X3 Dash Cam,2.7Inch LCD,1080P,170 Degree Angle,Night Vision and 8GB Card

I purchased the iTrue x3 along with the iTrue GPS logger three weeks ago and have been impressed with their performance and features. Since there are so many good reviews of this camera, I decided to limit my discussion to those features not mentioned in most of them and which might be useful to people interested in more details.SUCTION CUP MOUNTThe mount adhered strongly to my windshield and held the camera firmly. At first, I couldn't get the mounting neck to rotate so I contacted ITrue and was assured it was supposed to rotate. After performing a sit of surgery with a razor blade, I got the lower section, that attaches to the camera, to rotate properly. The way the camera attaches to the mount is unique. So, if you want to use a different mount, like the AmorTek snake mount, for example, you'd have to fabricate an adapter, something like the one I made from a piece of 1/16 inch aluminum - see photo. Then you would have to file off the protrusions of one of the AmorTek mounting pieces and epoxy or screw your adapter to the flattened surface.USER MANUALBefore buying the camera, I searched for an online copy of the user's manual. Couldn't find one but did find one for the Rexing V6, which is identical to the iTrue x3. Since Amazon doesn't permit non-Amazon URL's in reviews, I can't show the link here but you can find it by searching for "rmv8 rexing v6".Since there are so many settings for the camera that are explained in the user manual, and in other reviews, I will only discuss those that are not in the manual.Most all menus and settings are explained in the nice 41-page manual, all in English. However, when I first connected the camera to my computer (Windows 7) with the supplied USB cable, a menu popped up that was not mentioned in the manual. That menu listed 3 items: MASS STORAGE, PC CAMERA, and VIDEO. You select an item using the up/down buttons on the camera then press the OK button.When Mass Storage is selected, your computer recognizes it as a regular USB flash drive. You can then use Windows Explorer to open it to select the file of interest. Even though the video files are in MOV format, they were playable with Windows Media Player on my machine. Photos taken with the camera are saved in the JPEG format.When I selected PC Camera, my computer recognized it as a webcam and went online searching for a driver. Since I had no interest in using it as a webcam, I stopped the search and never checked out this feature.Finally, when you select Video, the camera switches to the same mode as when you power it up in your car, except it doesn't begin to immediately record. You have to press the OK button for that. Now you can use the User Manual to go through and familiarize yourself with all the menus and selections.The only problem I encountered was when I tested the Motion Detection feature. I couldn't get the bloody thing to exit that mode and the manual doesn't explain how. A quick email to iTrue and I had an answer in less than an hour. Turns out you have to wait until the camera detects no motion and shuts down recording (blinking red record light goes off). Then you can access the menu to turn Motion Detection off. However, just the process of moving the camera when accessing the menu can cause it to begin recording, which will last for 30 seconds. So one has to either cover the lens with something opaque or be very careful not to move the camera when pressing the On/Off button to bring up the menus after it stops recording. Until I got the hang of it, I found this frustrating while in a parking lot because cars and people kept walking by and causing the camera to keep recording. But functionally, the motion detection feature works extremely well.CAMERA LENSOne physical feature I noticed was that the center of the lens protrudes slightly beyond the face of the bezel. If you were to set the camera down, with the lens facing down, or put it in your glove compartment, your pocket, etc., the lens would eventually become scratched. So I made a protective lens cap from the bottom half of a plastic bottle and use that to cover the lens when moving or storing it. I put a strip of duct tape inside the cap so it made a snug fit over the lens assembly and wouldn't slip off.As you can see in my attached photo, the lens bezel has a wide metal ring, with a knurled surface, around it as well as narrow silver & copper colored rings on the face. The body of the camera is wrapped with a wide, shiny, metal band while the front has the iTrue logo and a transparent cover over the LED lamp. In my opinion, these are thief magnets so, as shown in another attached photo, I made a slip on/off cover out of black construction paper to make the camera ugly and more stealthy while mounted to my windshield.That wide, knurled ring around the lens barrel may function as a heat-sink. I