The best wireless dash cam is a camera that allows you to easily access footage, change settings and see the live view. Do you want to know more about wireless camera benefits and usage?
The key benefit of a car wireless camera is that you can connect it, without wires, to your smartphone. So, with such a gadget, you’ll view immediately or store any event that might happen on the road or the parking lot. You can also check what happens overnight with your car – theft attempts, damages, crashes and more. Or if, by a rare occasion, something nice happens on the road, you can share that as well.
A wireless dash cam is the best choice for you as it lets you control every aspect of the device without any hassle of removing or transferring the video recordings to the SD card.
In the event of a car crash, your wireless car camera records everything and prove your stance in front of the law enforcement authorities.
If you are interested to know more about the dash cams with WiFi, such as benefits and usage, you can go through the following article. This article covers everything and offers a complete buying guide to help you make a smart decision.
What is a Wireless Dash Camera?
A quality dash cam can help you in many ways to prevent an unpredictable situation and to protect your interests in the best possible manner when you need it most. WiFi enabled dash cams can offer visual and clear evidence of an accident without removing memory cards. This is really important when you need to review footage immediately, especially if you are pulled over by law enforcement or were just in an accident. Removing the SD card and finding a computer to play the footage is cumbersome and inconvenient.
If you are looking for a dash cam solution that can record without the need for a power cord, check out battery operated dash cams.
How Does a Dash Cam with WiFi Work?
Dash cam and smartphone connect for video transfer and altering settings
A dash cam records the events going around your vehicle. When it has WiFi, there are some additional benefits that make your life easier.
A WiFi-Enabled Dash Camera will typically have a smartphone app that is provided by the manufacturer.
As long as you have a smartphone, you can download the free app. With the free app opened, it will ask you a series of questions to be able to connect to the dash cam. If it isn’t obvious at this point, make sure your dash cam is on! Also, ensure that your dash cam has that functionality. If you have a newer dash cam, the chances are higher.
Once you connect your smartphone to the WiFi camera, you can play video recordings or receive live streaming from the dash cam. You should be able to review your video recordings to report on any accidents or crashes you may have been in. Even if you haven’t been in any explicit accidents, you might want to see if your car was hit when idle. You can download this footage to your phone, where you can forward it to YouTube, your email or even your insurance. If you are in an active accident scene, you can quickly pull up footage for police officers. Be careful, dash cam footage is a double-edged sword. It can bite you in the behind if you were at fault!
Having the dash camera live stream to your smart phone is great for dash cam positioning. How annoying would it be to have the dash cam setup in a way where it doesn’t record your windshield? Also be sure to not have the dash cam positioned in a way that can obstruct your view. There are a ton of state laws around windshield mounting.
What if you are away from the car? Can you view Live Video when the car is parked?
Some dash cams send video recording events to a cloud service from where you can access them later. While some cloud services are free, others are charging you a monthly fee for all these features. The cloud service allows you to see real times videos from your dashcam, alerts when the car is hit or other unwanted events. Also, you can share your most exciting videos to YouTube or other social networks via WiFi.
It’s important to know if a wireless camera does not have these capabilities out of the box.
If your dash cam does have this feature, in order for this to work, you need to download the proprietary Android or iOS app on your smartphone and also connect the wireless camera to the internet.
As soon as you pair the wireless car camera to your smartphone, the wireless connection will allow your smartphone to operate the camera remotely.
Wireless dash cams connecting to a Hotspot for Live Streaming
Your smartphone can be an internet hotspot, but you can use other mobile devices for that.
For small distances between camera and smartphone, you should use your smartphone for internet sharing.
However, if you want to receive live footage from the dash camera no matter where you are, you need a portable hotspot that provides wireless internet in your car.
So, you need to buy a portable router or hotspot with a data plan, put it in your car, and then choose your favorite WiFi dashcam.
Connect dashcam to the portable hotspot, install manufacturers’ app on your smartphone, and access your dashcam over the cloud.
If you don’t have money for a portable router, you can use an old smartphone which will do the same job. Put the smartphone in the car, enable mobile data, and that’s it. Follow the already discussed steps t configure your WiFi camera to stream live videos.
Some examples of cheap hotspots for the car:
Some wireless dash cams come with cloud services which can be free or paid monthly.
The cloud service is accessible from anywhere, and it stores some extra data from the device and also backup’s every critical footage.
Also, with a cloud service, you can stream live from your dash cam.
Why Buy a Dash Cam with WiFi – Advantages Over a Standard Dashcam?
WiFi enabled dash cams are receiving increasing popularity due to some benefits.
Live Stream Videos
Live streaming from dashcams when parked or you’re away, is the most important reason for buying a wireless dash camera. You can keep an eye on the car 24 hours a day, and you can act quickly in case of vandalism or if your vehicle is hit. How often are you in a car per day? Maybe at most 3 hours? What happens to the rest of 21 hours; usually sitting outside, exposed to the elements. By utilizing the live streaming factor, you can monitor your car during off hours.
Once you have a wireless dash camera, you do not need to go through many hassles such as reducing the size of the videos and improving discreetness to share footage.
