AKASO DL12 2.5K Mirror Dash Cam Voice Control 12" Touch Screen Front and Rear Dual Dash Camera for Cars Night Vision Backup Camera with Sony Starvis Sensor GPS G-Sensor Parking Assistance

The media could not be loaded. Overall I love this dash cam. The view on the 12" mirror is a very large size viewable screen. Touch screen works well, and settings are pretty straight forward. I did struggle a bit with the time settings as for the eastern time zone it has to be set to minus 4:00 from whatever Hong Kong Phooey time it shows from God only knows where. That part makes no sense. The 1-3-5 minute loop is how long it records a segment, breaking it off into one file. It does continue on flawlessly from one file to the next. The cameras have great wide angles, but this also has a few issues. This affects the distance you are actually away from things. The rear camera does not have a great vertical view. I have to use the camera in my Honda Fit's dash for the close items when backing up as it does have a great vertical view to the ground. See photo for both views, with car in reverse. The rear camera does do great on seeing vehicles in your blind spots as it shows you better view of anything close to your corners. It does a great job in low lighting, but gets grainy if real low and headlights are blaring and overpowering in video, especially in rear camera of course. Things wash out some in low lighting 2 lane roads when headlights approach you in front camera also. It really isn't the fault of the manufacturer on this, just a result of having good ability to see in low light, with cameras that don't have infrared. I would strongly suggest getting a U3 (for speed), 128GB micro sd card to have plenty of room for recording as the files sizes with this much resolution are huge. This brings me to another thought. The micro sd card is a pain in the rear to get in or out. You have to bend it way down in the car as it's in the top of it, use something pointed and just the right size to push hard enough to get it to release, or put in to get it to click, lock into place. This is a real negative as it's not designed well for access comfortably. I know you don't need to remove it much, but this is a VERY BAD ISSUE! Formatting works great, and setting motion detection to low seems to work well and will trip if I shut the door on the car most times. Wind can also trip it even on low, so this is my suggested setting. Install was easy, pretty straight forward, but a bit tough on my Fit's hatchback. The wire for the back up light isn't long enough so I had to splice in extra to get to reverse light. I have 2 Honda Fit's and my other one I learned the hard way to route the cable from the front to the back of the car instead of back to the front of the car. I had so much wire left to put over the headliner in the front of the other car that it was tough to get it all up there and hidden. On my other one, I simply rolled it around and zipped tied it inside the hatchback, much easier! I mounted the gps module on top of car near the door opening, but I wondered if it could be put inside the car maybe at base of windshield, but can't find that answer. The rear camera also has issues with rain. It almost wipes out the video at times. I have it angled down more so it will show lower toward the ground which don't help at all really with seeing objects on ground your backing up to, but hoped it would help run the water off better also, but it don't. The rear camera video you see here is after I adjusted it to a lower angle. I wonder if I could use a little paste wax on it and wipe it clean so maybe it will run the water off of it better, but have not tried this yet. I didn't want it inside the rear window as I have a rear window defogger and would cause a higher mounting point than I wanted, and didn't want the bad reflections from the glass either. This is an issue with the rear camera that isn't much so on the front camera. I bought a hard wire kit (not included with this dash cam) for it and highly recommend doing so. This eliminates any issues with the dash cam losing power, and clears your 12V socket for other needs. The install is pretty simple, but with my hatchback it was more work. I had to take the rear panel off to get inside hatchback, and had to drill a 1/4" hole to route the cable inside. My friend bought one of these Akaso's also and he didn't have to drill any holes at all in his Chevy Volt to install. It really depends on the vehicle and how you wish to install the rear camera. I also had an area that the wire had to be exposed for a little bit around the hinge for the hatchback which was unavoidable. I have had installed for well over a couple of months now and it's working flawlessly. I have included some photos and video here. Bear in mind this mirror cam is also an actual mirror if you turn it off and a negative at times. I learned the hard way to bring it down below the view of the rear window to keep the reflections away from seeing the screen. It does NOT photograph well because of this, but is good to the naked eye, so take warning. I can only upload 1 video and I chose one that has the issue with rain on the rear camera. This will also show the very good resolution it has, and the front being 2K is even better. I am in hopes that Akaso's people read this and maybe learn a thing or 2 that has not come to their attention. I also welcome any questions anyone may have on this. I did install a different brand on the other Fit I have, but they both are extremely comparable, and same basic setup. I very highly recommend this product 100% and would not hesitate to buy again if I ever need another one.UPDATE:After waxing the lens on the rear camera, there isn't any difference on the rain laying on the lens washing out the view on the rear camera. When you look at the curvature of the camera lens glass you see that it does not have much raise to it. With the fact that when you drive your vehicle and break that wind, it creates a vacuum in the rear of the vehicle. This fact tells me that if the curvature of the lens was greater, a higher degree of roundness and not so flat, this would allow the rain to be blown off of the lens. I do hope Akaso's people see this and maybe do something about this issue. Even at very high speeds I notice that it stays washed out many times with rain on the lens. I do believe this would correct the issue.

