Product review: Navman MiVUE dashcam

Navman's MiVUE690 SAFE adds driver safety aids to basic dashcam digital recording, but are they a help or a hindrance?

Whether you're fully insured or not, the cost and hassle of being involved in a car accident isn't pleasant. And when that accident triggers lawyers at 10 paces amid a flurry of angry finger pointing, you'll be glad you invested a relatively paltry sum in a dashcam.

Dashcams have exploded (metaphorically speaking) in popularity in recent years, and now GPS navigation specialist Navman has come up with a value-added twist on the equation.

First, the basics. For the unaccustomed, a dashcam is a digital video recorder that sits on your dash or windscreen and continuously films a wide-angle view of proceedings in front of you. The idea being, if you witness or play a part in any accident in front of you, there's video evidence of what went down – and who did what to whom. That in itself is often enough to send those accusatory fingers back into their pockets, and more importantly the lawyers back into their BMWs…

ANTE UP

Navman's MiVUE690 SAFE, however, throws a range of driving safety aids into the bargain – giving users an extra layer of assistance that hopefully helps head off a bingle before push comes to crunch.

About the width and length of a driver's licence, the compact little unit comes with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that include forward collision warning, lane departure warning, frontal departure warning (a reminder for when the car in front moves off from a standstill), and driver fatigue alerts.

A Safety Camera Alerts feature gives you an audible warning of any impending speed or red light cameras, and you can add your own locations to the device's database.

Because the unit has GPS functionality it records your location, direction and speed (so there's no point claiming you were at the speed limit when you T-boned that car, if you were 10km/h over), and all the information is displayed on a 2.7-inch colour high-resolution screen.

The video is recorded in super high definition, and because there are slots for two SD memory cards you can make back-ups manually to one card while the device records to the other.

ON THE ROAD

It all sounds great in theory, but how's it stack up on the road? We used the MiVUE in inner-city Melbourne in a standard car, and also on a run from Melbourne to Ipswich in an Iveco Eurocargo (a race transporter, in fact – click here for the review).

Well, for a start, you have to supply your own SD cards – a tad annoying in this day and age – but once you've inserted them, fixed the dashcam to the windscreen with the suction cup and plugged the power cord into the 12-volt outlet, you're good to go.

Five adhesive brackets are supplied to route the power cable around the perimeter of the windscreen so you don't have an ugly cable hanging down – a nice touch.

We had no qualms with the dashcam's basic operation – it starts automatically on firing the car up and shuts down when you key off. Fortunately we weren't involved in any collisions so we're yet to test the unit's operation in an 'incident', but basically any sharp motion is meant to trigger recording to the device's memory.

Calibrating the unit required the help of a passenger – while driving in the centre of the lane, they need to follow the on-screen prompt and align a horizontal and vertical plane. The device's menu system is easy to navigate via four buttons on the right-hand side of the unit.

We weren't quite so enamoured, however, with the unit's ADAS features. We found the frontal collision warning was a bit too sensitive, ditto the lane departure warning. Driving around town the constant audible warnings (you can set them to either a non-judgemental beep or a curt female reprimand) led to these features being disabled.

On a couple of distracted occasions we appreciated the alert that the vehicle in front had moved off, and the headlight reminder could potentially be a handy thing when driving at dusk or dawn. As for the driver fatigue alert, well – it's a personal thing as to whether or a not a driver heeds these warnings, but it can at least be set to trigger at intervals of two, three or four hours.

In fact, the MiVUE690 SAFE offers a high degree of flexibility in most aspect, giving users plenty of scope to tailor the unit to suit their needs. If you don't like a feature, simply turn it off. And viewing your footage is a fairly simple matter of downloading the MiVUE Manager from the internet. Stick your SD card into a card reader (not supplied) hooked up to your computer and away you go.

The speed and red light camera warning was useful for the most part, but it did seem to trigger occasionally in places where no camera was present, and it seemed to miss plenty of cameras too. Adding a new camera, however, is a matter of pushing a button on the MiVUE (hopefully not while speeding past said camera at the time!). In a similar vein, you can take a photo at any time by pressing another button – handy for capturing the vehicle(s) final resting place after a smash.

THE VERDICT

To sum up, the MiVUE690 SAFE packs an awful lot of technology into one small package, and at a pretty reasonable price too. We found several of its ADAS safety features irritating for city driving, but less so on the open road. These safety systems don't appear to be as effective as the equivalents found in many of today's cars, but then the pricing puts it all into perspective. Dashcams are cheap insurance, and this MiVUE 690 SAFE is a good one that comes loaded with extras.

Navman's MiVUE690 SAFE has a recommended retail price of $329 and is available now. Visit www.navman.com.au for more information.

Product review: Navman MiVUE dashcam

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