chaadster

It’s too bad for anyone who wants to access camera footage for any reason.

WhyFi

Do you ride with a camera?

seypat

I guess the questions is:

Do you purchase it for what it can/can't do now, or for what it can potentially do in the future? Or do you wait for those questions to be answered before you get one?

PeteHski

I own a GoPro, which I rarely use on the bike. Mainly bought it for skiing.

PeteHski

Well that sounds like another issue. What's the problem with accessing the footage then?

chaadster

That’s easy: wait for the answers! Will Garmin improve, or at least fix, the user interface experience?

Neither the state I live in nor any of the states I regularly ride in (well, once or twice annually) have front plate requirements— MI, OH, KY, IN— so the 715 is pretty pointless for me since it’s horrible for any use other than that.

If I could easily snag some pics off the device to illuminate my Strava posts of my clubmates’ faces as I put a hurtin’ on ‘em, that’d be something worth money, but that’s not something easy to do with 715.

So yeah, I’ll be waiting for answers before I even consider getting one. It’s a pretty big hunk of stuff to hang off the seatpost; just not aesthetically pleasing. Maybe a gen.2 RCT device will look better, too. Garmin did a good job on the 2nd gen RCLs, so there is hope!

Troul 

wait for those questions to be answered & other improvements before I get one.

Up until the RCT715 came about, I was very close in picking up the RTL515. Now that the 715 is out, it will make me either wait until questions & improvements happen, or just not anticipate such hopeful expectations from garmin. I don't need it, but it would be a nice to not have a bunch of extra gadgets if 1 could do what I need & then some.

chaadster

Really??!? That explains a lot of what has been going on in this thread…

There are many reviews addressing those issues, as well as your question about license plate legibility. In fact, there’s even more to learn about how 715 works in those reviews

WhyFi

You've been pretty adamant for not being terribly well versed in the shortcomings of the product, then.

At this point, the 715 is a 515 with a $250 price increase for a crummy camera experience. You guys keep handwaving and dismissing that with, "but it's just a dashcam." Sure, but it's a subpar dashcam for the price. Also, features that would make it more suitable for capturing and sharing non-horrible memories ("action cam") would also make it a better - not a lesser - dashcam.

I assume that you haven't tried to pull plates off of your footage? I have, multiple times. For dashcam use, image quality matters: resolution, dynamic range, frame rate, image stabilization, field of view - all of these things help to make vehicles and plates more easily identified. Do you think that 1080p 30fps is adequate when a vehicle buzzes you with a 40mph/65kph speed delta? Under good conditions, it's a flip of a coin, at best. I know - I've been there, and this is with a camera looks to be slightly better than that of the 715, based on specs and the footage I've seen.

Then there's the file handling. You have to sift through the footage to find the stuff you're after and, should you neglect to earmark the footage in the heat of the moment, that's not easy, even with the 15 minute blocks that I record with. Sifting and stringing together 30 second blocks from of the 715? Pffft. Sure, it's worth the hassle if you got hit, but it might even dissuade me from reporting a punishment pass to UpRide.cc, if my blood has has a chance to stop boiling by the time I get home.

I'm a tech and gadget guy and I mostly agree with the thought that, "there are no bad products, only bad prices." With this as a measuring stick, I think that this is a disappointing product, both in terms of user experience and suitability of intended use. With a price drop *and* improvement via firmware updates, I might consider it. Otherwise, I'll wait for a hardware revision.

PeteHski

I was only commenting on the action-cam side of things. If it doesn't work as a dash-cam as intended then I wouldn't buy it.

WhyFi

And in your mind, what, in practice, distinguishes the two?

Bah Humbug

There are two problems here.

The first is that even as designed, it's not very good - the review makes that clear, in detail, and anyone who hasn't read it to find that out should. It's not a good product, really at any price. It may be resolved at some point since the worst issues are software, but maybe not.

The second is one of disappointment. It actually reminds me of Shimano's months-long countdown to their centennial... only to offer nothing but a self-congratulatory coffee-table book when everyone was thirsty for new components. A few chose to say "they never promised new parts", which is the best kind of true (that is, technically true). However, raising your customers' hopes and then disappointing them is horrible business.

So here, Garmin said "we took that Varia you love and added a camera!". People were excited (at least, I was when I saw the headline). Then we see the implementation and are disappointed, and the price adds insult to injury. The SD card is a red herring, but being a $250 terrible crash-cam isn't worth it, even by Garmin-tax standards. Saying "but we never said it was for recording all the happy stuff on your ride" doesn't change things; someone (many someones) at every meeting should have said "hey, we're putting the camera hardware in there, we should take the time to make it good and flexible instead of terrible and limited, even if that means it has to take more development". The disappointment means there's a market here that Garmin is missing, and spent what I have to assume is a sizable chunk of development money on a product that seems likely to be heavily-discounted before the end of year. Did they not do market research to discover what everyone (just about literally) in their user base is saying right now?

