pro which is the main dash cam that I run now in both of my cars now this
  • 0:13 | new a329 shares the same form factor as the a229 pro uh the front camera has a
  • 0:18 | wedge shaped design with an LCD in the back and the rear dash cam has a slightly modified uh rotating Barrel
  • 0:24 | shape the front camera uses the same 4K starvest 2 sensor the IMX 678 and the
  • 0:30 | rear camera uses the same 2K starvis 2 sensor the IMX 675 now that said there’s
  • 0:36 | a number of different improvements here uh with the newer dash cam and the two biggest ones is the fact that the front
  • 0:42 | camera is now capable of recording at 4K and 60fps giving you smoother video as
  • 0:47 | well as reduced motion blur which can help when trying to capture fast moving details such as the license plates of
  • 0:53 | cars going by second they’ve also added external SSD support so now you have the ability to save all the captured video
  • 0:59 | files onto an external hard drive there’s also several other improvements that we’re going to get into and there’s
  • 1:05 | a change that actually makes the newer dash cam a little bit worse than the previous model and so in this video we’re going to go ahead and take a
  • 1:10 | closer look now here at this new a329 and see what all the new changes are with vf’s latest Flagship dash
  • 1:18 | cam now full disclosure vfo sent me an early copy of this a329 here uh for
  • 1:24 | testing for providing feedback and Reporting bugs uh and ultimately here for review as well it’s got production
  • 1:29 | Hardware but I’ve been testing with a variety of different pre-production firmwares as they continue to improve things and fix some bugs and so it’s
  • 1:35 | very likely for that reason that as time goes on uh some of the issues that I talk about here in this video may actually get corrected uh and improved
  • 1:43 | uh now I do get to keep this dash cam after I finish doing my testing and review and whatnot uh but I’m not otherwise being sponsored by vfo or any
  • 1:50 | other manufacturer for that matter uh in any way I also have no limits as far as what I can say good and bad and so uh
  • 1:56 | this video actually covers everything that I’ve seen so far both good and and bad uh to share with you guys what I’m seeing here with this dash cam now the
  • 2:03 | dash cam is available now for pre-order and it’s going to begin shipping on October 8th and if you’d like to order one I’ve got affiliate links down in the
  • 2:09 | video description uh and if you use those links it does help support my Channel at no cost to you and allows me to continue doing tests and reviews here
  • 2:16 | like this for you guys additionally it’s also worth noting that uh this a329 uh I’m going to be comparing it throughout
  • 2:21 | the video to the a229 pro uh this is kind of like the upgraded version but the a229 pro is going to continue to be
  • 2:27 | sold as well it’s not being discontinued they’re actually going to be selling both of them side by side and so in this video uh we’re going to be covering of
  • 2:33 | course the improvements here uh with the a329 but also covering maybe some of the advantages of the a229 pro so you can
  • 2:38 | kind of get a sense as far as which one uh would be a better fit for you now to start things off let’s take a look at the form factor here of the a329 now as
  • 2:46 | mentioned earlier it’s based on the same design of the a229 pro uh we’ve got the LCD in the back the status LEDs the
  • 2:53 | buttons here in the bottom Etc if we take a look at the sides of the dash cam you can see that we’ve got some additional cooling vents that they’ve
  • 2:59 | installed here I’m going to have another section uh entirely focused on cooling but yes the uh 329 does run cooler than
  • 3:05 | the 229 Pro uh as far as the USB type c Port here on the side this used to be for the rear dash cam that goes in the
  • 3:11 | back of the car now this port is only going to be used for ssds so if you want an external hard drive basically plugged
  • 3:18 | into the dash cam uh that’s what this port is for now and I’m going to have another section of the video dedicated
  • 3:23 | just to the SSD uh compatibility as well now if we take a look at the other side of the dash cam we’ve got some more
  • 3:29 | changes here as well uh on top of the micro SD card slot we now have the port for the rear dash cam because it was
  • 3:35 | removed uh you know on this side because the port is now for ssds so the rear dash cam is now going to plug in here
  • 3:41 | and you can see we’ve got a smaller uh coax connector there instead of USB type-c and with the smaller connector
  • 3:47 | you can see the cables kind of look like this it’s actually the same cable as what was used on the original a229 and so if you’re upgrading from
  • 3:54 | like the a229 duo for example you can actually use the same uh cable as what you’ve had before uh the mounts here for
