Our car experts choose every product we feature. We may earn money from the links on this page. This article was updated with new information in November As we've seen from countless crash videos on social media, dash cams are among the best ways to capture evidence of an accident; for insurance purposes or a good story for the bar on Saturday night.
But like anything in the technology market, there are way too many options to choose from. Should you get one with an interior camera? How helpful is a dash cam with a screen? What about nighttime performance? Do you need fancy functions like GPS locating and vehicle speed? And what's the scoop with insurance and legality on these things? We at the Gear Team considered all of these questions and more, and aimed to answer them with an extensive comparison test.
We ran a handful of the top dash cams available today through a set of rigorous testing parameters to separate the decent from the great. Here's everything you need to know about choosing the best dash cam for your vehicle. For the best visual comparison, make sure to turn up the quality on YouTube videos. Considering why you want a dash cam, what features you value, and how much you're willing to spend will help determine which dash cam you should buy.
Before you decide to pony up for a pricey dash cam—or, conversely, a less expensive model without all the bells and whistles—there are a ton of important factors to consider. Here's the Dirty Little Secret about dash cams: Many are worthless right out of the box.
After all, what good is a dash cam if you can't provide its footage to investigators later or upload it to YouTube or CrashDashes? Dash cams are generally too small to feature internal storage, so they require a micro SD card to save footage. The problem is that most don't include a memory card; you need to buy it separately or upgrade to a bundle that includes one. Always check to see if the model you're considering requires and comes with a memory card, and purchase one if necessary.
