Garmin Dash Cam 55
This is the dash cam to beat
£149.99 FROM Garmin, garmin.com features 1440p video, 3.7-megapixel camera, GPS, voice control, Wi-Fi, iOS app
Garmin’s Dash Cam offers high quality video and a really
compact design. It’s arguably the last point that stands as the device’s most compelling feature. The Dash Cam 55 is tiny. It’s about the size of a matchbox – albeit a matchbox with a lens that protrudes by about 1.5cm.
The mounting mechanism is also small. A metal disc about the size of a 20p piece sticks to your windscreen; this connects magnetically to a mounting arm attached to the camera itself with a ball-and-socket joint. You can leave the camera in place when you park up, or pull it from the mount and stow it in your glovebox or pop it in a pocket.
Extra convenience comes from the internal battery, negating the need to plug the camera into your lighter socket. However, it’s rated at just 30 minutes, so for longer journeys you’ll want to plug the camera in anyway.
Garmin also sells a Parking Mode Cable (£29.99), which draws a constant power supply from your car’s battery, enabling the camera to record when it detects movement while parked. This requires professional installation, however.
Safety, camera, action
Turning on your ignition fires the camera into life and, once you have agreed to a safety message, recording begins. If the camera detects a collision using its accelerometer, the footage before, during and after the impact is saved to the replaceable MicroSD card. You can also save recordings manually.
You can interact with voice commands; say “Hey Garmin” and the camera shows available instructions on its two-inch screen. You can start and stop recordings, take a photo, or start and stop a timelapse video.
Included GPS means the camera adds location data to your recordings, along with speed, direction of travel and time and date. Each of these details can be switched on or off, and so too can the Dash Cam 55’s driver safety features, which include forward collision and lane departure warnings. The camera can be made to alert you when the car ahead moves and you’re not paying attention. Alerts about nearby red light cameras and speed cameras are part of Garmin’s Cyclops service, which costs £16.99 per year.
The camera records in 1440p resolution at 30fps, 1080p at 60fps, 1080p at 30fps (with or without high dynamic range), or 720p at 30fps. Audio can also be recorded. Video quality is impressive, and it performs well at night. We’d suggest keeping the resolution at 1440p, although this might mean investing in an SD card larger than the bundled 8GB one. Recordings can be viewed on your phone by connecting to the camera over Wi-Fi and using the Virb companion app.
We found the on-camera menu system a little confusing, as it isn’t immediately obvious what the camera’s four buttons do. Aside from that and the rather limited app, though, the Dash Cam 55 ticks a lot of boxes. Its design is one of the most compact available and we particularly like how simple, secure and unobtrusive the mounting system is. Video quality is good, and adding location, time and date information to your recordings could prove invaluable if the worst happens.
You can leave the camera in place when you park, or stow it in your glovebox or a pocket