  • 4:01 | all the a229 series dash cams original plus pro and a329 it’s all the same Mount so you can reuse the same power
  • 4:07 | cable uh the same Mount and everything and you can reuse the same connector here uh from The a229 Duo however it is
  • 4:13 | going to be a different cable uh compared to what we had with the a229 plus and pro now I think maybe the main
  • 4:20 | benefit of using uh this type of connector is the fact that the cables are actually going to be thinner and if
  • 4:25 | you take a look at it mounted in my car you’ll actually see that the cables here going to the rear camera are indeed thinner and that can be beneficial when
  • 4:31 | you’re trying to actually tuck the cables behind your vehicle’s trim uh during the installation it makes it easier to get things installed uh it is
  • 4:38 | worth noting that these connectors are going to be a little bit more fragile so you’ll definitely want to be careful uh when you’re actually getting things installed and plugged in here in the
  • 4:44 | dash cam so you don’t wind up breaking anything and then taking the place of where the interior cabin camera used to plug in that’s no longer available here
  • 4:50 | on the a329 it’s only going to be a two-channel front and rear dash cam at most uh so in place of the Interior
  • 4:56 | cabin cam plug we now have a port here uh for micro HDMI so if you want to plug it into like an external video display
  • 5:02 | or something you do have the option here now as far as the lens if you take a look uh there was actually a marker here
  • 5:07 | for the circular polarizer so when you’re taking the polarizer and installing it here on the dash cam like that you would want to actually align
  • 5:13 | the two white lines however uh this is going to be facing the windshield and it’s actually tough to see when you’re taking a look at the back of the dash
  • 5:19 | cam from inside the car and so for that reason they’ve actually moved that little alignment line here on the 329 so
  • 5:26 | now it’s actually going to be uh here visible when you’re looking inside the car so now you can align it here like
  • 5:32 | this uh and plug it in by the way Pro tip you can actually uh kind of maybe rotate it a little bit clockwise to
  • 5:37 | maximize the polarization effect and you’ll just take a look at it here on the back of the display but it’s going to make it effectively now much much
  • 5:44 | easier to get these two aligned uh when you’re looking at it from inside the car because they move that alignment line
  • 5:49 | here on that side of the lens then taking a look at the rear dash cam they have physically changed the design here
  • 5:55 | of the rear dash cam you’ll notice that it does look different than the previous design used in the a229 plus and the
  • 6:00 | a229 pro and the main benefit of this updated design means that now you can clip on the optional rear circular
  • 6:07 | polarizer on the rear camera to help cut out Reflections back behind you as well just like you could do with the front
  • 6:13 | camera next let’s take a look at the video quality here from the vfo a329 now I’ve long been a fan of the video
  • 6:19 | quality from the previous a229 Pro and in fact I’ve considered it to be the Benchmark that I’ve been comparing other
  • 6:25 | dash cams to and this updated a329 is going to be building upon the previous a229 Pro it shares the same image
  • 6:32 | sensors front and rear however it now offers the option to record at 60 FPS up
  • 6:38 | from just 30 FPS on the front camera the rear cam is still going to be recording at 30 FPS but you now have the option to
  • 6:45 | record at twice the frame rate up front now the first benefit of recording at a higher frame rate means that the video
  • 6:51 | is going to look much smoother when you’re recording at 60 FPS now realistically though this may not
  • 6:56 | necessarily be a big deal in practice but it can can be helpful if something really quick happens in front of you and
  • 7:02 | you’d like to slow down the video footage to get a better look at it for example here’s a cool 911 GT3 RS that I
  • 7:08 | passed on the highway and if you slow down the video footage from both of the dash cams the a329 still looks smooth
  • 7:15 | now playing back at 30 FPS while the a229 pro which is going to drop from 30 fps to just 15 FPS is definitely going
  • 7:22 | to start to look chunky now that said my larger question is what the real world benefits are to recording at 60fps when
  • 7:29 | it comes to freezing motion and capturing important details like moving license plates now that said after
  • 7:35 | looking through a ton of sample footage I’m actually having a hard time finding examples of when 60 FPS offers a
  • 7:41 | dramatic improvement over 30 FPS for example here’s a clip with these two cars back behind me and as soon as
