Dash cam reviews?

[Hawkmoon]

I've decided that it's past time for me to equip myself with a dash cam. I bought one from Amazon, and it was a total disaster. It came with no instructions, and the manufacturer (or vendor, not sure if they are one and the same) could only say to plug it in and it will function. Yeah, fine -- how do I set the date and time, and how do I retrieve a video off the device?

Too late to return it, so it's going to Goodwill. What's a reliable, affordable dash cam that isn't difficult to set up and use?

[KD5NRH]

What's a reliable, affordable dash cam that isn't difficult to set up and use?

If WalMart's still got the Ginii camera, it should be around $20-30.  Had a PNY 32G card fail in it, but otherwise it handles Texas heat fine for ~3 months now.

You may want to bump the resolution down a bit from 1080p to get more than a few hours on a card.  (Consider that you may not be in a position to stop recording before the car is towed off, and it will overwrite the files.)  Impact detection is hypersensitive, quickly filling the card with door closings and rough streets.  (It locks the 3-5 minute file to keep it from being overwritten.  Took less than a week to have 32G filled with locked non-events at 720p.)  Turning that and "parking guard" (detects the aforementioned door closings, as well as loud pipes passing nearby when the power is off) off makes it pretty much just an always-on looping camera since I couldn't find a switched line to splice into near the overhead light.  (I hate having wires dangling in the middle of the windshield, and not really a fan of routing them around the edge.  Last few radar detectors were also run off the overhead light's power line.)

[HeroHog]

I'LL TAKE IT! I'll pay shipping!

[HeroHog]

Well, Hawkmoon's "low budget" dash cam DOES work. It isn't perfect though as it has something loose inside that makes an annoying buzz in the audio feed. The video isn't that bad! I am at 720p right now and the next test is at 1080p. I will run a longer test that will fill up the memory card to see if it "eats" older files to keep recording. At 720p I can get one hour of video with sound on an 8gig chip. Wish me luck!

http://herohog.com/images/temp/13080007.AVI

PS: Hawkmoon is right, the interface SUCKS and NEEDS a manual SOOOOO bad! I DID figure it all out but it took a lot of trial and error and I still don't understand some of the icons and what they mean and what some options do.

PPS: the "Power" button is also the "Enter" button. WTF?