raqball

A few more videos. One shows a string of 4 cars (only 3 had front plates) and the other 2 videos are going down what I consider a crappy road. The roads here are pretty well maintained and kept up and there are very few true crappy roads to be found.. On the crappy road shown I could feel the vibrations and see my Garmin vibrating up and down. This road is only about a mile long and traffic does not generally speed. I've also noticed that most cars will tend to give me some space when passing on this specific road.

I'd say if you normally ride on smooth, or smoothish roads then the camera is fine. It's even fine on the road I consider bad but if you normally ride on crappy roads that are worse than the one I show in the video you might want to pass on it and find something with stabilization.

Troul I looked at the raw video on my 55" TV and it is easier to read the plates. Could be because the screen is much larger, could be that it's a cleaner image or it could be that my TV might have upscaled the videos. It's a newer high end TV so I guess upscaling is a possibility but I don't know if it did or not.

Videos: (no edits other than to shorten clip length and freeze frame plates)

• Normal ride on smooth tarmac: https://vimeo.com/761257314
• Crap Road 1: https://vimeo.com/761257136
• Crap Road 2: https://vimeo.com/761257221

While the video is fine for my general daily use, I am still considering getting the GoPro Mini just for the better quality alone.. Not sure what I am going to do as if I get the Mini I need to run a cable from it to a USB battery pack and I'd rather not..

Why Garmin, why? Image stabilization should have been a no brainer move for a device designed to capture plates under varying conditions..

Troul 

Some people think features like such & other features like an USB-C or inductive charging is worthless to consider by the businesses out there these days.

raqball

I just don't understand their decision.. IMO it should have been 1080p 60FPS and have some sort of stabilization option, Sure those 2 things will ding battery life but the thing is already pretty chunky so adding a bit more chunkiness to it in order to add a larger battery to make up for the loss would have made sense to me..

Video, for my use, is mostly usable and does capture most plates. I went on a short ride this morning and reviewed the footage. I'd say it was able to capture readable plates 8 out of 10 times. I also had one clip where the plate was a bit beat up / bent and the camera did not cleanly capture it.. The times where it can't, or where it struggles, is if the car is off angle (passing to give you space) but that might present a different issue if someone throws something at you. They might not buzz you but that does not mean they won't chuck an item at you. I've had this happen a few times in the past and most recently about a month ago where some teen was hanging out the window and threw a McDonalds cup with soda in it at me.

With my GoPro running 4K or 2.7K at 120 FPS I didn't have any issue, even with extreme angles, getting readable plates.. I really do not want to run a USB battery pack in my saddle bag so I guess that's why I am fighting this so hard and wanting this to work and / or be better..

From what I can tell so far is that battery life is about what they claim maybe even a tad bit more. The 3 in 1 combo could have been an absolute killer package but the areas where it's lacking are the most important part of the package..

Not sure what I am going to do.. I'll give it the rest of this week to test out then decide between it and the GoPro Mini.. I know the Mini is hands down the better choice for camera footage but with it I'd need to run a cable to a USB battery pack, I loose the 3-1 combo and need to run 2 devices on my seat post..

Troul 

This is true. I'd have bought two if it were such capable devices!

raqball

Went 38 miles today all in the City and had a crap TON of footage to review. No way I was going to review the 500+ 30 second clips the camera creates but I did manually save about 20 clips to review. On those clips the camera was able to cleanly capture plate #'s on 47 of 63 vehicles that passed. I guess that's okay but Murphys Law says that the 16 it was not able to cleanly capture are the ones that would have ran you down... I guess in it's defense maybe it would have captured them if they were close enough to have actually ran me over..

With that, back it's going. I'll order the GoPro Mini and just have to suck up not having a 3 in 1, having to put 2 devices on my seatpost and with having to run a cable to a USB Battery pack in my saddle bag..

I'm sort of bummed as this device could have been the one device to rule them all... Maybe the next version will address the issues this one has..

Polaris OBark

At risk of being seen as a devil's advocate (albeit the MacOS Darwin version, rather than the FreeBSD version), why are you sending it back? Your tests pretty much demonstrate that the device lives up to all of its promises.

raqball

Radar works as advertised, the light works as advertised, battery life is as advertised but the camera, while mostly fine, does not capture plates that I think it should. I've used previous Garmin cameras, Cycliq cameras and GoPro's continually for the past several years so I think I have a good idea of what a camera should be able to capture.

I was not expecting the footage to be high res as it's only a 1080p camera but what kills it, IMO, is the 30 FPS and the lack of any stabilization. One example from todays ride was where stabilization might have been handy was on a short (1/2 mile) but fairly steep climb where I was out of the saddle and wobbling a bit from side to side. A car came within a few feet of me at high speed and the camera didn't even come close to getting the plate.

Todays ride included about 12 miles on the outskirts of the city and it struggled, at times, on cars going at high rates of speed. I tried to freeze fame those high speed cars at different locations trying to get a clean image and no dice.. I did however have a few high speed vehicles where it was able to capture plates though. It's just very inconsistent. I think location of the sun, shadows and other things factor into if it can get a clean read on the plate of a high speed car.

I think if someone mainly rides tarmac (me) and on roads where cars generally are not moving a high rate of speed (not me) then it's fine..

I just think Garmin seriously missed the mark with the camera portion. 60FPS would give you the ability to slow the frames down and probably get a much cleaner plate image. Stabilization would help even on smooth tarmac as was the case today on my short but steep climb..

All this is just my opinion as I am sure there are plenty of happy users out there..

tempocyclist

Like you say a better camera would have made this an absolute killer of a product. I think it'd still be "fine" for most people, but for the cost it should have been a lot better.

raqball

Agree.. There is no way that camera is a $200 upgrade.. $50-$75 tops maybe..