BlackVue DR650S-2CH dash cam review & notes

[bdkinnh]

I installed a BlackVue DR650S-2CH in my '17 M4 last week, so I thought I'd post a few notes about it in case it helps anyone with their purchase and/or setup. I was going to post pictures, but there's already a bunch of BlackVue pictures on the site - how different could mine be?

I bought it from blackboxmycar.com, and I'm glad I did. These days, 90% of my purchases are through Amazon, but with all the positive feedback here about blackboxmycar.com, I purchased from them instead. I had a bunch of questions, and they answered them all quickly & completely. They shipped quickly, and everything was packaged and protected well.

I ordered the Cellink Battery B, as well as a multi-safer, and they were kind enough to splice the MS to the Cellink for no charge. Actually, I ordered a PowerMagic Pro at first, but they told me the MS would be a better option for my configuration, and upgraded me at no charge.

I decided to get the multi-safer even though I was getting the Cellink, because the M4 isn't my only car; there may be several days that I don't drive it, especially when the snow starts flying here in NH. If the car sits idle for a long time, the camera would end up draining the battery in parking mode while checking for motion that is never going to happen. If I then took the car on a short trip, the battery wouldn't charge enough to record for any length of time in parking mode. With the multi-safer, I can have it shut off after 6 hours and protect the Cellink's battery.

I've seen a few posts that say the multi-safer can't be used with the Cellink, and that isn't true. It works just fine, and does exactly what I want it to do.

Installing everything is ridiculously easy. If you can plug a lamp into an outlet, you can install all this yourself. If you pay to have someone install this for you, you're just wasting your money.

The Cellink comes with the add-a-fuse, and all the pieces (camera, MS, and battery) plug into each other without any splicing or wiring at all (unless you buy it elsewhere and have to splice the MS to the Cellink yourself). I used fuse location 125, which was unused on my car. Since I have the Cellink, all I needed to connect to the fuse panel was the cable from 125 (ACC) to the Cellink.

Stuffing the wires behind the trim pieces is the only mildly annoying part, and even that isn't a big deal at all. Took all of 20 minutes.

The cable that goes from the front cam to the rear one has a TON of extra cable left over. I spooled it, wrapped a few pieces of electrical tape around it, and stuffed it above the headliner. There's probably twice as much cable as you need.

I wanted to install the camera behind the rearview mirror, but NH puts the state inspection sticker in a location that prevents it. I thought about mounting the camera on top of the sticker and just re-mounting it every year when I got a new inspection sticker, but I did a few image tests using the BlackVue app and my iPad, and the difference between mounting it there vs. at the top of the windshield wasn't enough to make it worth it.

I ended up installing it on the drivers side; I thought about putting it on the passengers side to get it out of the way, but after looking at the images, I preferred the video to be as close to what I was seeing while driving as possible. I'm getting this as cheap insurance in case of an accident, and on the outside chance that I have to present the video as evidence, having the video match what I saw while driving could be helpful. Plus, having it on the drivers side is better for picking up any roadside conversations I have with the local constabulary (note to self: start saving for the Stinger and ALP).

I thought having the camera in that location would be a bit annoying, but it hasn't bothered me at all. After a few days, I don't even notice it's there anymore.

I have the rear camera mounted to the side of the brake light. I have the rear sun shade, and there's plenty of room at the top for the camera.

The BlackVue has a cloud feature that allows you to access the camera's recorded videos, live video, and GPS location from anywhere in the world provided you have a WiFi hotspot in the car. You can setup the camera with a total of three networks, and if it can't connect to one it will try the others. My M4 has the WiFi hotspot option, and I've setup the camera to use it. It works, for the most part, with a few notes that I get into below. I have my home network setup in the camera as well, and once the car goes to sleep (and shuts off the WiFi hotspot), the camera then connects to my home network and I can browse and download files until the multi-safer shuts everything off.

The cloud feature also allows you to receive push notifications on your phone for certain events, which are configurable in the app (things like parking mode enable/disable, event recordings such as movement while parked, etc). These are a nice idea, but they need a little more work in the app to make them useful (which I get into later).