  • 7:47 | another Lane opens up they’re going to go ahead and speed up and pass me and this was actually super convenient for
  • 7:52 | testing so going back and rewatching this here with both of the dash cams you can see that at both 60 and 30 FPS but
  • 7:59 | both of the frame rates allow me to capture that license plate I do think that the a329 makes it a little bit easier to read the license plate but I
  • 8:05 | think that’s actually just due to some additional sharpening going on on the post-processing side if you look down at the a229 pro I mean there’s not a bunch
  • 8:12 | of motion blur going on there that was eliminated by the a329 and then continuing on and looking at that white
  • 8:17 | Tesla next the same thing is true here at both 30 and 60 FPS I’m able to capture the plates no problem now if you
  • 8:24 | want to get even more motion blur we can try freeze framing the license plates of oncoming traffic and in these situations
  • 8:30 | sometimes yes the 60fps does seem to do a little bit better job here it’s not night and day but I do find it easier to
  • 8:36 | read the individual digits here when recording at 60 FPS your mileage may vary though in other instances neither
  • 8:43 | of the frame rates are going to allow you to capture the license plates then continuing on there’s this parked car over on the side of the road and in this
  • 8:49 | situation again I do think there is a bit of an improvement here with the 60fps it’s not enough to where you can
  • 8:54 | easily read each digit but it does look better than what I’m seeing at 30 FPS and continuing on to look at more
  • 9:00 | oncoming traffic we’ve got the white car on the left neither one of them are able to read the license plates then with the
  • 9:05 | gray car behind that I think the 30 FPS actually does a little bit better not enough to make every digit easily
  • 9:11 | legible but I do think it’s a slight Edge over 60 and then with the SUV behind that again maybe a slight Edge to
  • 9:17 | 30 FPS but I wouldn’t necessarily call that a win the plate digits aren’t legible on either of the dash cams then
  • 9:22 | slowing things back down a little bit to get a little less motion blur if we take a look at the plates here on the parked cars the legibility is very similar here
  • 9:29 | and both of the dash cams can make out the digits then looking at the next car we’ve got some motion blur on both of the dash cams and neither one of them
  • 9:35 | can capture the plates and then with the white subw behind that again same story here I’m not seeing any improvements
  • 9:41 | with the 60fps when it comes to freeze framing motion now the times when I could see 60 FPS potentially being the
  • 9:46 | most useful is during the day when the light levels start to get a little bit lower the reason is when this is happening the camera is going to have to
  • 9:52 | go for longer exposures per frame which is going to introduce some additional motion blur but when you’re recording at
  • 9:58 | 60 FPS and you got twice as many frames to capture will you have half the amount of time per frame to capture each image
  • 10:05 | and thus with the faster exposures you should have less motion blur and taking a look at some of the plates here of
  • 10:11 | these cars that I’m passing I do see a bit of an edge here at 60 FPS not night and day but I do see an improvement and
  • 10:17 | to save us some time I’m just going to start to jump ahead to the next cars in line here with this black Subaru in this
  • 10:22 | example things are pretty similar and so there’s not much of an advantage at 60 FPS with this white car same thing it’s
  • 10:28 | basically a tie where neither one of them can make out the plate with this black car it’s a tie neither of them can do it with this blue truck it’s a tie
  • 10:35 | neither of them can do it with this brown truck it’s a tie neither of them can do it and so basically the moral of
  • 10:41 | the story is that in most situations there’s not actually really that much of a benefit sometimes yes there can be a
  • 10:46 | slight Edge to 60 FPS but it’s not going to be a big huge dramatic Improvement now something that does make a big
  • 10:52 | difference is introducing HDR there’s times when it helps and there’s times when it hurts for example here’s a clip
  • 10:58 | a few minutes later later where Auto HDR kicked on on the a229 pro and as you can see in this example there is a
  • 11:04 | noticeable amount of motion blur here at 30 FPS with HDR while with HDR off on
  • 11:10 | the a329 it’s really easy to make out each of the individual plate digits and it’s for this exact reason that the vfo
  • 11:16 | dash cams have an auto HDR feature because you typically want HDR off in the daytime and on at night the dash cam
  • 11:22 | offers the ability to let you choose when HDR should be turned on and turned off and to give you a good example of
  • 11:28 | the benefits of HDR at night take a look at this comparison clip where we’ve got 60 FPS up at the top with no HDR and 30
