6 best dash cams 2017: save money and record bad driving

Want to know which is the best dash cam? Well, good news, we’ve tested dozens to find the best. There’s also a brief response and a long reaction, so strap in and come along for the rail.

The brief response is that the Garmin Dash Cam fifty five is our favourite at the moment.

A Two.0-inch screen on the back of the Garmin Dash Cam fifty five enables you to instantly play back movie on the camera. As well as movie it records detailed time and location data with GPS, features a smartphone app, and has extra features such as forward collision and lane departure warnings. All-in-all, a pretty compelling dash cam package!

The long response involves how you plan to use the dash cam, what specific features might be useful to you, and different options to suit your budget.

How to choose the best dash cam for you

These are a selection of the best dash cams available in the UK, they all automatically record footage when they sense a collision, but some of them have a few extra abilities. They’re certainly a worthwhile investment, and could end up saving you a lot of money in insurance premiums (for example, Adrian Flux will give you a 15-percent discount car insurance with most of these cameras).

There are several things to consider when buying a dash cam, but the most significant factor is photo quality. These devices are absolutely pointless if, when it comes to reviewing the footage of an accident, it looks like the lens has been wiped with Vaseline and you have difficulty telling whether you were cut up by a grey Vauxhall Corsa or a baby elephant.

We enlisted the help of a brand fresh Land Rover Discovery to throughly put these dash cams through their paces. Testing all of the cameras with the same lighting conditions, in a number of different, challenging scripts, such as driving towards the sun and at night.

If we weren’t blessed with the photo quality, they didn’t make it in this list. You want at least 1080p recording, 720p doesn’t fairly cut the mustard.

Next, there are dash cams with screens, and models without. Dash cams with screens are lighter to set up and view footage on, but ones without screens are a lot less intrusive. Both are useful, but we’d choose one with a screen for occasional recording (track days and scenic drives), but one without a screen setup and leave behind about for everyday driving.

Mounting type is also significant. Most stick on the windscreen with a absorption climb on, the same a sat nav, where are some more permeant cams have gooey 3M mounts.

The key feature to look out for is Wi-Fi smartphone connection, this makes it so much lighter to view, download and share footage. There’s also gimmicks such as lane departure and forward collision warning – while these are potentially interesting inclusions, in practice, they don’t work very well.

It’s also significant to note, that while these are battery powered, we’ve found they all have minuscule, sub-thirty minute battery lives. That means they’re going to require a power cable, similar to a sat nav.

The six best dash cams you can buy today

Here are the six best dash cams available right now.

1. Garmin Dash Cam 55

Narrowly pips the ProofCam RAC five to be crowned the King of Dash Cams in 2017

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