I've only been using the camera for a week or so. It works very well, and I'm glad I got it. It was easy to install, it does what I want, and it has a small footprint so it's relatively stealth. I do have a few notes & quibbles, though:

The image quality is quite good, especially for a camera this size. I have several 1080p security cameras installed at my house, so I'm used to a certain level of quality, and I'm hard to impress. I'll admit I had hoped for a little better, but given the size and weight of the BlackVue, it's really quite good. During the day it's good enough to read license plates; at night it's pretty good, but plate reading is tough. I can read them on the car stopped in front of me in a well lit area, but on the highway the reflections from the plates make them almost impossible to read. This is an area where the ability to record audio from inside the cabin is nice - just read the plate number aloud, and you've got it.

You can't turn off all the lights on it: the GPS signal light stays lit, and there is a little WiFi light on the end of it that remains on, and if you use the cloud feature, it blinks while it's connected to the cloud (which should be all the time). It's not distracting during the day since I can't really see it, but at night it's noticeable. Not glaring, but because of where I have it mounted, it is a tiny bit distracting. I'm sure I'll get used to it, and if it bugs me enough I can just put some electrical tape over it.

When parked at night, the WiFi light is noticeable from outside the car (especially when blinking, but that will only happen for 20 minutes until the ACC power goes off and kills the WiFi hotspot). Some people might like this because it may act as a faux security light, but with the blinking clown nose of the built-in security system, I don't see this as adding much value. To me, it's a "I'm probably expensive, you should smash the window and steal me!" beacon.

It would be nice if you could shut off the GPS and WiFi lights, and make it totally stealth, especially at night.

Getting the camera to connect to the cloud can take a while - I'd guess around five minutes once I leave the house. It could be that the camera starts out connecting to my home network, and once it drops that connection it takes a little while to round-robin to the M4's built in WiFi hotspot. Whatever the reason, I've noticed that after I leave the house it takes a little while before the WiFi light starts blinking, signaling it's connected to the cloud. The main benefit of the cloud feature for me is using it as a DIY Lojack, so if my car gets stolen I'll have to wait 5 minutes before it shows up on the app. Not a really big deal, but it would be nice if it connected faster.

The push notifications do work, and you can configure which types to receive, but with one major problem: every time the camera connects/disconnects to/from the internet, you get a notification... and you can't turn these off. The camera connects and disconnects constantly - sometimes every five minutes - so I'd receive a TON of notifications, none of which are useful.

I had originally setup the camera to send me notifications during parking mode only (so if someone hits my car in the parking lot I'd be notified right away), but every five minutes my phone would go off when the camera either connects or disconnects. This would happen even when the camera was connected to my home network, which is rock solid and has full strength in the garage (I've been a tech guy for 25+ years, and I make my living at it - my network is solid), so I think there must be some sort of issue with the network stack in the camera. Even so, you can disable all the other push notifications from the camera, but not these? They gave us the option to disable the other notifications because they knew not everyone would want to receive them, but they thought that everyone would want the "Hey! The camera is connected! Whoops - no it isn't! Wait - yes it is! Dang - it just disconnected again!" cycle? This one issue makes the push notifications basically useless, unless you don't mind your message alert going off every five minutes.

Hopefully they'll add an option to not send these notifications in a future release of the app, but if you read reviews online, people have been complaining about this for a while.

Streaming the videos or copying them via WiFi is really slow, but that's just physics - a three minute video is over 200 MB, so that's a lot of data to transfer. When viewing videos using the app (or using the 'live view' feature) it drops the bit rate so it doesn't have to transmit everything, but it's still slow. It's not like you're going to sit there and watch them on a regular basis as entertainment, so it isn't a big deal, but if you ever need to show the video to the police from the side of the road, be aware that it will take a little while. You can select a file and transfer it to the phone's local memory first and then view it from there, but that step will take some time - do a test run so you know what it's like before you need to do it for real.

When you format the microSD card it will transfer the camera's settings to the card, and it will also install the viewing applications for both Mac and Windows (I haven't used the Windows application yet - just the Mac version). The application works fine, but one downside is the viewing window is a fixed size. I have the camera set to FHD @ 30 FPS front, and HD @ 30 FPS rear, so the pixel density is high - when using the viewer app, the video appears kind of pixelated and blocky. At first I thought it was a video quality problem, but when I copied the files from the SD card and viewed them using VLC (a video player) and was able to increase the viewing window, they looked a lot better.

