Campark Full HD Dashcam Front and Rear DC20 – Review

 

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I’ve been wanting to acquire a dashcam for quite a while now.  People are idiots when driving in general, and you never know when you need video evidence if something bad happens. 

And of course, occasionally I see something interesting that I want to record just for fun.

I’ve tried using an action camera and such but it’s nothing like having a dedicated dashcam made specifically for that purpose and does its job without intervention or worry.

And that’s what this Campack DC20 dashcam with 1080p front and rear cameras and G-sensor and night mode does.  It’s a dashcam and it does its job and does it well.

Also, the manufacturer – Campark – makes a multitude of various kinds of other cameras.

When I had the opportunity to get this camera to give it a try I jumped at the chance.  

Similar to the Campark X15 4K action cam (also a really excellent little camera) that I just bought too; the box this dashcam comes in is very slick and high-quality looking.  I 20200509_141512love the design in fact.

All pieces are packed well in cardboard partitions and individual bags as you’d expect.

The camera itself, which looks kind of like a regular camera but smaller with a slightly protruding lens with knobs around it, has a lens aperture of f1.8 for fast shooting.  It records 1920x1080P front and back, though you can change to 720p.  The back is nearly all screen, about three inches worth and there are buttons along either outer side of the camera, a USB power plug on the top and socket for the rear camera, and SD card slot on the left above the buttons.  Along the bottom is a vent and a tiny reset hole that resets the camera to factory condition (you can also reset it in the menu options).  Also on the middle top is the mounting socket.

This dashcam has a speaker on the front and a microphone too (I am not sure where it is located), the microphone recording can be turned off in the options.

Included is a lighter plug and a real good long length of power cable with the USB plug at the end.  This fairly long cable should fit around pretty much any windshield if you are slipping the cable under the trim edge.

And there is a handy included tool for helping you to slide the cable under the trim with little effort – which can be used for both cables (power and rear camera) .  Included in the same bag as the trim tool are four cable clips with sticky backs for running it along a surface or a place where you can’t get either the power cable or the rear camera cable under the trim.

The suction-cup mount that comes with it can easily have the camera attached to it, and it can be rotated in any direction.  The suction cup itself has a nice locking mechanism to keep it secure, with a tab for release.  This locking function works amazingly well, probably the best of any suction cup mount I have tried elsewhere.

There’s also a regular mini to regular-sized USB charger cable that will plug into any USB charger.

The rear camera has a long cable also, about twenty feet, and has a socket in the cable near the camera end, which allows you to disconnect and connect it, making it easier to slip through holes or other things if needed.  The rear camera is on a nice gimbaling mount that can either be stuck on with included double-sided tape or with a mounting bracket for it with double-sided tape on it.  Of note, this is to install INSIDE the car above the rear window or something like that as it is not waterproof.  

There is also a small manual, nicely written.

The only thing you need to provide is an SD card – likely one with a good recording speed of class 10 is best, which most any modern one will likely be.  The maximum size is 128 GB, which is a lot!  I used the handy menu on the camera (more about this later) to format the card but I also tested it with just a regular SD card that I pulled from something else and it worked fine without having to format it on the dashcam itself, though I think this is recommended.

Hooking it up is pretty simple and straightforward, and you can of course just plug it in without running the power wire if you wanted to give it a try.  Though you probably do want to take a few extra minutes to run the power cable and the rear camera cable once you make sure everything is working perfectly so that you don’t have wiring hanging all over.

You probably want to set the time on the menu but really you can just start using it without changing anything else, just plug it in and start the car and it’s ready to go, which I really like.  Don’t get me wrong, I like customizing the options and settings on things but it’s nice to also be able to plug something in and have it just work for you, without messing with it.

And that’s what this does without needing to change anything – it comes on when you start the car (if your car has a power plug that comes on with the car, otherwise it will stay on in parking mode, or it can be wired to only come on with the ignition if your car’s power plug doesn’t do this), and starts recording and doing its job.

Just stick the card in, format it and maybe set the date and time and you’re ready to go.

Rear Camera

Rear Camera

It has a night vision mode and both the front and rear camera cover 170° each, giving you a total 340° front and rear overall!  Good for covering pretty much anything that is going to be near your car.

It also has the option of either straight-through recording without interruption or loop recording, with loop recording you don’t have a bunch of videos of you just driving around that you need to delete all of the time.  The option for loop recording is one or two minutes per video segment and when the card gets full it deletes the oldest one. 

Pressing the lock button on the side allows you to save any two or one-minute loop video that you want to so it doesn’t get overwritten automatically, plus if the G sensor detects any activity it automatically marks that loop as protected and won’t overwrite it until you manually delete it.  Great for accidents and incidents, and if you have it in parking mode – more about that later.

The camera records a video from both the front and rear camera in a separate directory/folder on the SD card, with various folders for the recording functions.  EVENT folder is locked videos when something happens or you have locked a video file to not be overwritten, NORMAL are regular videos that are recorded as you are driving, and PHOTO is of course for photos you have taken with it.  You can either play these back on the camera itself or download them to a computer using the included USB cable (or any USB cable, you can even access it via your phone using an OTG cable or putting the SD card in a card reader that will plug into your phone).

