Hey, what's up guys? So at the tail end of 2020, Blackvue released a whole bunch of dash cams
and basically revamped their entire lineup with their new X Series dash cams as well as their new
LTE dash cams. In this video I want to go over their whole new lineup of dash cams,
and to help me out we're back here with Alex, the CEO of BlackboxMyCar. How's it going, Alex?
Hi guys, thanks for having me Ariel. This is Alex from BlackboxMyCar.
Yeah, good to have you here Alex as always. And then quickly before we go into all of the
different models as well as the benefits of Blackvue's new cloud capabilities,
why did we suddenly just get a whole bunch of new Blackvue dash
cams released all at once? How did that happen? You know what? That's a very interesting question
for everybody here. First thing first, Blackvue wanted to release the X Series in March of 2020,
but as you can remember back in March the COVID cases were going up and due to COVID
they decided to halt this release of their new models, but I suppose they needed to release it,
maybe they had models made up and therefore in end of October they released all their new models
pretty much all at once. So it's been a learning curve for us here at BlackboxMyCar.
Yeah, and for me too. I've been spending a ton of time playing with these different dash
cams. I'm a longtime fan of Blackvue dash cams, and their big appeal here
and really what the big push has been with all these different dash cams is the new cloud
capabilities and making that whole experience smoother. The appeal of the cloud connected dash
cams is the idea that it's going to take your dash cam and not just record like every other dash cam,
but the dash cam can actually connect out to the cloud to add some additional functionality. It's
going to do things like in case maybe there's an accident while you're driving or somebody hits
your car while you're parked, a notification of that impact can be sent directly out to your phone
along with the location of your car on the dash cam. You can then get a video clip of
the accident, you can get a video clip of somebody who maybe just hit your car and is driving away.
That video clip can also just get uploaded directly to the cloud, which is nice in case
somebody maybe breaks into your car and steals your dash cam, that clip is saved to the cloud
so you still are able to download it remotely and then take that evidence and send it over
to police so they've got video evidence of who actually broke into your car.
It's going to allow you to turn your car into a secured camera to basically allow you to just
any point connect directly to your dash cam from your computer or from your phone and effectively
live stream what's going on in real time so you're able to just remotely tap into your
car and get a feel what's going on and keep an eye on it. It's nice for extra peace of mind.
Now one of the issues of getting this all set up before is it wasn't always that easy to get
an internet connection for your dash cam. You could either maybe have your car parked really
close to your house, maybe just outside your home so you can connect to your home WiFi and connect
to the cloud that way, or you could take the time to actually install a dedicated WiFi hotspot into
your car, that way it can connect to the cloud. Some clouds do have a WiFi hotspot built in,
but typically those only turn on when the car is driving. When you turn off your car, typically
those also turn off as well. And so then you got to start looking into dedicated WiFi hotspots that
automatically turn on with your car and then when you turn your car off then they start running off
of dedicated battery packs and stuff, which is kind of what I've gone through. It was a
bit of a pain to install separate battery packs and WiFi hotspot and all this kind of stuff.
And Blackvue's like, "All right, the cloud stuff is cool, but we gotta make it easier for people to
get it set up and start using it." And so what they're doing here with these dash cams is now
a lot of these ones actually have the ability to just add an internet connection directly
to the dash cam, whether it's an accessory that just plugs directly into the dash cam
or for some of them you can even pop a sim card directly into the dash cam itself
and the dash cam has its own LTE antennas built directly into the dash cam. So
that seems to be the big push here of what Blackvue is going for for this latest
lineup with their X Series dash cams and their LTE ones and kind of what we're looking at.
So in addition to that, kind of what are the other things that we need to know before we
start diving into the individual models? Yeah, for sure. So at the end of the day, they
didn't necessarily improve the video quality but they pushed towards making sure their cloud
functionality on all their models starting from 590 to 900 and they have another special model
called 750 LTE. The focus was for this launch was to make sure their cloud system is ready
for their consumers. And they've done a really one hell of a job in making sure
that the new models are more reliable and robust in terms of connectivity to the cloud server.
Yeah, I've tested a couple other connected dash cams or LTE dash cams from a variety
of manufacturers, Blackvue is by far the best here. If you want any sort of cloud capabilities,
definitely take a look at the Blackvue models, which we'll be covering here. And that's a good
point that you mentioned, with these new dash came the video quality is exactly the same as before.
There are some changes in addition to all the cloud capabilities but the video quality is going
to be exactly the same as what we had with the previous generation dash cams. And with that said,
let's go ahead and start with their entry level dash cams and work their way up.
Let's start here with the Blackvue DR590X. Tell me a little bit about this dash cam.