Ease of use over WiFi
Another benefit of a WiFi enabled dash cam over the standard dash cam is that it offers ease of changing settings. The wireless feature lets you do many functions. You can use your phone to change the settings or recording quality. The smartphone will work as the remote control that you can use to control every aspect of the car camera. I much rather change the settings via smartphone than deal with the dash cam screen. Not only are the dash cam screens smaller, the touch responsiveness isn’t as good compared to a smartphone. Wireless-enabled dash cams will allow you to send videos through email, replay footage in high quality and upload the footage to the internet.
In the event of a crash, dash cams provide instant proof to the law enforcement authorities without using a laptop or without removing the micro SD card. The viewing function is very useful as you can see every event, live, on your smartphone’s display. If you have non-WiFi equipped dash cam, then you have to either remove the memory card or remove the dash cam altogether.
The WiFi function will prevent this hassle and will offer better convenience to view the footage and share it with luxury.
Top Picks for the Best Wireless Dash Cams
Rexing V1P Pro Dual
The Rexing V1P is a compact and high quality dash camera made by another great dash cam manufacturer, Rexing.
Rexing has dual cameras, with both the front and rear camera recording in 1080p @ 30 fps. Both cameras feature 170 degree wide angle lens. One important feature incorporates a GPS location logger. It allows you to mark your location, time and speed at any point. This is helpful if you are wrongly pulled over for speeding. You can show footage to the judge to waive the ticket.
You can use the WiFi feature to view, share and save dash cam recordings into your mobile device via an app interface.
It also features technology to combat extreme hot and cold climates ensuring your dash cam will never shut down or overheat. Video quality for the Rexing is top notch.
Separately, you can purchase their own Hardwire Kit to connect to your car’s fusebox to ensure the dashcam is running at all times.
AUKEY Wi-Fi Dash Cam 1080p
The AUKEY is a great dash cam with wireless capabilities. It showcases a simple and minimalist design at a budget price point. It features a 1080p resolution with a wide field of view at 170 degrees allowing you to capture most the road.
We like how the design fits with the slant of the windshield and contains a supercapacitor battery to withstand heat up to 167 degrees.
The WiFi is seamless with AUKEY’s own WiFi app that will easily connect and allow you to download, view or share footage.
This is a solid choice for those who want a no hassle dash cam. It doesn’t have a ton of fancy features, but the upside is that you aren’t paying for them either. For people who want to be protected at an affordable price, the AUKEY is the one.
IIWEY Dual Dash Cam 1440P&1080P
The IIWEY Dual Dash Cam is a newer company on the market but has made a splash with its dash cam. It packs a bunch of features and even includes some high end ones at an affordable price.
It can record the front in 1440p and the rear in 1080p both at 30fps. It has built-in WiFi as well as GPS. When you wireless connect your smartphone to the dash cam, you can pull up not only dash cam footage, but also location, speed and timestamp information.
This dash cam is wireless in a slightly different way by being able to record without a power cord. It has a lithium-ion internal battery that is capable of being a car security camera to monitor your vehicle overnight or when away from the car.
It can’t record for long periods of time, but it can record incidents such as collisions, shocks to the car or if people are walking in front.
BlackVue DR900S-2CH Wireless Dashcam
BlackVue DR900S is a 4K Wireless dashcam which you can rely on even when your car is parked, or you are on a business trip. This is a two channel camera with the front camera filming in 4K while the rear camera films in 1080p. Not only does this have Parking Mode, which will record any motion or vibration toy your car, it also has cloud capabilities. This means you can remotely view your dash cam from anywhere in the world! Image quality is great as you will be able to read license plates from a distance due to the high resolution.
The camera records videos at high-quality day and night without problems. The 4K 30fps recording quality allows you to see the smallest details of an unwanted event like a license plate number which hit and run.
This dashcam is an expensive one, but if you need a superior level of protection for your car when you’re in traffic when your car is parked or when you are not around, this model is a must.
Garmin Dash Cam Mini
The Garmin Dash Cam Mini is a great choice for those looking for the smallest, most discrete dash cam on the market. If you don’t want to garner attention by any outsiders or if you are worried about the size of a lot of the other dash cams, then this is the one for you. You can easily hide this behind the rear view mirror and not obstruct your view.
It is a 1080p camera with a respectable 140 degree wide angle lens. Similar to the other picks, this dash cam has WiFi functionality using the Garmin Drive App. This camera also comes with Parking Mode which will allow the Garmin to monitor your car at all times. The video quality is good, but not great as they did have to make some sacrifice due to the size.
How to Choose a Wireless Dash Camera
It is essential to go through some key features to ensure that you are buying the best product for your usage.
While buying a wireless dash camera, you need to check :
- the video quality, WIFI connectivity, size and reliability, storage capacity
- night vision image quality, easy installation and mounting options, motion detection
- heat tolerance, G-sensor, and GPS features.
- cloud service for streaming – some are free but some are not.
As you are buying a wireless device, make sure that the wi-fi connection works good, and the smartphone app is safe and bug-free. User reviews are the best informational resources in this case.
The quality of the video is the most critical aspect of ensuring better footage. You should buy the one that comes with a good video resolution and an excellent camera. Look for an HD camera or even 4K if you can afford it.
Besides resolution, look for a wireless camera that has quality lenses. Without quality video lenses, the camera records low-quality videos which are not useful.
If you intend to use the wireless dash camera when the car is off, check if you can connect it to an external power box. The power box provides continuous power to the camera and also protects your car’s battery from being drained.
Dash cams with WiFi is definitely a luxury feature, but it makes owning a dash cam so much easier.