There are no shortage of dashcams available in the New Zealand market, offering a vast variety of choice for Kiwi consumers wanting to capture everything from close calls to crashes, and even moments of unintentional comedy.
And now Navman's first ever three-channel dashcam, the MiVue True 4K Pro Surround, has stepped the into this crowded market, looking to shake things up with its innovative three camera approach that not only provides video capture facing forwards and backwards, but also inwards and sideways.
The front-facing camera unit is your standard windscreen-mounted dashcam, with an adjustable camera and a small screen for controlling its functions. The camera features 4K Ultra HD (2160P) recording and utilises the highly-regarded Sony Starvis 2 sensor, which is considered the gold standard in high-end dashcams.
In real-world driving conditions, the front camera performance is excellent, capturing footage in daylight and overcast conditions that is clear enough to easily see the smallest details and read number plates. Even when conditions worsen - such as early dusk, night, or heavy rain - the footage remains excellent, with that beefy 4K sensor proving sharp and capable of dealing with pretty much any light conditions.
The Pro Surround's biggest distinguishing feature, however, is the side-facing "surround" camera that is housed in the rear module.
As well as the standard rear-facing camera, this satellite unit also employs a 170-degree ultra-wide front-facing interior lens to offer a panoramic view, uniquely capturing footage both inside the car and out of side windows.
While this third channel isn't 4K and may not capture finer details like number plates from a side impact, it is genuinely useful as it can record more context and how an incident unfolded, potentially capturing events missed by standard two-channel setups.
This smart third angle proves helpful for identifying side impacts, covering forward-facing blind spots, and even added security, recording anyone peering into the vehicle.
The Front Departure feature thoughtfully alerts the driver when the car ahead moves only after the vehicle has been idling for ten seconds or longer, preventing annoying alerts in start-stop traffic.
For extended protection, the MiVue also offers a parking mode, recording incidents when the car is turned off. To enable this function, however, users must purchase the optional $69 SmartBox hardwire tap. You can, however, use a portable power bank, but this only offers fairly time-limited protection, as it chews through a 20,000mAh power bank within a few hours.
Navman provides a generous amount of cable (eight metres) for the rear camera unit and includes a 128GB microSD card.
Beyond its recording capabilities, the MiVue True 4K Pro Surround also acts as a safety system, incorporating a suite of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), including the likes of Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS), Forward Collision Warning System (FCWS), Back Collision Warning (BCW), Headlight Reminder, Driver Fatigue Alert, and Front Departure alerts, bringing modern safety features to older cars, or as a colleague suggested “make your old car as annoying as a new one”.
And there is a lot of truth to this as, while some of the features were genuinely useful (such as the headlight reminder and front departure alerts), a number were poor imitations of such systems offered in modern cars, relying on what the camera can see and process on board with its considerably more limited capabilities.
The Front Departure feature thoughtfully alerts the driver when the car ahead moves only after the vehicle has been idling for ten seconds or longer, preventing annoying alerts in start-stop traffic, but things like the Safety Camera Alert system that warns drivers about fixed speed traps, red-light cameras, and school zones was annoyingly inconsistent.
The combination of the 4K sensor and the unique surround angle makes it a formidable tool for incident documentation.
Still, these features are nice to have and while some of them do indeed make an older car just as annoying as a new one with them all built in, there are enough genuine benefits that at least some of them will be useful to most people. And you can always turn off the ones that aren't.
The MiVue's initial setup is simple and surprisingly “app-free" since the front unit features an integrated screen and physical buttons for configuration; there’s no touchscreen functionality here, but this is actually a blessing as the screen is too small for fat fingers anyway.
However, this refreshing simplicity quickly becomes a burden because the accompanying Navman MiVue Pro app is severely barebones and easily the Pro Surround's weakest feature - you can’t configure settings, adjust features, or rename files through the app, as all setup must be done directly on the camera, relying on the small screen and menu options that are half composed of technical acronyms.
Connectivity is also a major pain point, with wireless file transfer being inconsistent and slow, with connection stability being hit and miss at best. Most annoyingly though is the fact that every time you need to access footage via the app, you have to manually activate Wi-Fi mode on the camera and then manually reconnect your phone by scanning a QR code or picking the Wi-Fi hotspot, a process that is truly a grind and makes the theoretically simple act of transferring footage from the camera needlessly complex.
Popping the MicroSD card out is the easiest way, but seems like an unnecessary extra hassle given how simple and easy wireless connection between devices is (and should be here) these days. It's also fraught with danger, as a tiny MicroSD card dropped down the side of a car seat has a high chance of never being found again...
While the experience is undermined by the limited functionality of the companion app and the frustrating file transfer process, the Navman MiVue True 4K Pro Surround is a technically impressive, extremely well-built three-channel dashcam that delivers high-quality footage with a genuinely useful side-view context.
The combination of the 4K sensor and the unique surround angle makes it a formidable tool for incident documentation, while ADAS features are a nice, if slightly less necessary, feature that all makes the MiVue True 4K Pro Surround a compelling proposition at the top of the dashcam market.