  • 11:35 | FPS at the bottom with HDR and you’ll notice that with my headlight shining on that reflective license plate without
  • 11:41 | HDR I can’t make out the license plate at all with HDR it’s easy to see and if we stop and take a closer look at a time
  • 11:47 | where my car kind of dips down a little bit so the headlights are not shining directly onto the plate anymore you can
  • 11:52 | see that even when I’m trying to optimize things here for the 60fps with no HDR it’s still a dramatic difference
  • 11:58 | compared to running the dash cam with HDR and taking a look at another example of this uh check out that white
  • 12:04 | Volkswagen Golf there right behind me now as we’re driving up the road here in two different Lanes our lanes are going
  • 12:09 | to start to merge and that golf is going to dive bomb in front of me right as there’s a cop sitting on the side of the
  • 12:16 | road there and I was really curious to see what the cop was going to do if anything but he actually just kind of
  • 12:21 | stayed on the side of the road there and did nothing uh either way if we take a look back at that clip here from both of
  • 12:27 | the vfo dash cams you’ll note that with the a329 recording at 60 FPS it’s completely unable to capture that car’s
  • 12:34 | license plate because of the fact that it’s not using HDR like the a229 pro is
  • 12:40 | and talking with vfo they said that both dash cams are going to have comparable video quality when you’re running both of them uh with the same settings which
  • 12:47 | is really helpful because they only sent me one copy of the a329 and so I can’t do a direct AB test with just the a329
  • 12:54 | nevertheless I did try driving down the same road back to back with the a329 on
  • 12:59 | different settings and I noticed that there’s this issue with 4K 60 that goes away if you’re running the dash cam at
  • 13:05 | 4K 30 with HDR uh for example here have you noticed how the sky has these weird changes in brightness and it keeps
  • 13:12 | changing colors between blue and orange well when I drove down the same road running 4K 30 with HDR those issues went
  • 13:19 | away and the video looked much more normal again but either way when it comes to nighttime recording I think
  • 13:24 | that the 30fps with HDR is going to be much more useful than trying to capture at 60 FPS without HDR and so personally
  • 13:33 | I think that auto HDR is going to be the way to go here you can run it at 60 FPS in the daytime because occasionally
  • 13:38 | there are some instances where it can offer a slight Edge over 30 FPS most of the time it’s not going to make a big
  • 13:44 | difference but you might as well and then at night you’ll definitely want to run it with HDR because that’s going to
  • 13:49 | work significantly better than trying to run it at 60 FPS at night now it’s also worth noting that the text that’s
  • 13:55 | stamped onto the video footage is going to be white which works well most of the time time but if you’re driving a white car then it can be hard to see the white
  • 14:02 | text against it and so for that reason they’ve added a new Option here in the a329 that’s going to allow you to change
  • 14:07 | the color of the text that’s stamped onto the video footage and there’s now four different colors that are available
  • 14:12 | including white yellow cyan and golden next let’s take a look at the dash Cam’s
  • 14:18 | SSD support which is one of the big new features here of the a329 now ssds or
  • 14:23 | solid state drives they’re basically external hard drives that you can plug in to the side of the dash cam and store all the video footage on these instead
  • 14:30 | of the micro SD card in the dash cam itself you’ve got the option to actually record the files in the micro SD card in
  • 14:36 | the dash cam or onto one of these solid state drives now there’s a couple reasons why you might want to use one of
  • 14:42 | these instead I found maybe four benefits to doing so uh number one you’re going to be getting much larger
  • 14:47 | capacities here with a solid state drive the dash cam actually supports drives as large as 4 terabytes which is going to
  • 14:54 | give you a ton of record time so much larger than 256 gigs or 512 or something
  • 14:59 | additionally when you take this out of the car and plug it in the computer these have much uh faster file transfer speeds which is really nice when you’re
  • 15:05 | working with a lot of really big sized video files uh number three maybe the biggest benefit is the fact that well
  • 15:12 | you can take one of these drives and store it somewhere maybe out of sight so uh let’s say if somebody breaks into
  • 15:18 | your car and steals the dash cam that does have the micro SD card in there however they’re not going to be getting all the video files that are stored on
