I just installed a Viofo A129 Duo Pro. This supplements my old Esky unit that still works and I will leave in the vehicle if I ever sell it. The Esky is the stealthy one that you hide the head unit and mount the little cams to the glass. My head unit is in the glove compartment. This Esky cam is about 7 years old and doesn't have the greatest resolution, only 1080p, which isn't sufficient for reliable license plate reading. And it lacks GPS and wifi. The new Viofo is 4k to the front and has GPS and wifi... the wifi merely to be able to view and download videos on my phone whereas on the old Esky needed to connect up an AV cable. Of course on both one can also pull the micro SD card and view the footage on a computer. I'll post some videos when I get some... although I believe you guys are already familiar with this cam.
One minor annoyance with the Viofo is the time/date setting. It has GPS and will set the time automatically. But you need to enter your GMT offset to have it report accurate time. Seems like they could have made this automatic using GPS position relative to well established time zone borders. Maybe there is some technical reason for this?? IDK. But I have a road trip coming up and will be crossing a time zone between eastern and central US time. I am not gonna pull over mid trip and reset my GMT offset.
I was thinking about parking mode. I never used it on the Esky. I looked into the battery backup options for the Viofo and they just don't seem adequate, only providing about a day of power. This vehicle sometimes sits for several days... so it just is not worth it to get a battery. I can still use parking mode on a case basis when out and about.
I installed a VIOFO A129 Duo Pro in my SUV but I brought it directly from the manufacturer in China instead of from USA supplier.
Reason I got mine direct from China is because I learned that the older A129 had a poor wifi chipset where the wifi connection between mobile device and camera is very poor and it would often disconnect from each other. The video file download would be slow and live streaming nearly impossible to achieve. When I contacted the manufacturer to see if they were going to improve in this area and that when I learned they have switch to a different improve better wifi chipset just recently and none of the USA supplier have any with the new chipset in stock.
I really loved my A129. The live streaming is stable and smooth also the video file downloading is quick too. I have not face an issue with wifi at all like other had posted about on the internet.
I just ordered a power cord to allow it to be in parking mode (full time power and accessory power separated) also I got a bluetooth button for it too. My A129 is mounted right behind the rearview mirror so it hard to press the file lock button by feeling alone while still keeping your eye on the road. With the button, I can just put it on the console which will make it easily reachable when I need to lock a video file.
Only con I found on it is that I have to enable the wifi each time I need to access my video file and it does not keep it enabled if you power cycle the camera (Honda vehicles does not power lighter plug all time, only when key is in ignition). I asked manufacturer if they could add a function in setting to make it that wifi come back on after a reboot or power cycle, they say they will forward to their engineer to look into it.
Overall, it's an awesome camera ..
Here an easter egg, hold down the mic button until you see an icon of a sandisk with a down arrow appear on the camera screen then let the button go. This will enable the h.265 compression