So it is their entry level system from Blackvue. It comes in two different variants, one channel,
front only or two channel system front and back. They both offer full HD video quality, so front
full HD, rear full HD. So it's pretty standard now to offer full HD full HD and a dedicated
dual channel system setup. This isn't a 2K or a 4K system. If you want that,
that would be with the 900. What's unique about this offering is that it's now capable of
offering the cloud feature even in a very entry level system.
And it also comes free with 40 megabytes per month from Blackvue for first year of ownership
of the 590X. One channel or dual channel system, you just have to get the dedicated LTE module,
then it actually gives you the free sim card to run your system for a year paid by Blackvue.
What does it do for you with the addition of this LTE module? If gives you a notification
on your phone, so if your vehicle is parked, if there's an impact and so forth, you will receive
a message from Blackvue's app that an event was recorded on your vehicle. It won't give you
any video playback on the app, but it will at least give you the notification, make sure to
check video footage or to even run out and see what's happening around your vehicle.
So at least you can still see maybe car ahead of you or somebody that hit your
car or a person that hit your car, correct? That's right. And I'm thinking Blackvue wants
this feature pretty much standard for all their upcoming newer models per se, and that's why I
think they're starting out with the 590X and just trying to test the market and see how many people
would be willing to always use this feature. At the end of the day, Blackvue's cloud feature has
been around for the last three years and they've been improving over and over and over with the
introduction of the X Series, I think their cloud feature is really reliable at this point now.
Yeah, and so it's going to be a pretty simple entry level dash cam and cloud experience.
And then if you want to step up to their full cloud experience, the next one up is going to be
the new DR750X. Tell me about the DR750X and some of the differences here compared to the 590.
Yeah, sounds good. So with the 750X-2CH, it comes again in two different variants, front only
or a dedicated two channel system. Offers full HD full HD, but the front cam, unlike the 590,
it will shoot in 60 frames per second. So some people really like the video quality that you
get on 750 compared to any other models out there even if it's being advertised as 4K because of
the 60 frame per second ratio. With that said, this I would say is more of an entry level true
cloud system that Blackvue is pushing out for, you can do a video playback as well as you do receive
those notifications if you have that enabled. You do have to purchase the LTE module.
With that being said, we'll take a step back and talk about this LTE module briefly because prior
to this LTE module, you would have to get WiFi hotspot in your vehicle and I think you have a lot
of videos about this actually. In your vehicle, you have to run your WiFi hotspot, you have to
power the hotspot differently or through a battery pack and so forth. With the introduction of this
module, you simply just plug it right onto your dash cam. You don't have to worry about
turning on the hot spot. You don't have to worry about the plugging and making sure that there's
power always for the hotspot to feed you that live data for your dash cam. So it makes things
a lot easier if you're truly running the cloud system. And believe it or not, this sort of blew
out the water for us too, we didn't think that the whole cloud and the LTE module would be that
popular with the introduction of this series, but it's become a very popular thing to do.
And that just speaks about the loyal fan base that Blackvue has with their devices.
Interesting, that's good to hear. I didn't actually know how popular it was. I like it,
but I didn't really know if other people do too. And when I'm playing with it I'm kind of seeing
more of the technical stuff, so I'm like, "Okay cool, I got this LTE module and it plugs into the
side of the dash cam." How does that work, well the connectivity is easier but then you run into
some issues where like if you want to pop out the memory card of the dash cam, now with this one you
have to not only unplug the power cable in order to be able to pop the cover off the side to remove
the memory card, but you also then have to unplug this LTE module as well. So there's now two things
to unplug instead of one. So, that's a difference that I've noticed compared to maybe running it off
of the separate external WiFi hotspot. But it's definitely easier just to have a dedicated LTE
module and not have to worry about powering WiFi hotspots and everything, it definitely simplifies
the whole experience, you just have to keep in mind that one little quirk with the power cable
thing. Plus the fact that you do have one little extra box that you're going to have to tuck away
and hide somewhere, maybe up in your headliner or wherever else, but it definitely seems to improve
the cloud connectivity and make it easier. Let's talk quickly also about pricing. For
people who want the cloud capability here and you also want the video capabilities,
I definitely think it's work it. If you're looking for a cloud capable dash cam,
I would recommend at least 750X minimum to get the video for the cloud. Here in the US,
there's two providers that are available. There's AT&T and T-Mobile. And you can use their prepaid
sim cards even if you're not an AT&T or T-Mobile customer, if you're Verizon or something else, you
can get a prepaid card. Pricing here, here's how that looks in the US. With T-Mobile, you can get a
prepaid sim card, you're going to pay $10 for the card upfront and then another $10 per month for
two gigs of 4G LTE data and then unlimited 3G after that, which is just fine. So effectively,
$10 a month for your unlimited service. With AT&T, it's cheaper upfront. It's only $5 to
purchase a prepaid card, but then you're looking at $20 a month for your unlimited data service.
