Minolta MNCD53 Car Dashboard 1080p HD Video Camera with LCD Screen and G-Sensor (Black)

The camera itself is great for a pre-bluetooth solution. The things that make this a terrible purchase is the mounting hardware and the power supply. I have owned two of these. The only mounting solution that comes with the camera is a suction cup mounted to a 17mm ball socket. Pretty standard. The suction cup is actually pretty good considering the size and weight of the camera. The terrible part is the way the camera slides on to the mount. There is no click, no detente, nothing to hold the camera securely to the mount other than the tight fit and friction between two plastic surfaces. After a month or so of driving, the vibration quickly loosens this connection and the camera eventually falls out of the mount. This product should be sold with a bottle of LocTite to prevent this from happening. Also, the power supply (mini USB at the camera end) is hardwired to an enormous, oddly shaped 12V lighter adapter plug. It takes up a conspicuous amount of space in the outlet, is also unstable and tends to unplug itself due to vibration, In one vehicle the outlet adapter popped with the volume of a gunshot and the camera stopped working. Not sure if it damaged the camera but the plug was fried. This could have easily been supplied with a standard mini USB to USB wire and a separate 12V adapter. Not willing to risk experimenting with that in case Minolta has some weird voltage conversion thing going on. For the price, pay a little more and get a smaller bluetooth compatible unit that you can control from a smart phone.

IT KEEP CUT ON AND OFF.

the battery does not charge. the instructions are handwritten that the battery does not hold charge

The first thing to notice is the nice big display. Most dash cameras are smaller, some a LOT smaller and it’s hard to see.Then I plug it in and turn it on. It starts up fast. I have a generic camera which is so slow to come on that your car could already be moving by the time it records.It has a VERY tiny battery built into it. It’s not for using the camera without a power cord, it’s more like making sure the thing doesn’t shut off if the power cable wiggles a bit in the cigarette lighter plug (my generic camera has that problem) and also being able to continue recording for 20 seconds after impact if an accident takes out your power. This is a pretty good feature to have.There is ONE good thing about the user interface, which is that one of the left-side buttons , next to a record icon on the display, is an instant one-touch option to turn sound recording on or off. If you don’t want to constantly be recording conversations with people, you want it off. But you also might want to quickly turn this on, and not all cameras make that easy. I think this might be the only feature which has a good button/display coordination.OK, now some bad stuff because this thing definitely has some…When looking at the display, the markings on the buttons themselves are not visible. The buttons are on the sides of the camera, and the symbols referred to in the manual are molded into the buttons. There is plenty of room to just print those symbols on the plastic along the side of the display, but that area is blank. So to follow the manual instructions, you have to either memorize all buttons or keep looking at the sides.The menu navigation mostly works with 3 buttons on the left side: Up, Down, and a Menu select in the middle. But when you get to the end of a menu path, after selecting a category and sub-category with the M each time, the final thing must be selected with the camera function on the other side of the camera. If you try to select the last thing with the M button again, it will go back to the beginning.What I have been calling the manual is really more like a quick start guide, and a very bad one at that. It’s all poorly written, and at least one thing was false. It says something like “simply press the ___ button” but it turns out you have to change modes first or that does nothing. So the interface is bad, and the only instructions provided are not good.It has a G-force sensor so it can start recording if there is a collision. This feature doesn’t really make much sense. If you are in an accident, the most important stuff is what happens just BEFORE the actual collision. Why even have one of these if you don’t have it set to full-time loop recording? My generic camera has an impact sensor, and it responds to collisions by automatically marking the current loop segment as protected so it can’t be accidentally over-written.The window mount is probably my least-favorite part. It’s a suction-clamp sort of thing, which seems like a good idea if you are new to the whole dash cam game and hesitating to use permanent mounting tape. But it’s terrible. Despite cleaning the window carefully (I’ve played with suction mounts before), it has fallen off twice. Maybe the rubber is not good at handling hot weather. The angle adjusts with one of those ball sockets with a twist-ring you tighten to lock it in place after getting the angle just right. But it’s one of the cheapies which never really holds its position well no matter how tight you make it. The camera attaches to the window mount by just sliding loosely in with a tab/slot setup. It slides in horizontally, and there’s no snap or even a mush to hold it in. I initially wanted to angle the camera up slightly, given that I have no reason to record my dash board and I wanted to record the color of traffic lights as much as possible as I pass under. But if you do that, or even if you angle the camera perfectly level, it will wiggle out and fall. I have to keep it pointed slightly downward so it stays in.As a final disappointment, the plastic layer which protects the display (and forms the entire rear of the camera as a single piece) has begun to curl away and come off. The plastic is obviously not the least bit heat resistant, nor is the double-sided tape used to attach it to the camera body. This is especially sad because one of my first impressions was that the camera body felt nice and solid, but then this happens.So to summarize, the good things are:1. Instant audio record button2. Backup battery3. Fast startAnd the bad things are almost everything else.

With more and more reasons to be recording travel, I thought this would be a good idea. It's a little odd that it's styled like a little camera - I guess that's capitalizing on the old Minolta brand to look like one. (This is actually made/marketed by Elite Brands Inc. Their web site doesn't even have a complete description, and there is no support listed. The manual has an 800 number, however.)I would give the hardware and function 3 stars, and the documentation and support 2 stars. Overall, I would give this the 2.5 it deserves.The controls are 7 buttons arranged on either side and have tiny and almost unreadable icons on them. There is nothing on the screen to show what their function is. The manual is fairly hard to deal with - not surprising with an import of this type. The cord is very long, but has an old style cigarette lighter plug permanently attached. I would rather have had it be a long USB cord and let me provide the USB power either through the car or with my own adapter (my current USB plug has two outlets, which would be more flexible.)Another issue is the mount (suction cup) - the camera just slides in but there is nothing to lock it in place and and it twists from side to side even when slid all the way in.Daytime allows for decent recording, but nightime is pretty bad. I don't have anything to compare to, but I have to imagine there are better choices for night driving if you want to record in all conditions. Still, something is better than nothing.There's no software, so you just move the video clips to your computer via USB. If you're just looking for collision evidence, this will work, but if you want to pull video from it,The difficult manual doesn't help, I just made copies of the pages and put them all on one sheet to make it easier than constantly flipping back and forth.Look elsewhere for a dashcam that's more usable and well supported. This one will work at the price point, but is a bit challenging to master. I think it would be worth it to spend a little more for a mainstream product.