  • 15:24 | the SSD uh and that can be helpful so they can’t see where you’ve been driving they can’t hear like the audio
  • 15:29 | conversations in the car recorded by the mic that kind of stuff so for security and privacy reasons it can be nice to
  • 15:34 | have everything actually recorded onto an external device like this that’s not in the dash cam itself and then fourth
  • 15:41 | I’ve actually noticed it’s a little bit tougher to remove the uh micro SD card here uh from the a329 compared to like
  • 15:46 | the a uh 229 series uh especially if you’ve got like shorter fingernails like I do and so maybe having everything
  • 15:51 | recorded to an external drive like this it’s a lot easier to maybe like pull out of the glove box or something and then just pop back in does make that process
  • 15:58 | easier now that said there’s also a couple downsides as well uh for example this uh USB port on the side where you
  • 16:04 | plug in the SSD that used to be for uh the rear dash cam this no longer functions as a dash cam Port it’s only
  • 16:10 | for ssds um and so for that reason it only supports now a Max of two camera so front and then the rear camera right
  • 16:17 | there so you’re limited to two channels you can buy it as a one channel or a two channel option but there’s no option available now uh for a three Channel
  • 16:24 | option uh which makes it maybe less versatile than something like the a229 pros which which can support three
  • 16:29 | channels plus you’ve got options for interior cabin cameras and the telephoto cameras up at the front to zoom in and
  • 16:35 | capture license plates or exterior rear waterproof cameras uh Etc and then having the SSD plugged into the side of
  • 16:41 | the dash cam like this means that there’s one extra cable coming out of the dash cam that you’re going to have to like tuck out of the way and run
  • 16:47 | throughout your car now retro Car Guy 530 has also been sharing some of his testing and he found something really
  • 16:52 | interesting if you’re using the SSD for parking recording now it is going to draw some additional power and if you
  • 16:58 | take a look at his numbers you can actually see a pretty sizable increase in power draw which is also then going
  • 17:03 | to ultimately reduce how long the dash cam can record for in parking mode and so you’ll actually get significantly
  • 17:09 | longer parking record times if you have the dash cam set to record to the internal micro SD card next let’s take a
  • 17:15 | look at the SSD functionality in action so in order for this to work you’re going to need an SSD drive of course there’s many different types uh and the
  • 17:22 | idea is you’re basically just going to plug it into the USB port here on the side of the dash cam into what used to be the rear dash cam Port uh and so
  • 17:29 | we’re going to go ahead and plug in a drive here like this and then you’ll notice on screen uh it should recognize
  • 17:34 | the drive this is a little bit difficult to actually get it to recognize the drive I’ll talk about some of the complications here in a bit but assuming
  • 17:40 | it does recognize it it says the SSD needs to be formatted do you want to format it we’ll hit okay hit it a second
  • 17:46 | time and it’s going to go ahead and uh format the drive for us now that that’s done uh we’ve got everything connected
  • 17:52 | here uh and you’ll notice here in the bottom right hand corner there’s two icons uh oh it says do you want to save
  • 17:57 | uh the videos to this drive drive so we can hit yes and if you take a look right there the one in green on the left is
  • 18:03 | the SSD drive uh the one on the right is the micro SD card slot and you do actually have the option of where you
  • 18:08 | want the dash cam to write to it’s not going to be able to write to both at the same time it’s just either or and so uh
  • 18:14 | taking a look now at the uh menu options we’re going to go into system settings uh and you can see we’ve got the option
  • 18:19 | in here for video storage we can choose if we want to write to the micro SD card or to the external SSD drive uh we’ll do
  • 18:26 | this for now uh there’s also an option here for manage SSD storage if we go into there there’s two options one is
  • 18:32 | you can back up the files on the micro SD card over to the SSD drive uh Additionally you also have the option of
  • 18:38 | maybe uh deleting all the files that are stored there uh now if you want to play back any of the video files that are on
  • 18:44 | the drive uh we’ve got the option here of where you want to play back stuff from so we’ll say external SSD uh we
  • 18:50 | just formatted it so there’s not going to be a lot of video files but there we go there’s one uh you can see we’ve got the file right there uh and it’ll play
  • 18:56 | back and stuff uh as we’re going or at least in theory it should play back I’m not actually seeing the counter go um