base this assumption on the iTrue x3 tear-down photos that can be seen in Jason Gibson's excellent YouTube review of the camera. You can see this review by searching for "iTrue x3 dash cam full review".I've attached a photo from his video to show that the knurled ring is actually the outer surface of a circular metal plate, which may have been designed as a heat-sink to help dissipate heat generated by the camera's circuitry, particularly the CMOS imaging chip. The ring itself stands off from the lens assembly thus allowing air to flow under it. The knurled outer surface increases the effective surface area and further enhances heat dissipation.Also shown in the attached photo, of one of Gibson's tear-down shots, is a copper plate attached to the bottom of the circuit board to which is mounted the CMOS imager and lens assembly. This is definitely a heat sink. So, given the metal plate in the lens assembly and this copper heat sink, I suspect this camera will survive high operating temperatures that would make most other cameras go belly-up. That is one reason I bought this camera since I live in Florida and will use the motion detection feature every time I leave my car in a hot parking lot somewhere.I was curious about how much heat is generated by the camera so I left the camera on, with the LCD display on, for half an hour. Then I used a laser infrared thermometer to measure the surface temperature at various spots. At a room ambient temp of 75 degrees F, most of the surface was at 85 F while the area where the lens housing attaches to the camera body was about 95 F with a hot spot of 100 F.On Page 6 of the User Manual, it is recommended that you only use the camera at temperatures between 0 C to 60 C (10 F to 140 F) and at a humidity of between 10% and 80%.INTERNAL BATTERY and CAR CHARGER ADAPTERIn that tear-down photo mentioned above, you can see the lithium battery, which appears to be glued to a metal cradle. The User Manual lists this as a 3.7 VDC 320 mAh battery. But the photo clearly shows it is rated at 3.7VDC at 120 mAh. I contacted iTrue about this and they replied that the rating in the manual was a typo error and would be corrected in the revision.Another of my attached photos shows the end of the adapter that plugs into your car's cigar lighter socket. A blue LED lights up when you plug it in. A female USB socket is hidden behind a small pivoted cover. The male mini-USB connector, on the end of the long cable, plugs into the camera. A hard-to-read label indicates the charger accepts an input of 12 to 24 VDC and provides an output of 5 VDC at 2 amps on the USB outputs.Being curious about how much current the camera draws from one's car battery, I made the following measurements.Cigar lighter adapter without camera attached..................9 mACamera attached but turned off - battery charging..........30 mACamera on but not recording.........................................160 mACamera on, display on, and recording.............................250 mACamera on, display off, and recording.............................230 mACamera on, GPS attached, display on, and recording....290 mASince the camera's max current draw is only about 1/4 amp, it is clear one could leave it on inside your car for days without draining your car's battery. Furthermore, my measurements show why the camera will operate in the recording mode for only a few minutes when powered just by the internal lithium battery.VIDEOS and PHOTOSThe day and night videos I have made are of excellent quality, particularly with the resolution set at 1920x1080P. But even with the resolution set at 640x480P(VGA), the lowest of the 5 selectable resolutions, the videos were surprisingly good and the file size was about half that of a 1080P video for the same amount of time. There are many reviews of this camera that show sample videos but most do not show the excellent quality one sees when files are played back on one's computer or TV.A feature I really like is the ability to zoom the image while you are recording. For example, if you come up on a street sign or a car's license plate you can't quite make out on the display, pressing and holding the UP arrow button will zoom in on the object and pressing and holding the DOWN arrow will return it to normal. The detail of the digitally zoomed image is excellent, although some graininess is apparent. One gotcha I encountered was when I zoomed out, I pressed the DOWN button and didn't hold it and inadvertently turned off the microphone. I didn't see the thin red line that appears across the microphone icon on the display that indicates that the mic was off. All buttons have dual functions - press once for one function and press and hold for another.If you want to use the camera to just shoot photos, there are most of the settings available that you will find on most digital cameras. The User Manual lists them all, including