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The Car Cam is compact. The camera unit itself is a small 1. 6-inch die that is permanently attached to its flat mounting arm. In total, the complete package is about 8 inches long. The Car Cam is designed to have compatibility in the area between your car’s dashboard and windshield, maintaining its position on the glass with a strong semi-permanent adhesive pad. Near the tip of the stand is a USB-C port that plugs into an OBD-II adapter, the diagnostic port under the dashboard of solo on each and every car built after 1996, where the Car Cam is forced, even when the vehicle is turning. (Despite their familiar appearance, the USB-C cable and USB-C port are proprietary and can only be used to force the Ring Car camera. )
Privacy disables the Car Cam’s indoor camera and microphones.
On the ad side, locate two HD cameras: one that points forward with a 120-degree ultra-wide frame of view and another that points toward the cockpit with an even wider 153-degree field of view. The indoor camera is flanked by small infrared lighting devices that enable night vision and has a spring-loaded canopy that can be lifted to turn off indoor recording when privacy is desired. The camera head also has some degrees of vertical tilt adjustment to accommodate other windshield angles.
Read more: How to make Dash Cam more productive
Placing the camera in windshielded cars with aggressive angles can be tricky. On our long-term Kia EV6, the angle is so serious that you can see a bit of the mounting arm in the pictures. The EV6’s long dashboard and giant screens also made it difficult to protect privacy. I also tested the Car Cam on our traditional VW GTI and my private Mazda MX-5 and found the installation angles and diversity to be more reasonable. Your mileage may vary.
Video quality is not Car Cam’s strong point. That’s smart, but there are notable compression artifacts in the 1080p H. 264 symbols that I was able to retrieve from the camera over the course of a week of testing. It’s hard to tell if it’s the camera’s fault or if it’s the fault of the HEVC to MPEG conversion that occurs in the cloud before uploading the clip. The fact is that stretching 1,920 x 1,080 pixels on such a wide FOV will only be so detailed. Even so, the quality symbol is smart enough to distinguish license plate numbers over a car’s lifetime in broad daylight. Its quality in the middle of the night suffers a little more, but the symbols can be used on fairly illuminated roads or highways.
Video quality is poor for a 1080p ultra-wide camera.
In addition to the cameras, the Ring Car Cam also has an internal speaker and microphone, which are used for two-way and limited voice communication through the Ring app and subscription service. Front camera and allow users with shared access to the Ring account, for example, parents of teen drivers, to monitor the vehicle without seeing or hearing what is happening in the cabin.
While driving, the Car Cam is on and records a video buffer, probably recording older stored photographs when the camera’s internal memory fills up. When parked, the camera switches to low-force mode where it only records images when motion is detected. through their cameras. Users have a choice of 3 degrees of PTO that can help save battery from cars that are driven less regularly or improve the tracking of a daily driver. If the camera detects a low battery point of the parked car for an extended period of time, it can automatically turn off to avoid catching the owner with a dead battery.
Perhaps the most important piece of the Ring Car Cam puzzle is the built-in Wi-Fi/4G LTE antenna and Ring Protect Go remote tracking subscription. When active, Ring Protect Go allows the camera to send motion notifications and driving detection from the vehicle anywhere it is. From the Ring app, users can watch a live feed of the cameras and inside, as well as conduct two-way communication with Car Cam’s speaker and microphone, which is useful for reminding a wife to avoid through outlets or scaring off a so-called thief. The Ring Protect Go subscription service costs $6 per month or $60 per year and is a separate service from any Ring Protect home protection plan you have recently.
Infrared lighting fixtures allow night vision of the indoor camera.
Ring Protect Go also activates Car Cam’s traffic stop mode, which is designed to protect passengers in case they are stopped by law enforcement. began recording up to 20 minutes of video, notifying users of the shared Ring account while streaming the photos to the cloud. In addition to traffic stops, this mode is useful for any potentially harmful scenarios where you may need to save a recording.
Car Cam works more productively with Protect Go, but giving up the subscription doesn’t render the camera useless. It will record and purchase transmissions from two cameras on the road and when parked. Without a subscription, you’ll want to be connected to your home Wi-Fi in your driveway or garage to view or download those images, get notifications, access live streaming, or allow two-way voice chat.
Users interact with Ring Car Cam through the same Android or iOS app (or internet portal) as any other Ring doorbell, camera or smart device. Here you will get notifications when internal movement or possibly around the vehicle is detected. and the car is driven. There are also many settings to adjust the frequency or sensitivity of those notifications.
Images stored in Car Cam are presented as a drop-down timeline of video thumbnails that are stored locally on the device and then streamed to the app in 540p during preview. Clips can be downloaded directly or shared in 1080p. Alert previews can be stored in the cloud for up to 180 days with the Ring Protect Go subscription, but depending on how much you drive and record, there will possibly be less area on the device for normal driving sequences, so you want to manually download the clips you want to stay longer.
Outdoor night photography suffers a bit, but they are still very useful on well-lit roads and highways.
The only way to delete video from the device is through the app and a home Wi-Fi or LTE cellular connection. There’s no microSD card slot like the one found on most dash cams, and the USB port is for charging only. Like motion alerts or traffic stops, they’re easy to manage. Select the clip you’re looking for, then click Share to get a link to a video clip stored on the Ring site that can be shared, or click Download to save the clip to your device.
Driving photos are harder to remove from the device. You can download one 20-second clip at a time from the front or rear camera by scrolling to the time you need to capture and then pressing the download button. This series is then uploaded to Ring servers where you switch from your local HEVC to the H. 264 codec before you are ready. The procedure takes around 1-2 minutes consistent with the clip depending on the speed of your data, and it can be frustrating to capture exactly the right clip on the fast scrolling timeline with such a small capture window. It took me a smart bite of an hour to download the 7-8 minutes of footage for the integrated review video.
In all honesty, Ring probably doesn’t expect most users to want or want to download dozens of clips at once, but to even expand the 20-second manual download limit to two minutes or add a switch to download any of the angles of the camera would make a big difference in ease of use.
The Ring Car Cam connects to the host vehicle via a patented USB Type-C to OBD-II connection.
There are many dash cams on Amazon that are less expensive than the $250 Ring Car Cam, but very few LTE-connected cameras are advertised to consumers. Garmin recently announced its Dash Cam Live with a unique 1440p camera, but at $400, it’s a bigger initial investment for some of the cameras. There’s also Owlcam, one of the first connected dual-dash cameras CNET tested in 2018, but its monthly payment is more than double what Ring charges.
The Ring Car Cam is a compact and discreet dual-camera formula with decent video quality thanks to its two ultra-wide 1080p cameras on the dashboard. However, for others, especially existing Ring House Safety users, Car Cam stands out from the crowd thanks to its Wi-Fi/LTE connection and remote tracking features that integrate seamlessly with the rest of the Ring eco-formula.