  • 19:03 | but we do have the option here of uh playing back the video files either way actually it looks like uh the dash cam is locked up I can’t do anything else
  • 19:10 | anymore uh let’s try unplugging the drive real quick uh it should actually give me a disconnect warning when the dash cam is uh working properly go ahead
  • 19:17 | and just unplug the dash cam and uh power off the dash cam real quick but once we got the dash cam up and running
  • 19:22 | I wanted to point out that uh if you do disconnect the drive like this uh it should actually now fall back to the
  • 19:27 | micro SD card slot you can see it says uh the SSD has been removed and so it’s going to save now uh to the micro uh SD
  • 19:33 | card slot and I like that as an option so like you can take this home for example can store a lot more files here and the transfer speeds are a lot faster
  • 19:40 | than micr SD so you can take the videos here and then it falls back there probably a good idea to go ahead and switch it uh in the dash cam for first
  • 19:46 | before unplugging just to avoid any sort of corruption issues uh but uh you do have the option to record either here or
  • 19:52 | the micro SD card slot now I’ve had a number of different issues getting it to work properly with these different SSD drives uh starting off first with even
  • 19:59 | getting it to recognize the drive I found that it’s not going to be compatible with all USB type-c cables
  • 20:04 | with several of the cables that I’ve tested uh it doesn’t even recognize the drive in the first place and so you might have to do a little bit of trial
  • 20:10 | and error to find a cable that is going to work properly uh between your drive and dash cam I’ve got several different
  • 20:16 | cables that I’ve tried where the dash cam can’t even see the drive at all and so it might take a little bit of trial and error uh to find a cable that is
  • 20:23 | going to work properly now the dash cam does come with a USB cable in the box that does work with these ssds
  • 20:29 | however it’s only about 18 in long and so if you need it to stretch all the way to say your glove box for example uh you
  • 20:35 | are going to need to use a different cable that you provide now vfo does actually include a really long cable
  • 20:40 | that could actually be perfect uh this is the power cable that’s designed to be used with their included a cigarette lighter like this so you’ve got the USB
  • 20:46 | port here uh the plugs in right there and then this is actually supposed to run to the uh Mount right there to provide Power for the dash cam but it’s
  • 20:53 | actually shaped perfectly to uh go into the side here you’ve got the 90° Bend to go up to the headliner and then it can
  • 20:59 | go here to the uh uh the SSD drive unfortunately though it doesn’t actually work like you can see if I try to
  • 21:05 | connect to it it says uh please add an external SSD so the shape and design and length and everything would be perfect
  • 21:10 | but unfortunately you are going to have to get a different cable uh that does allow the proper data communication additionally formatting these drives to
  • 21:17 | be compatible with the dash cam can actually be a bit of an issue as well it’s not exactly plug-and-play uh I’ve got a number of these plugged into my
  • 21:23 | Mac formatted as apfs but I had to actually change that in order for the dash cam to even be able to see these
  • 21:28 | even with the proper cabling now uh there’s a couple different partition table formats it looks like the dash cam
  • 21:34 | is not compatible with GPT and so you have to actually format it to MBR now unfortunately on my Mac I couldn’t do
  • 21:40 | that with dis utility kind of Apple’s gooey to do this and so I actually had to do it from the terminal getting some
  • 21:45 | help from chat GPT to help me walk through the process but once I was able to format it with the MBR partition
  • 21:50 | table the dash cam was then able to recognize uh these memory cards and then format it uh directly now that said
  • 21:57 | after the dash then formats the drive then I run into other issues as well for example I can plug this back into my Mac
  • 22:03 | afterwards to view the files on the drive but unfortunately the Mac then can’t read the files that are stored
  • 22:08 | there it just gives me an error and then wants me to format the drive again uh now if I plug it into my Windows
  • 22:14 | computer this does actually work a little bit better uh in this case it’ll actually throw an error which I think is
  • 22:19 | due to me unplugging the SSD while the dash cam is still running and not actually unmounting the drive properly
  • 22:24 | but windows will give me the option to repair the drive and after I do that that then I am able to view and play
  • 22:31 | back the files on the drive and transfer them to my computer additionally when I then plug the drive back into the dash cam it does work properly so it’s not