So I find the best deal is just go get a prepaid T-Mobile card and just get a data only card and
you can pop it in for your Blackvue dash cam and 10 bucks a month you can get your data plan.
What about in Canada, how does it work there? Oh yeah, similar to what you have described just
now, especially if you have a cell phone plan that offers sharing your data with your iPad and so
forth just by simply getting another sim card. And we found that is the best practice to go about.
Then again though, if you don't have the latest phone plan it could run you anywhere between 20 to
even 30 dollars a month if you have to get another sim card dedicated for the cloud module. That
being said, we've tested it, just anywhere between 10 to 20 dollars is normally what we would pay to
keep up with the notification system and sometimes do a playback here and there. It all just depends
on how much data you use and you pull, but if you have a very good plan with lots of data pull
then you probably won't be looking at more than $10 here in Canada as well.
Yeah, and I found you don't need a ton of data. Blackvue has some good information on their
website with how big the video files are depending on which camera and file size and file quality and
all that stuff which you can take a look at. In short, I find even 2 gigs is plenty, it's not
like you're constantly trying to live stream. Live streaming is only like 480p by the way,
it's not 1080p or even 4K, it's low resolution there. And then uploading videos to the cloud,
that's going to be the biggest thing, but you can easily push several of them every month.
You don't necessarily need every single one, but you can. And even for something like that,
if you've got a really fast plan initially then after you go through the two gigs it slows down,
fine, it just takes a little bit longer to upload to the cloud but not necessarily a huge deal. So
I found the data caps aren't necessarily a huge deal in practice, but you can always
take a look and run the numbers if that's something you're curious about based on which
dash cam you're running, what video quality, as well as which plans you're looking at.
100%. And I think you pointed out something very important for us to point out here. Blackvue is
the first everyday driver's dash cam that offers cloud capability at a very affordable price. And
their technology behind making sure this video is reliably fed out to the cloud server. Not
only that, also in a way that you can view this video footage quickly and through your phone,
it speaks a lot about their engineering and research and development behind creating this
lineup. So as much as we're not so excited about with the X Series with not having a better video
quality, but really I think their core focus on this specific release was to make sure their
cloud functionality is much reliable as well as just much easier to use for their users.
For sure, that's definitely a big difference compared to their previous gen dash cams. And
speaking of which, we can take a look next at the Blackvue DR900X, which is now the successor
to the DR900S. Same idea as 750S to 750X, same video quality, 4K, still has the same 1080p
rear dash cam if you choose to opt for that. But again the same thing, you now have this LTE module
that plugs into the side of the dash cam and allows you to connect to the cloud that way.
Now with these X Series dash cams like the 750X and the 900X, there's a few other changes as well
besides the ability to plug in an LTE module. If you take a look at the outside of the dash cams
for example, you'll notice there's some additional vent holes on the new X Series dash cams. There's
also some internal changes and all these changes are specifically designed to help the dash cam
avoid some of the overheating issues that plagued the DR900S that we saw before. Now the dash cam
has a little bit better cooling so it's designed to help overheating in hotter climates.
Additionally, the power input cable has been changed as well.
Instead of just relying on a G sensor of when the dash cam switches into parking mode and then
when you start driving and moving that triggers the G sensor to switch back into driving mode,
Blackvue now has a three wire ignition triggered power cable. So when the car starts providing
power again, with the ignition trigger, you turn on your car that can be the trigger to switch the
dash cam into driving mode. And now it can also do the same thing to switch it back into parking
mode. So you now have that option as well. One of the downsides is, now the fact that the
power cable is going to have three connections instead of just two< the power cables are no
longer compatible, so if you're upgrading from a previous gen Blackvue dash cam, I've got the
750S and the 900S in my car right now, you can't just plug and play and plug in the new X Series
dash cams. You're going to have to run all new power cables even though the dash cams themselves
still have the same G sensor capabilities. Luckily, the mounts are still the same.
The rear dash cam is the same as well as the cable that physically connects the front dash cam to the
rear dash cam. So most everything is the same, but the power cable specifically is different
because of the fact that there's now the three wire ignition triggered parking mode capability.
So another little change besides just all of the cloud stuff that we've been talking about.