Anti-Shaking.The camera has an LED lamp on the front. This lamp is useless for dashcam purposes since the light just reflects off your windshield and washes out the image. But it might be useful if you needed to make a video or take a photo in a very dark situation. I've attached a photo I made of the User Manual in a completely dark room. The limitations of using the lamp are obvious in this photo. First is the reflection of the lamp off of the image. The second is the shadow of the edge of the protruding lens that was cast over the lower right of the image. The third is the edge distortion from the wide angle lens. Since the zoom function is not available in photo mode, it can not be used to compensate for these artifacts.CONNECTION TO YOUR TELEVISIONThere are two ways to connect the camera to a TV. One is with the AV output and the other is with the HDMI output. I had trouble with the AV method when I used the only AV cable I had. So I contacted iTrue about it and they agreed to send me a cable with which I could do the test. They further told me that, if their cable didn't work, then there might be a problem with the camera's AV output connector and they would gladly replace the camera. When I tried connecting via an HDMI cable, it worked perfectly.When you connect to your TV, the camera's display turns off and the image is transferred to your TV. You can then use the camera's buttons to access the setup menus and play back any of your videos or photos. While connected to the TV, you can take photos with the camera but you can't make a video. iTrue assured me this is normal operation.THE GPS LOGGERThe GPS feature of the x3 is not discussed in the User Manual,. The GPS unit plugs into the camera next to the mini-USB power connector. It come attached to a long cable so you can place the small, flat GPS unit wherever you want. I coil up the extra cable and put the unit above the passenger side sun visor. I had no problem picking up the GPS satellite signal through the roof of my car or when I tested the unit in my house while the camera was connected to my computer.My detailed review of the GPS unit, and the included viewer software, can be seen under Amazon's listing of the device.In summary, I highly recommend this dash cam because of its solid construction, small size, large display, excellent video quality, the many selectable settings, good user manual, one year warranty, and superb iTrue customer service. And for anyone who buys this camera, I also strongly suggest they also buy the iTrue GPS Logger. It would be well worth the extra $30.

This is a good dashcam. I have purchased many dashcams, mainly of the $50 variety and they do just as well, although those can be a bit rough around the edges.This dashcam comes out of the box and feels premium right away. I paid twice as much for this unit so I expected it to feel like it's worth more. Indeed, it comes off that way.While I do like the look and feel, the functionality is 80% of the $50 camera. The HD is quality just like the other cameras, however with the additional GPS unit, there is extra functionality for tracking location and speed. To me, that was worth $75 more than the $50 camera.The menus are MUCH better to comprehend than the other cameras I have used. The menu buttons and layout is much better and easier to use. I didn't even need the manual. I was able to jump right in and start programming the camera. This one can also get the time from the GPS so it's always 100% accurate. That's nice because the other cameras would ALWAYS drift time after a few months. That was very annoying especially if you ever need to use it as evidence in a court of law. Time accuracy is a big deal!The outside buttons also allow quick access to muting the mic, taking photos and getting to the screen. I do like that a lot.Wiring it was a breeze. I get the optional $9 wiring kit with the mini usb interface and it works like a charm. I always hardwire my dashcams because it looks much cleaner and way less noticible. Subtle is good with a dashcam.Which brings me to my last point and why I took a star off: this camera has LOTS of Chrome!! Wow it is really shiny which makes it not-so-subtle. When looking at my car from the outside, it really is noticible.I ended up painting mine flat black. Now it disappears into the interior and is much less noticable from the exterior. (See photo)Overall I'm glad I got this camera but if you don't intend on using the GPS feature (and purchase the GPS module seperately) then I would advise looking at other highly rated solutions that are 1/2 the price. This is priced due to a slightly better quality, better fit and finish and the GPS add on.I'm glad I bought it regardless because in the end, a $100 dashcam can save you from a lawsuit or ....?? They are essential in today's times. The GPS adds a layer of protection and the ability to tell it exactly like it is.