  • 22:38 | exactly a plug andplay process here uh but it seems like it works better on Windows than on Mac um I’m sure this
  • 22:46 | kind of stuff could be improved over time I’m testing kind of some of the earlier firmware here uh as we get into the launch uh so this is kind of some
  • 22:52 | information that I’m providing back to vfo and I’m hopeful that in future firmware updates they kind of uh smooth out uh some of the stuff because the SSD
  • 22:58 | functionality is actually pretty cool next let’s take a look at some of the cooling improvements here on the a329
  • 23:04 | now internally they’ve made some changes here to the heat sinks to help with thermal dissipation inside the camera
  • 23:10 | and then to help with air flow and getting all that pot air out of the dash cam they’ve added some additional cooling vents on the side of the dash
  • 23:15 | cam too now to see what kind of uh real world improvements that we have let’s take a look at uh how the dash cam fares
  • 23:21 | under a thermal camera and taking a look at the two dash cams here under the thermal camera I’ve got the a229 pro
  • 23:27 | here on the left and then the a 329 on the right uh and the main thing to note is just the fact that the 229 does
  • 23:32 | indeed run hotter you can see kind of like more white here under the thermal camera and this red Crosshair is
  • 23:37 | actually going to be pointing to whatever is the hottest thing in the entire frame so uh this spot right there
  • 23:43 | the maximum temperature in the frame right now is 48° uh if we wanted to maybe look at the equivalent spot actually might have to
  • 23:49 | move this out of the way and that’s kind of cool you can see where the dash cam used to be sitting but over here on the
  • 23:54 | 329 the hot spot is going to be 42° if we come back over here we’re at
  • 24:00 | what 48° so 48 vers 42 if we were to maybe like take a look at this side of the dash cam for example uh the hot spot
  • 24:07 | is going to be over by the uh micro SD card we’re at 40 or sorry 61° uh and then in this dash cam we’re
  • 24:14 | at uh 52° so 9 10° uh Celsius difference
  • 24:20 | and then finally if we take a look at uh maybe like this side of the dash cam uh over here on this spot which is what
  • 24:25 | would be facing like the sun for example uh if your car is parked in the windshield or Dash Cam’s parked in the windshield we’re at 50° here uh versus
  • 24:33 | on this dash cam got to move this out of the way again instead of 50 we are at uh 45° so 5 degrees cooler on this side and
  • 24:41 | so the main takeaway here uh is the fact that uh the 329 does run cooler natively
  • 24:46 | uh than the 229 Pro and so if you’re parked in an area uh where it’s already hot enough by default I mean I’ve got
  • 24:52 | them I’ve been running here for a while but it’s here in my cool office uh if you’re running the dash Cam’s in a
  • 24:57 | really hot part of the country the 329 will natively run cooler which does help to address one of my concerns here with
  • 25:03 | the 229 Pro uh and some of its issues with uh overheating in hotter climates
  • 25:09 | now when it comes to parking recording the a329 is going to be very similar to the a229 pro and it’s got a variety of
  • 25:14 | different parking recording modes uh but it does have one new Option here for the time-lapse at 1 FPS with super Knight
  • 25:22 | Vision mode and doing some Park time-lapse recording testing here in a dark culdesac you’ll notice that when I
  • 25:27 | switch to the super Knight Vision option it does a significantly better job of capturing what’s going on around me and
  • 25:32 | this is true for not only the front camera but the rear one as well now in the daytime the super night vision
  • 25:38 | time-lapse looks just like the normal time lapse now I asked vfo what they’re doing for the nighttime recording and
  • 25:44 | they said that they’re reducing the FPS which I take to mean that using fewer frames per second allows them to have
  • 25:50 | longer exposures per frame and letting in more light per frame for example they could do up to a full second of exposure
  • 25:57 | per individual frame of video and so I went back out to test this kind of walking around in front of the car and stuff but I found that it actually
  • 26:04 | handles this situation just fine there’s surprisingly little motion blur despite this being such a tough situation and I
  • 26:11 | got to admit that by default I still prefer the auto event detection to give me my motion detection and impact
  • 26:17 | detection and I don’t like the fact that any impacts detected during parking mode don’t automatically switch to continuous
  • 26:24 | regular parking recording to give you full speed video and audio but but if you park a lot in super dark areas this
  • 26:31 | super night vision feature in the time-lapse mode is honestly kind of hard to beat additionally it also draws less