And then finally, a quick thing to note is you're no longer going to be reliant on an
external voltage management solution like the power magic pro, now the dash cam itself has
all the voltage management built in so you can set your voltage cutoff thresholds for
how far down your car battery has to drop before the dash cam shuts off to avoid draining your car
battery, that way you can still actually start your car up next time. So more capabilities
now actually built directly into the dash cam instead of reliant on an external accessory.
The next one to talk about is the Blackvue DR750-2CH LTE. This is nice if you don't
like the idea of having the LTE module, it's an optional extra, it's 150 bucks.
If you don't want to buy that extra module and plug it into the dash cam,
if instead you'd rather just plug the sim card directly into the dash cam itself,
Blackvue now sells the DR750-2CH LTE. This is going to be a bigger dash cam than the 750X or
the 900X because of the fact it's got to have the sim card in there, it's got to have the
LTE antennas in the dash cam itself. Plus it needs additional cooling for all this
new circuitry that they've put in there. And so the dash cam is going to be a little
bit bigger and bulkier. You won't necessarily notice that if you have the dash cam maybe mounted
behind your rear view mirror. So from the inside of the car, you won't necessarily notice that,
but the dash cam does have additional cooling and additional bulk now because everything is
built directly into the dash cam. It's going to further simplify this whole setup process because
you don't need extra dongles plugging into the side of the dash cam, but then the dash cam itself
is going to be a little bit more expensive and then it winds up being a little bigger too. So,
that's the DR750-2CH LTE. What are your thoughts on the dash cam here?
750 LTE, the biggest surprise is that it is quite large and comes to
size. For the profile of the device I have one right here next to me, so this is the 750 LTE.
People are generally surprised at how chunky it is, but at the end of the day you don't have to
think about installing another module. And for our fleet customers they absolutely love this device
because this is something they've been sort of longing for. So to give you a contrast here,
this is the size of the DR900X, this is the LTE version of the 750 LTE. It's got a dedicated sim
card slot in it. With that said though, these two models are still relatively new for us, so I don't
have a lot about the feedback from our customers. Generally, they're always very popular when they
first come out because a lot of older customers like to upgrade. And you're right about the cable,
due to the three wire voltage cutoff system and the hard wire kit, all the customers with
the older cables are not able to upgrade by simply switching the dash cams, you have to reinstall the
power cable of it. But that being said, Blackvue customers are super loyal to the brand so it
doesn't seem like it's troublesome for many, but it is quite unfortunate that we have to do so.
I can understand why they're doing that because now they have the additional wire in the power
cable so you don't just plug it in directly. But I guess maybe that could be an advantage for the
DR750 LTE, that still has the older two wire cable and it requires the power magic pro, so if you're
upgrading from a previous Blackvue dash cam, you could still actually reuse the same power cable if
you're going to be upgrading to the DR750 LTE. Yep. And one other thing that I really want to
point out about parking mode in Blackvue devices is that Blackvue used to solely rely on G
sensor to kick the dash cam into the parking mode. While that is quite useful, but all the
other competitors or all the new models came out with the three wire hard wire kit instead, because
that way the dash cam will know exactly when to go into the parking mode. Having said that though,
if you're using a constant power plug in your vehicle, the cigarette plug, or let's say you
have a battery pack and there's no way the battery pack will communicate if you're simply plugged
into a 12 volt constant power volt because there's no cutting of the power supply into
the dash cam battery pack and therefore if you're using U1000, for example, you're not able to put
the dash cam go into the parking mode because it thinks that it's constantly receiving power.
But with even the newer Blackvue models, despite they have introduced this new way of going into
parking mode, they still kept the G sensor mode. So long story short, if you have let's
say a Ford with battery pack that's plugged into a cigarette lighter port where it's constant,
when your vehicle parks and that's the way that you're running your dash cam, Blackvue is really
the only dash cam that will allow you to go into the parking mode because once you park your
vehicle for 10 minutes it will automatically sense that car's parked, not moving, let's
go into parking mode. If that makes sense. So I did a cross country road trip a little while
ago, and in the moving truck I was moving all my mom's stuff across country, and I actually brought
the DR900X with me, it had recently came out, and it was nice because it was a Ford moving truck
and the power cable always had power so I could literally just plug it into the cigarette lighter
and it would do driving mode and parking mode and it had all of its own voltage management built in
and with the G sensor it could just switch into parking mode. I didn't have to mess around with
any extra electronics, it was super, super easy to add it. Kind of a specific use case,
but yeah if you drive a Ford, for example, want to plug into the cigarette lighter, and I know this
is the case with some other cars, if that lighter always has power, even when the car's parked,
Blackvue can be a great option. Yeah, and another actually car,
Tesla especially, Tesla Model3, it doesn't even have a fuse box inside your vehicle.
