Nexar One: I really want to give this hope

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I previously owned 2 different Nexar/Skorche cameras before, I forget the models but something like NX1 or such. They actually worked really simple and great. Nothing fancy. Not even sure what video format was used (720 or 1080). The "drive" videos were easy to review on a smartphone and automatically uploaded to the Nexar cloud to review via their website.
I was in the hunt for a enterprise dashcam for my 5 work vehicles being the owner and wanting to see driving habits of my technicians when driving out and about, not to mention to keep a recording of any accidents, along with driving history in conjunction with Google Maps.
I was holding out for Dahua's dashcam since I strongly favor their IP cameras, but unknown when they will hit the market nor what all features would be included.
In my search, the Nexar One seemed like a perfect fit. 1080p or 4k recordings, remote 4g LTE connectivity that I can live stream my techs driving around to my PC at the office at any second (or maybe directly to my smartphone...unsure about that one), cabin camera, does not look like a brick hanging near the rear view mirror, pretty decent video quality at day and night.
Nexar also has an enterprise plan just for a small business like me (though a tad spendy...have not done extensive cost analysis on this part yet).

What has gone wrong to sour my impression?
I usually do not take internet reviews to heart unless it seems 85% of the people complain about the same thing. Example, the remote connectivity does not work for most people ( I currently do not have the remote connnectivity option because wanted to try the base camera out first). Uploading videos to the Nexar Cloud does not work for most people. The unit goes into hibernation when car ignition is turned off (you could connect to continous power outlet, however) unless a shaking event happens (parking mode). However, many say the thing just simply powers off 100% after 30 minutes.
I have experienced all of these (other than remote). Granted, I have not read the instruction manual in depth yet (going to have to look for it...or download PDF to read on big screen) as previous cameras were simple plug and play.
Nexar is updating the firmware and trying to fix these bugs. At least that is something. But as of right now with current firmware, I could not recommend the Nexar One to anyone...personal or business.
This is after 3 weeks of daily use in my work vehicle.
I did toss Nexar support an email raising these concerns today. Should be interesting to see their replies.
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Well... updated info from Nexar Support. The whole point of wanting a dashcamera in all my work vehicles are for a couple of reasons I thought would be accomplishable:
1.) in case of accident to have video recording of the event.
2.) to review their driving habits (does the tech speed excessively? stop of stop signs? etc)
3.) With Nexar One, you have the ability to remote Live connect with the 5g LTE addon (this currently has bugs and it not working at the moment). So I could remote into a technicians camera to see where they are driving and see what they are doing (if had front / cabin combo camera).
4.) 4k camera videos

Previous Nexar dash cam driving videos automatically uploaded to the Nexar cloud after each drive. I was just informed by Nexar Support that Nexar One (their flagship camera) does NOT. You have to manually upload only selected clips. Otherwise, the videos remain on your smartphone til over written by newer videos. Even when you upload a clip, you can not directly view the camera clip video on the Nexar webpage. You have to 'share' the link via email or text message.

So #2 is out. I would not have my techs manually upload after each drive. Also to upload a clip: not sure if encoding/decoding is going on or if their Nexar Cloud has weak hardware / bottleneck but it takes forever to upload. 1MB takes 30-60 seconds. A 15 minute drive could easily be a 70MB clip.
#3 is not functioning (as of 6 weeks ago). They are working on it via firmware fixes.

As for night time / license plate images. I was not yet concerned about videos at night as needed to have #1-#4 above in working order. I'll see about doing some night videos later this week to see.

I have research to do to see if other dash cams upload their videos after each drive, which is top 3 critical aspects that I'm looking for.
As it stands til I find some things out, I would not recommend this camera for fleet operations.
Maybe, manually uploading is how dashcams will work in the future due to the storage space required for 1080p or 4k videos.
Maybe, they will fix their remote Live connect.
Maybe, 98% of dash cam users have no need/expectations of drive videos being automatically uploaded and are happy with the videos being accessible on their smartphone only.
 

bethzur

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I've been shopping for a camera and it is annoyingly difficult to find something that does what one wants.
 
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I set my camera to 4K video recording. I believe almost 320 MB for 1 minute. I will save a clip when I get home today of 10 or 15 seconds and share a link with everyone so folks can see daytime imagery. I will also take a quick couple minute drive later this evening when the Sun goes down to see how the night time works out
 
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Welcome to your Nexar Dashboard

What I thought was a 1 minute 4k clip of me driving around in daytime at a stop light intersection to see how the camera deals with fast moving cars left & right and front.. For some reason, it turns into 2 minutes. In no way is this 4K either. Looks barely 720p. Still discussing things with support. Maybe the 'shared link' is 720p. I'm asking them where is the 4k.
So far, this is what I found out:
1.) all DRIVE recordings (starting from engine on where it detects voltage to engine off) remain inside the camera until you manually download the specific DRIVE clips. I was unaware of this so I only have a mid-sized storage capacity (128GB). There is the 256GB and 512GB options.
2.) On your smartphone Nexar app and while connected to the Nexar camera WiFi (have to disable office or home WiFi on smartphone to do this if sitting in driveway), you have to download the DRIVE session to your phone. The speed is eh..alright for this download. You then have to move left and right cursors to select a specific CLIP (kinda like how we do with Blue Iris) to upload into the cloud. This 1 minute clip turned into 600MB and took 10-15 minutes to upload on 5g cellular WiFi. Maybe I should download the DRIVE session and then try to save a clip while in office/home WiFi. I did mention above somewhere about this slow speed (crappy pipeline to Nexar cloud server or some other bottleneck).
3.) Great...you would like to review this 1 minute clip. Log into your Nexas webpage, and it's not there! Hence, my today's email to Nexar support. Granted, they actually do reply pretty fast so we shall see.
4.) Only way I found out how to view a clip on the PC is to 'share a link' to it. The link is listed above for all to see.

Are all dashcams this way? Soooooooooo challenging.
 

bethzur

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Looks like fairly low contrast and it's hard to read a lot of signs. The resolution is listed as 3840x2160, but I agree that it doesn't actually look that. VLC says around 40,000 kb/s. I've seen worse, though.
 
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Looks like fairly low contrast and it's hard to read a lot of signs. The resolution is listed as 3840x2160, but I agree that it doesn't actually look that. VLC says around 40,000 kb/s. I've seen worse, though.
copied your reply to support to see what they say :)

Before you posted this 23 minutes ago, Nexar support did reply:
I'm here to help. They actually do upload automatically to the server. It's just it only happens to Clips. Automatic clips gets the file uploaded into the server where as full drive does not.

Once Clips get uploaded to the server, they aren't accessible to be located via the dash board (outside Nexar app). but instead they get available into your phone and under the app> video tab.

And yes, they can be access outside Nexar app via Share a link or file. You'll see a cloud icon that shows it is already back-up on the server and this is only accessible in one place until you move it which is the Nexar app.


So it looks like 'saving to the cloud' is only for smartphone backup purposes. Can not see video clips on the Nexar account webpage or on a PC other than "sharing a link" option.
These are things NOT mentioned on their product page, btw. But then again, maybe all dashcams do it this way.
 

bethzur

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I'm certainly no expert, but that may be typical for these things. It looks like they cranked up the gain and did a lot of digital noise reduction (look at the fence pickets when you drive by.) Signs are readable, but many are illuminated and y'all have lots of streetlights. Seems decent to me for that sort of area.

I watched a number of review videos on YouTube and night performance is generally not great. This one seems better than many I've seen there.
 
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