As I said earlier, the cloud feature has the ability to share your GPS location. You can configure the camera to share a bunch of things via the cloud, but it's a little unclear if your GPS location is public or not (I don't see an option to enable/disable public publishing in the app, contrary to what the manual says).

I've read some posts online that say you can look in the app and see other BlackVue users, and if they've enabled the option, even view their live feed (weird). I looked around for other BlackVue users in my area, and either there aren't any, or this feature is no longer enabled on these cameras. I don't relish the idea that my location is being shared with the public, but I don't see any way to tell for sure if it is or isn't. If this is something that is super-important to you, you may want to do some research on it (or just disable the cloud feature all together).

You can buy the camera with different sized microSD cards; I bought the 16 GB version, but since I've set it up with the highest quality possible, the card fills up quickly. The camera can handle larger cards - if you're going to get one do some research and make sure it's the right kind of card. SanDisk is my usual go-to SD card vendor, but it seems the standard cards aren't really made for loop recordings like a dash cam. They do have a "High Endurance Video Monitoring" card built specifically for dash cams, which I'll be receiving shortly.

There is a button on the side of the camera to turn off/on WiFi, as well as format the microSD card (which they say should be done once a month). The manual says the button should be held down for 10 seconds to format the card, but in my experience it's more like 30 seconds, and sometimes it doesn't work - you have to release & press again. Same with turning the WiFi off and on - I'll press it once and the camera will say "WiFi off!" - but the light stays lit. Pressing it again turns off the light. Same two press cycle to turn it back on. Not a big deal - I only mention it in case someone runs into the same issue and thinks the unit is defective (then again, perhaps my unit is defective!).

That's it! I hope this has been helpful. I've been happy with it so far, and I'm glad I got it. If I'm lucky I'll never be in an accident and need to use the video, but at least I'll have it in that case, and on the off chance it's a windy day and a breeze blows up the skirt of an attractive woman to reveal she's going commando.

[Arcades]

Thanks for the long written review

It does bug me you are unable to turn off the notifications completely but I am assuming if you never install the app then it wouldn't be an issue?

[x.shell]

Originally Posted by bdkinnh

If you can plug a lamp into an outlet, you can install all this yourself. If you pay to have someone install this for you, you're just wasting your money.

Thanks for the detailed review.

I have this installed on 3 of my cars now. I installed all 3 myself. I'm a pretty handy guy that does almost all my own mechanical work on my cars. Although all 3 installs weren't particularly difficult for me, I think your phrase is a bit of an exaggeration.

I wouldn't hold it against anyone to get a professional to do this installation because it's definitely not as easy as plugging a lamp into an outlet. Again, the install isn't rocket science, but I honestly think changing my brake pads were easier than installing these dash cams. If I had to install another one, I'd probably have a shop do it... Only because I've been there/done that.

[AIRPOWER]

OP thanks for the great write up. I was interested in how it worked via the cloud. I have not enabled this option as my '15 M3 does not have a wifi hotspot.

Overall I am extremely happy with mine as well.

The only configuration difference I have is I got the B100 battery backup. It works great and gives me 15 hours of park/record time. The B100 has been discontinued by Blackvue and replaced with the B112 but the B112 only offers 12 hours of park/record time

[bdkinnh]

Originally Posted by exo-shell

Although all 3 installs weren't particularly difficult for me, I think your phrase is a bit of an exaggeration.

I may have been a bit lucky in that the multi-safer was spliced into the Cellink for me, but the only thing I had to do was to plug the pieces together and then plug the Cellink into spot 125 in the fuse panel. Easy as lamp into outlet.

If you have to play around with different circuits into different spots in the fuse panel, or the trim wasn't as accommodating as it is on the F82, then I could see where it would be a bit (or a lot) more difficult.

[bdkinnh]

Originally Posted by Arcades

It does bug me you are unable to turn off the notifications completely but I am assuming if you never install the app then it wouldn't be an issue?

If you didn't install the app, you wouldn't be able to configure the camera (well, you could, but you'd have to remove the microSD card and then use the PC application to configure it - kind of a hassle).

You can turn off notifications entirely through the phone's control panel instead.