When dash cams first started showing their faces a while back they were bulky and immensely expensive and if I am honest I thought they were a passing fad.
Over the last year I have been more and more intrigued by dash cams and how easily they could fit into family life but also were they worth it?
Recently we were really thrilled to get to finally try a dash cam out to see how it installed in our family car and also how it integrated into our lives.
The Philips ADR 810 Dash Cam is sleek and stylish in design and also much smaller than I thought it would be (I thought sat nav size )
It comes in the box with the monitor, cradle, extra sticker pad and cable. You do need to add a Class 10 Micro SD card (no larger than 32 GB) which I bought for less than £10 on Amazon.
The set up is super minimal, pop in the Micro SD card, cable and then peel the sticker back off the pad and attach to the windscreen.
I have to be honest and say the sticker pad was by far the worst part of the set up as I just couldn’t find the backing paper and made a bit of a mess of the pad, although this didn’t stop it sticking.
The cable is fantastically long which makes it great for trying to route out-of-the-way as this machine only works when it’s plugged into the car lighter. It doesn’t come with any kind of wire stickers so even though I had routed most of my cable underneath the dashboard there is still a fair amount of cable on show. However I can only presume this is the case for all dash cams that need a power source externally of the engine.
Once installed this beauty has a great auto record feature meaning you don’t have to do anything except turn the engine on and it will kick in and start recording immediately which if I am honest I am rather grateful for as if it was reliant on me pressing record it would barely ever happen. Overall that feature alone made my day.
The dash cam also automatically saves the recording in a collision so it can be kept securing the evidence.
Some of the other features also seemed rather good with its wide-angle lens (156 degrees) Full 1080p HD camera for daylight and night recording. It also has fatigue index and driver alert that will have visual and audible alert if you need to rest and it also has emergency captures buttons on the device and on the cigarette lighter so you can make sure if for some reason you don’t have your camera on.
I have to say that since having it installed I can’t imagine not having one in now. Its great knowing that even if you are driving well, if someone around you isn’t then it’s not just your word against theirs.
I am totally hooked on having a dash cam now and this is Philips ADR 810 Dash Cam is easy to install and manage but with great image capture and a reasonable price (£139.99). The only thing you do need to take on board if you do go on holiday or not use your car for a few days you may have to reset the date and time but for me that’s not an issue as I don’t mind resetting as it only takes a minute and it doesn’t happen that often
Overall I love the feeling of stress free driving and I am now looking forward to the summer driving.
Disclaimer: I was sent this product for the purposes of this review. All thoughts and opinions were independently formed by members of The Oliver’s Madhouse.
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