  • 26:37 | power than traditional time-lapse recording mode and so you’re going to be able to record longer when you have it set to the super night vision mode and
  • 26:43 | for more information you can take a look at retro Car Guy 530s testing too which I’ll link to down in the video
  • 26:48 | description next let’s take a look at the upgraded Wi-Fi transfer speeds here with the a329 now with this dash cam
  • 26:54 | they’ve added support for Wi-Fi 6 and it’s going to support file transfer speeds of up to 30 mbes per second now I
  • 27:01 | was curious to see how much faster this is compared to the previous a229 Pro so I did a transfer test here with both
  • 27:06 | dash cams and with the a229 pro I found that it transfers at less than 10 megabytes per second when using 5 GHz
  • 27:14 | Wi-Fi but when I repeated the test with the a329 I noticed it was much much faster in fact it was actually
  • 27:19 | transferring at over 28 megabytes per second which is nearly three times the transfer speed of the a229 pro and so
  • 27:27 | this upgrade is both significant and noticeable and so with all that said what are my final thoughts here with
  • 27:33 | this new vfo a329 well essentially it’s an upgraded version of one of my favorite dash cams the a229 pro and in
  • 27:40 | fact the a229 pro has actually been my Benchmark now when it comes to video quality for a little while here with this new a329 though it now adds the
  • 27:48 | option for 60 FPS for the front camera to help give you smoother video and maybe more importantly reduce motion
  • 27:54 | blur in certain instances which can help better Freeze Frame action and details while moving it adds SSD support for
  • 28:01 | external video recording which can be more safe and secure in some instances uh it’s got the same parking recording
  • 28:07 | capabilities as the a229 pro plus it’s got a new super night vision mode which is a big help when you’re parked at
  • 28:13 | night and using the time-lapse parking mode they’ve increased the Wi-Fi transfer speeds uh which allow you to
  • 28:18 | download those large files to your phone that much more quickly they’ve also improved the cooling here with the newer
  • 28:24 | dash cam which is helpful if you’re driving or parked in hotter climate plus they’ve changed the connector for the
  • 28:30 | front to rear camera and given you a thinner cable which is going to be easier to tuck behind the vehicle’s trim
  • 28:35 | but with the newer cable it does mean that you can’t directly upgrade from the a229 pro to the 329 which is kind of
  • 28:41 | what I was hoping to do uh unless you first actually run a new cable connecting the front and rear cameras
  • 28:46 | additionally adding support for the SSD does mean that the dash cam loses some versatility when it comes to adding some
  • 28:52 | additional camera angles unlike the 229 Pro which supported three different cameras and you had the option of
  • 28:58 | switching between a bunch of different add-on cameras with the new a329 you’re limited to a maximum of just two
  • 29:03 | channels so you can run it as either a front only dash cam or you can have it configured as a front and rear setup and
  • 29:10 | so for that reason if you really want to run a dash cam that can support three different channels that can give you like a cabin camera or a telephoto lens
  • 29:15 | up front or something uh the a229 pro is still going to be the more versatile option but when it comes to maybe just
  • 29:21 | like the default recommendation for the best dash cam I do think that this new 329 is going to now become that standard
  • 29:28 | recommendation so long of course as you’re okay with running it strictly as a front only dash cam or as a dual
  • 29:34 | Channel front and rear dashcam there are some issues that I’ve been discovering here in my early testing that I’m
  • 29:39 | hopeful that vfo continues to improve upon they tend to be pretty good as far as uh listening to customer feedback and
  • 29:45 | improving their dash cams over time but nevertheless based on what I’m seeing so far this new a329 seems to be a pretty
  • 29:52 | solid option and down in the video description I’m going to go ahead and Link you guys to this new a329 uh both the single Channel version that record
  • 29:58 | Recs just up front as well as the two Channel version that’s going to record both front and rear if you guys have any questions feel free to ask down in the
  • 30:04 | comment area below alternatively you can also come join the discussion on the forums online and I’ll link to the
  • 30:09 | discussion thread for you guys down in the description below as well and so with that said thanks so much for watching hope you guys are doing great
  • 30:16 | and I’ll see you in the next one bye there’s a number of other improvements as well uh and there’s also one maybe
  • 30:23 | dis Improvement

You May Also Like