The market reacts to what it wants, not what the company promises. Declaring a low bar for yourself and (poorly) hitting it is not the definition of a successful product. And this comes from a long-time Garmin user who will get a 955 at launch, and wifey will get likely a 1040 when the Edges are released. This is not just a miss, it's a big miss, from a company that usually does better.

Troul 

It might be less of a "let down" if garmin was new to the camera scene, but that is not the case.
The Garmin VIRB Ultra 30 4K Action Camera has a lot of tech built into it that might have been useful when developing the 715. First thing I would have ditched from the VIRB is the display screen & reduced the amount of ports/buttons, which should in theory reduce the physical size & create for a favorable shape for mounting on a bicycle. Might've even considered making it use an inductive charging system if it reduced moister intrusion. The software of the VIRB is already established, so plucking the evidence recordings from it should be less of a conundrum.
Lastly, the VIRB is listing for about $400 ( $500 with a powered mount) , & I would be ok with that price if they carried it over to the 715 if the aforementioned changes/development took place.

Will Wahoo see this as an opportunity to capitalize on what garmin lacked with there product? Doubt it, as I expect Wahoo to do what Wahoo typically does & just does nothing regarding relative tech.... they're too focused on expensive pedals & competing with peloton like stuff.

Thanks for taking the time to post that.

Seattle Forrest

RTL is on sale and will be $50 more when you have your answers. Buy the 515 and move on with your life. In a few years when Garmin makes v2 of this it will be better.

Polaris OBark

I noticed on the Garmin video the plate numbers were completely obscured, probably for privacy reasons, but it would be nice to know.

My rectangular radar currently works for about 6.5 to 7 hr after a full charge, and was previously thinking of upgrading to the non-camera version for the battery life.

WhyFi

Yup. Handwaving and dismissal via, "well, don't buy it - you're not the target market," is lazy and disingenuous, at best. I don't know that I could be more squarely within their target demographic - middle-aged male, avid cyclist, tech savvy, ability and willingness to blow money on bike crap, already rides with radar and a camera - so, for someone like that to be disappointed is pretty damning of their development process.

Polaris OBark

The phone App appears to be a fail. If I had to guess, transferring movie files via bluetooth is problematic, but it sounds like the app itself is a disaster.

The workarounds are to take out the SD card and read it with a wired connection to a computer, or use a USB C (or C to A) cable.

(My Sony action cam has the same issue BTW, and it can connect by wifi).

Polaris OBark

This is where I have arrived. The old one works fine (unless I ride more than 6 or 7 hours between charges), but I wouldn't mind an upgrade. REI no longer has it on the website, so I would have to buy direct or via Amazon unless I can find it locally.

Edit: Even on Garmin's own site, there is a 3 to 5 week estimated "processing" time now.

WhyFi

What I see in the DCR footage is what I see with my Cycliq, which is a few years old - legible results in a lot of conditions, but the deck starts getting stacked against it when ambient light is low (increase in noise and decrease in contrast), when the road surface is poor (vibration), or when there's a big difference in speed (motion blur/luck-of-the-draw as far as capturing a clean frame, within the legible range, at 30 FPS). Also, one big advantage that DCR has is that the plates in his region have much larger characters than the plates in the US - some of the plates that were barely legible in his video would have been illegible with US plates, I think.

edit: his footage start at ~19 minutes -

PeteHski

Well if we go back to the very start of this discussion I was just responding to the complaints about the small SD card. I merely questioned why you would NEED a bigger card for its intended use as a looping incident recorder.
I did presume that the camera was capable of recording reasonable quality video for the purpose of identifying a vehicle in an accident. If it isn't, that really is a major issue.

Whether or not it should be a full-blown action camera with higher quality video, image stabilisation, large capacity SD card, editing software, etc is an argument you can have with someone else because I'm not interested in that additional functionality.

PeteHski

Having now watched DCR's video, it appears that the software is a bug-ridden mess (not that surprising for Garmin). But it does appear to at least get the job done as an incident recorder. Hopefully they will improve it after these negative reviews.

PeteHski

Just for info, my 515 was still going strong after a 9 hour ride on day flash mode. Battery is holding up well too after a full season. I would like an incident cam though.

Bald Paul

As promised, here's some actual RTC715 video. Software update to V4.40, does not seem to address stabilization, but image is still pretty clear. Note that SC does not have front plates, so the GoPro in front catches those as they pass (did not upload any of those videos.)
Settings are camera on when radar active, 90 second clips.

PeteHski

Thanks, but shame there are no front plates over there. How easy was it to access the clips? DCR seemed to find this a massive pita in his review.

Bald Paul

I didn't use the phone app. All I did was plug in the radar with the USB cable to my computer, open File Explorer, find the radar, and there they were. Easy.