With both cameras going you can see the rear in a picture-in-picture format and switch between the two cameras as needed.  You could even use it as a backup camera, though you would either need to have the screen turned on all of the time or trigger the camera manually to come out of screen saver mode – easily done with a press of a button.

There is a screen saver option in the settings so you could either turn that off and have the camera on all of the time (showing either the front or the back camera view).

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The second button up from the bottom on the right is the video lock button which will lock the current video recording so it is not overwritten if you want to save a video for whatever reason when it is not done automatically in an emergency.

On the right side, at the bottom is the power button, above it is the video lock button (lock symbol), the top right is an OK button and the next down is the Mode button.

On the left, there are three buttons with the top one being an up arrow, the bottom and down arrow, and a menu in the center that brings up the settings/options menu.

Depending on which mode the camera is in these have various functions.

There is the regular video recording mode, a photo mode, and a playback mode.  Pressing the Mode button switches between these and there is an indicator in the top right on the screen.

When in recording mode it shows a flashing light on the screen.

In general pretty straightforward functioning and easily learned.

With parking mode, it uses the G sensor to detect if the car is hit or bumped.  There is a capacitor backup battery but it is for short-term powering of the dashcam, so you would want to wire the dashcam to an always-on power in your car for it to function long-term as a parking monitor.  They do sell various parking hardwire kits or you can wire it up yourself.  Just be aware that this is using your car’s battery all of the time, likely fine for a few hours of parking but not for weeks at a time.

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The company’s info says that the capacitor power storage is better for resisting damage due to high heat buildup in the car and able to withstand colder conditions versus traditional batteries that can be damaged under those conditions.  But the company does still recommend it be taken off the windshield in extremely high heat.  

As mentioned above; when plugged into a computer the video and photos can be accessed directly, and as a bonus, it can even be used as a PC camera or webcam, which works well in a pinch.  It can also be used in video recorder mode.  So there are three modes that come up when you plug it into a computer and which you can select from using the menu buttons on the side.

The Campark company seems to be very quick to respond to any issues, in my case the rear camera was dead and they sent me a new one.  I have had various very good communications with them over a number of weeks time and I think you should feel confident that any problems will be addressed to your satisfaction, I believe. 

Night vision mode works well.  And with the G sensor on low sensitivity, it doesn’t seem to have any false alarms (or in this case ‘false loop records’).

Usage-wise the dashcam works exactly as it is supposed to, diligently doing its job.

capture

Quality-wise the video is what you would expect for mid-priced dash cameras, kind of middle of the road (so to speak).

The options are all that you need I believe, and the ability to save videos whenever you wish while still looping them to save space is excellent, as well as being able to take photos and review videos and photos as needed right on the screen. 

In my case, I also used the rear camera as a backup camera in addition to the car’s regular mirrors, though the screen is a bit small for this to be fully effective – the camera is not meant for this in the first place.

So overall it’s a great little dashcam and the Campack DC20 dashcam with 1080p front and rear cameras and G-sensor and night mode do its job as it is supposed to.


Short sample video from the dashcam

Marc M

I am a web developer and fitness geek, but I have a heck of a lot of differing interests.  Biking, the Internet, technology, movies, fitness, running and walking and hiking, science fiction, photography, graphics, WordPress, flying and aircrafts, pets and animals, history, and much more.  I like to stay very fit but I don’t mind sitting at my computer for work and play either.  I live in upstate New York (that’s far from New York City) in a rural area, yet close to a small city, with my beautiful awesome wife, a bunch of beloved cats and dogs and chickens in a very old multi-century house.

3 Comments:

  1. I have this dash cam but my rear camera won’t record or show the feed on the main screen. The blue led light it is lit on the real camera but it doesn’t work. I don’t see anything in the settings to help me navigate this. Any suggestions?

    Scott

    • Make sure you have plugged the rear camera in BEFORE you start the main camera unit – if you plug it in while the main unit is already running it will show a blue light on the rear camera but won’t access the video.

      If you have the rear camera plugged in and have then started the camera unit and it still doesn’t work then try turning it off, and unplugging the rear camera at both junctions (the cable where it goes into the camera unit and the cable where it has a junction near the rear camera itself), plug them back in making sure you have good contact and then start the main camera back up.

      With mine as soon as it detects the rear camera it automatically shows the rear camera in a small picture-in-picture on the main screen, nothing else needs to be done and I don’t believe that there is any options along the liens of turning it on and off.

      If it’s still not working it might be worth it to turn off the main camera, and jiggle whatever wire you can access for the length of the run for the rear camera to make sure there is nothing loose, and also adjust the angle of the rear camera as there could be a bad wire in the gimballing junction, and perhaps it will be enough to temporarily make it work.

      Worse case scenario is you pull all of the wiring back out, make sure there’s no crimps or breaks, give it one more try and if it still doesn’t work you may have to contact the company. They were really good about a problem I had and resolved it quickly.

      Good luck.

  2. I live in Canada. This camera won’t recognize the Micro SD card when booting below “0”C. You have to eject, re-insert and turn camera off and on again.

    Same with three different brand-name cards, including SanDisk 32GB High Endurance Video microSDHC Card

    Works great above zero.

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