At a glanceExpert's Rating
Pros
- Excellent 4K front day captures
- Integrated GPS
- Above average 1440p rear captures
- Unique external storage feature
Cons
- Detail lags in night captures
- Really, really expensive
Our Verdict
The Viofo A329 with its 60fps, 4K UHD video is one of the two best daytime dash cams we’ve tested and we love the ability to use external SSDs for storage. However, it’s also very, very expensive and detail drops off significantly in night captures.
Price When Reviewed
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Best Prices Today: Viofo A329 two-channel dash cam
Who knew we’d run across a new and unique feature — support for capturing video to external SSDs — in our latest look at a dash cam from solid but generally mainstream Viofo? The company’s high-resolution, high frame rate A329 takes fantastic day captures and sports all the bells and whistles, including GPS, voice commands, and Wi-Fi. It does, however, set you back quite a bit of coin.
What are the Viofo A329’s features?
The Viofo A329 is a 60 frame per second, 2160p dash cam (front), that’s available in both single-channel (front-only), and dual-channel (front/rear) flavors. I tested the latter with its 1440p rear camera.
The front camera features an 8 megapixel Sony STARVIS 2 IMX678 sensor and offers a 140 degree field of view, while the rear camera uses a 5 megapixel Sony STARVIS 2 IMX675 with a 160 degree field of view.
There’s a 2.4-inch color display, with five indicator lights (power, recording status, GPS status, microphone status, and Wi-Fi status) directly below. Aligned with the status lights are five buttons for the menu, record on/off, emergency save, microphone on/off, and Wi-Fi on/off. Logical enough, though all of the buttons are multi-function pulling duty for menu navigation and other purposes.
On the right side of the body are the microSD slot, miniature coax port for the rear camera cable (a fair amount of pressure is required for insertion and removal — as with the rear camera’s coax port), and a mini-HDMI video output.
Further reading: See our roundup of the best dash cams to learn about competing products.
The left side of the front camera body sports a Type-C port for power and direct connection to a computer for offloading videos. Serving as mass storage when connected is a feature I appreciate, but has seemingly fallen out of favor with many vendors. You get a bit of a show from the status lights when the A329 is in mass storage mode. Nice. There’s also a reset button on the left if the unit goes wonky.
Better than that, you can actually attach an external (up to 4TB) SSD to the Type-C port and use it in lieu of the internal SD card. This is the first time I’ve run across this capability and it makes the price of the A329 easier to bear.
The GPS is in the sticky mount that comes with the A329. You slide the camera onto the mount from the right, and there are metal contacts on both halves to facilitate the connection. If you want the GPS, you must attach the Type-C to Type-C cable to the port on the top of the mount — not the camera. To be honest, I’ve screwed that up before. Much to my consternation when I looked at resulting videos.
There is of course, an app (shown above) that features a live view, library of captures, and access to all the camera settings. It communicates via the integrated Wi-Fi hot spot.
How much is the Viofo A329?
Hang on to your hat for this next bit. The two-channel version of the A329 I tested is $470. Yowser. Even sans rear camera, it’s a hefty $400. That, dear friends is not what was once commonly referred to as chump change.
No doubt part of the pricing is for electronics capable of dealing with 60fps, 2160p video. But geez — there’s some pretty awesome competition for considerably less. Note that you’ll also go through TF cards faster, albeit not as much faster as you might think (see below).
How are the Viofo A329’s captures?
No mystery here, as I’ve already spilled the beans. The A329’s front day captures are second to none, and the rear day captures are also among the best I’ve seen.
If the detail had been maintained once it got dark, I would say that Viofo was justified in its pricing. Alas, while still decent, the night captures are nowhere near the quality of daytime video. And couldn’t hold a candle to the Miofive S1’s night video. (Yes, that was on purpose.)
The A329’s front day captures are second to none, and the rear day captures are also among the best I’ve seen.
The level of detail in the day capture shown in the image above is spectacular. The colors are spot-on for a gray day here in San Francisco, fish eye is minimal for the FOV, and there were no motion artifacts of any sort. 60 frames per second will help with that.
Despite the high level of detail, the 4K UHD/60fps video chews up only around 310MB per minute. Most h.264 4K captures use anywhere from 220MB to 250MB every 60 seconds — I don’t consider 25 percent too hefty a penalty; however, you’ll want as close to the 512GB maximum TF Card as you can afford.
In case you weren’t aware, unless you or the camera (due to the g-sensor kicking in) explicitly lock or save a video, it will eventually be deleted to make room for newer captures. First recorded, first deleted. If you see something interesting you want to view in the future, keep this in mind.
Being 1440p helped quite a bit with the detail in the rear camera day captures, an example of which is shown above. These are h.264 to the tune of approximately 145MB per minute. Color quality is similar to the front camera’s, as is motion compensation, but fish-eye is more noticeable.
Alas, the front night captures (above) aren’t nearly as outstanding as the front day video. Color is still relatively accurate, there are no motion artifacts, and headlight flare is minimal, but detail is comparatively poor, as you can see in the license plate to the right.
The rear night captures (above) fell off similarly to the fronts. Despite the STARVIS moniker, this seems to be a trend with Sony’s sensors. Color and other qualities are fine, but detail suffers greatly from the lack of light.
In total, the A329 is among the best daylight dash cams I’ve tested. I’d rate the detail of the front captures second only to the Wolfbox X5’s ultra-wide 5K (single-channel) and its motion compensation second to none. However, its night captures are a far cry from the standard set by the Miofive S1.
Should you buy the Viofo A329?
I’m an admirer of the A329’s stellar day captures as well as the overall product. Especially the game-changing ability to capture to external SSDs. However, I was a bit startled when I visited the product page and saw the price. Even without the rear camera, it’s $100 more than the 5K Wolfbox X5 and almost twice as much as the 4K Miofive S1 with its stellar night captures. A very worthy product, but only for those with the means.
Best Prices Today: Viofo A329 two-channel dash cam
Author: Jon L. Jacobi, Contributor, PCWorld
Jon Jacobi is a musician, former x86/6800 programmer, and long-time computer enthusiast. He writes reviews on TVs, SSDs, dash cams, remote access software, Bluetooth speakers, and sundry other consumer-tech hardware and software.