And despite Tesla has its own dash cam mode, a lot of our customers that simply want to
just add another accessory, I guess its a fun thing or just want to make sure the Tesla cam,
there's always a reliable dash cam that works. So customers, the best setup we see is a battery pack
plugged into a power center console and with the Blackvue dash cam, once you park your vehicle,
within 5 to 10 minutes it knows exactly what to do to go into parking mode and it will continue to
supply dash cam battery power to the dash cam, so it runs even when the parking mode is enabled.
So yo clarify, do you mean like the Blackvue dash cam plugs directly into the Tesla? Or
do you have a dedicated dash cam battery pack between the dash cam and the Tesla?
Oh, both options are available. But the best practice that we see from our Tesla customers is
to get a dedicated battery pack because you don't want to pull anymore battery than what it pulls.
So by having the battery pack, just like any other cars, it gives you that extra power and it just
won't tamper with the car battery whatsoever. Is that not an issue with the dedicated dash cam
battery pulling power from the Tesla while it's parked and turned off,
or is that okay with Teslas? No, not at all. We haven't
seen any codes or what not. Cool. So speaking of different accessories
and options and stuff, I know Blackvue also has a variety of different rear camera options. The
traditional one is just going to be a 1080p dash cam that attaches to your rear window and records
behind you, that way you have both front and rear recording. But there's also things like the
IR dash cams, it mounts on the front windshield and then points inside the car. It has two little
infrared LED's to help light up the cabin at night, you can't really see it with the naked eye,
but it helps light up the cabin. And this is especially popular for Uber and Lyft
drivers and then it also has the truck version of the dash cams which have special waterproof
rear dash cams that are meant to mount on the outside rear part of different trucks and
commercial vehicles. So if you aren't able to see through the rear window, you can still get rear
recording. So there's a variety of different options like this that are available too.
And speaking of which, Blackvue also sells special tamper proof cases. They're cases that kind of
just clip around the outside of the dash cam. The dash cam can still see out, but it's going
to prevent the dash cam from being able to be rotated. It prevents people from actually removing
any of the cables, so like unplugging power from the dash cam or removing the memory card,
it's basically a tamper proof case. That way, the dash cam continues to record and nobody can
really mess with the dash cam. So that's another cool accessory that they sell as well, especially
popular with, say, commercial truck drivers. And speaking of commercial vehicles, Blackvue's
also really big in their fleet services, so if you've got an entire fleet of vehicles,
with the cloud stuff fleet managers are able to track where all their cars are going,
where their trucks are going, making deliveries or just making sure everything is okay. So there's a
lot that's going into the fleet side as well. I'm personally, a lot more familiar with just
kind of the consumer stuff as a regular everyday person using a dash cam, but that's also something
else that Blackvue is really into. And then finally, there's a couple cool
software packages that are available as well. For example, if you like,
when you park your car in your garage and your dash cam connects to your home WiFi, I've actually
seen Windows software that's available. It's third party software that will go to your dash
cam and it will start just downloading all of the video files off of your dash cam and then saving
them to your computer. That's a pretty cool touch. Additionally, if you have a Synology NAS, I've got
one, they're great for storing all my YouTube video clips like this. I've also seen scripts
available that do the same thing so when you get home and your dash cam connects to your home WiFi
it will then just start pulling all the video clips off that way and storing it on the NAS.
So this whole cloud thing, there's a lot of really cool options that are available. Everything from
what Blackvue offers natively, even to some of the third party stuff that just
people at home are writing their own programs. So pretty cool stuff there.
And so just to quickly summarize, the big new changes here with the new X Series dash cams is
the fact that you have this external LTE module that can plug into the dash cam and make it a lot
easier to connect to the cloud without having to be reliant on external WiFi hotspots. There's also
some minor changes, things like improved cooling or the power cable changes to give it the new
three wire ignition triggered parking cables. But really the big push here is some improvements to
the cloud. And then of course the new DR750-2CH LTE allowing you to pop a sim card directly into
the dash cam and just simplify the whole cloud connectivity experience that much more.
And if you'd like to pick up any of these dash cams, all the initial information as always
will be down in the video description. So thanks so much for watching, I hope you guys enjoyed
this. And a big thank you to Alex again for joining me here in this Blackvue video as well.
Well, thank you for having me in this video today.
Yeah, always a pleasure having you Alex, thanks so much. And to all you guys watching,
thanks to you as well. Let us know if you have any questions or please feel free to
reach out to BlackboxMyCar and they are able to help answer any additional questions as well.
Thanks again, stay safe, and we'll see you in the next video. Bye.