My 2012 Elantra Touring was made before backup cameras became standard equipment, and I really wanted one. My car doesn't have a multimedia screen to tap into, and I don't really like having a tiny monitor on my dash, so a combo mirror backup cam monitor seemed like the obvious choice. Since 1080P isn't quite detailed enough to let you see license plates clearly, I decided to go for one with better resolution. I eventually decided to settle on the 2K Akaso DL12.The unit comes nicely packaged with the main mirror monitor unit, rear camera, GPS antenna, and the sundry sticky pads and other pieces for installing it.INSTALLATION:Remarkably simple, as the main unit is simply placed over the old mirror and held in place with rubber straps. The fit is secure, with no vibration or bouncing while driving. Running the camera to the rear is very simple and took me about 10 minutes. All you need to do is use the included plastic pry bar to push the wires up behind the head liner, and pull the weather stripping from the door in order to run the wire under it and around the door frames. The most complicated part happens at the rear, where you have to make the choice between mounting it inside the rear windscreen, or else find a way to run it to the outside.My car is a hatchback, and I started off with the camera mounted inside, at the top of the hatch frame. It worked fairly well, but you run into a problem at night: when it's dark, the camera may start focusing in on window grime and not the actual outside. And while being inside protects it from the elements, snow and ice in the winter may block it. I eventually decided to pull the panels off and run the camera to the outside, through a wire harness access hole. Beyond that, you need to tap into the reverse light's positive wire to the camera's red sensor wire in order for it to automatically go into backup mode when you shift into reverse.Backup mode is different from regular reverse view because it presents you with some guidelines overlaid and the image shows the full fish-eye wide angle view from the rear camera. My only complaint is that I wish the guide lines could be adjustable, because where you mount the camera really determines if those line have any meaning.HARDWARE:The monitor itself is a remarkably clear 12-inch wide touchscreen. It's very simple and understated in design, and the color and resolution are excellent. It displays at either 50 or 60HZ, so don't expect perfectly smooth motion, but it's perfectly adequate for something you're supposed to only be glancing at occasionally. The touch screen is responsive, and the user interface is simple and self-explanatory. Just don't forget to scroll down in the menu to find the time and date settings, and make sure it's set to the proper time zone, or else your clock will never be in synch.Streaming the rear view of the camera is a revelation compared to using a regular mirror. The camera gives you a 150 degree wide angle view, of which you see a slice on the monitor. You can "tilt" the view up and down to your satisfaction. A normal mirror only shows you a maybe 30 or 40 degree field of view, while this camera virtually eliminates blind spots. It's a real adjustment to how you drive, since you don't have to check your side mirrors nearly as often. When a car leaves the edge of the rear view, it's into your peripheral vision within a second. And since I drive rideshare, the rear camera comes in very handy when a passenger completely fills up my trunk with luggage.USAGEThe only drawback to this thing is that it has to function as a mirror as well, meaning the display is behind two-way glass. You can turn off the display and just use it as a mirror, and it works...okay. It's like a tinted mirror, but perfectly clear and usable. But when you want to use the rear camera as your rear display, you run into problems with too much reflection in bright daylight. You can adjust the viewing angle to minimize this, but I kind of wish there was a way to just do away with the two-way glass altogether. Still, the law is the law, and the law says that a car must have a rear view mirror.The thing is, you can learn to compensate for the reflections because of something I hadn't counted on when buying it: your eye focuses on a monitor differently than it does a mirror. You see, a mirror reflection essentially has depth, so when you glance at it, you don't really refocus your eyes from the road ahead. A monitor, on the other hand, is a flat image that requires you to refocus your eyes on a closer object. The result is that you end up looking "through" the reflections at the screen. It's not as distracting as I first feared, but it takes some getting used to.This is not a problem at all at night (or in a car with tinted windows, I suppose), and that's when another real advantage for this monitor becomes apparent. When a car behind you has its high beams on, or at sunset, you aren't blinded by the bright lights. The monitor can only display a limited brightness level, so high beams may blow out the camera image, but they don't blind you. I far prefer this to flipping down a mirror into "night mode", where you can only see headlights and nothing else.The included GPS antenna is stuck in the corner of my front windshield, and the camera records both my position and speed. There's even a footage display application for your PC that calls up Google Maps to show your position when any footage was taken. The parking mode feature works, too, since it detected my closing the hatchback a little too hard as an impact and had a message onscreen when I returned that it had recorded a hit on the car.All in all, I highly recommend this camera and monitor system. It's very affordable, easy to install, and works well. Just be aware of its strengths and weaknesses as a mirror.

Bought this mirror with backup camera for my bucket truck. It works excellent and saved me in multiple instances from backing up into things. The added dashcam was a bonus which I am glad to have just incase I ever need it. The screen brightness is very good, I never have a hard time viewing it. The interface is surprisingly good for a mirror, lol. I wish it booted up a little quicker, sometimes I start the truck and throw it in reverse and have to wait for the mirror to finish booting so I can see behind me.The daytime camera performance is pretty good, you can clearly read plates on the camera in front/behind you. Night time is not so great without the reverse lights. The Dynamic range of the sensor does not have the capability to capture both the bright headlights of a vehicle and the dark of night in the same image, however while reversing and you have the reverse lights on, it gives you an adequate image.All in all for the price I am very happy with the purchase and would recommend it. One more thing I would like to note, I did have to extend the rear camera wire harness about 5 feet to reach the back bumper of my truck. I used shielded cat5 cable, it is just an analog signal so it was fine and I suspect in most instances where you don't have a large truck it should reach without modification.