Three Reasons to Buy a Dash Cam for Caravanners

Who needs a dash cam? It’s just another device to clutter up your dashboard, right? The only use for dash cams is to record idiots on the road ahead of you.

That’s what I had in my mind when I agreed to try out the ThinkWare X550 dash cam. It was just going to get in the way, add another wire across my dashboard and bring me nothing more useful than some footage of bad drivers sharing the road with me.

Perhaps, I could send the footage off to Harry Hill to use on ITV’s ‘You’ve been framed!’ Show. But, to get that sort of footage, I was going to have to drive 10,000 miles to increase the odds of me actually getting some interesting footage of poor driving skills on the road.

What a waste of time, I thought. I was going to need a multi-socketed adapter to use the X550 and my smartphone simultaneously. Just another device and another wire to deal with in my car.

Easy to use

I duly unpacked the rather neat little ThinkWare X550 from its box, attached the bracket to my windscreen below the rear view mirror, and slid the camera onto it. I’d already inserted the microSD card into the body and unwound the lengthy power cable.

With the power plugged in and my car’s ignition on, the X550 dash cam lit up and gave me a verbal warning about the need to back up the footage from the microSD card. But, wait! I hadn’t taken any footage yet. I checked the card and saw someone from ThinkWare had recorded a short video as some sort of test before sending it out. It was fine and I deleted it.

The X550 comes with a long power cable so you can tuck it into the edges of your dashboard so you hide most of it the cable, a benefit. Also, supplied is a handful of cable clips to tie the cable back anywhere it can’t be tucked.

More importantly, as soon as I started plugged in the X550, it booted up. I didn’t have to do anything. The dash cam worked straight out of the box. You can change the default settings to customise it to what you want. But, for my purposes, the camera just worked.

Driving in detail

Setting off to work, the X550 began recording. After a mile, I closed up behind a car ahead of me as it went into a dip in the road. Coming up the other side of the dip, I nudged a metre closer to the car in front. The dash cam emitted a beep at me to warn me I was too close. Fair enough, I eased off a little.

Next, a builder in his lorry came in the opposite direction and, according to the ThinkWare X550, it was too close for comfort. The camera alerted me with a different beep.

Twenty minutes later, I was at my desk inserting the microSD adapter which comes with the X550 into a USB port on my laptop looking at the video files on it. The dash cam records in short segments, saving them in chronological order on the card.

The quality of the video is high. You can see fine details of the road in front of you, like number plates, the car dealer’s name from the car in front, and maybe the expression of the drivers coming in the opposite direction (I’m joking, but the detail of the HD quality video is good).

I’d had an uneventful commute to work on which to test the dash cam. But, I had experienced some features of the X550 and I was beginning to warm to it. Not until my return journey a couple of days later did I fully understand one of the big benefits of using a dash cam.

1. When you realise you should have fitted the dash cam

The ironic aspect of why I understood why having a dash cam in your car was when I was not using it.

Returning home after work, I pulled up at traffic lights at a narrow bridge which leads into a small village along the A151 in Lincolnshire. On the opposite side of the bridge, a driver waited for the lights to change to green. As he was pulling away I could see someone driving a VW Golf coming up quickly to his rear, over the 30MPH limit, no doubt.

The driver of the Golf overtook the first person in the queue, squeezed past them and narrowly missed me. The driver of the Golf was a dangerous fool and was lucky not to hit anyone. I ‘kicked myself’ for not having had the X550 mounted and working to record the VW driver and have some evidence of his stupidity.

2. Touring memories

Not long after, I read a benefit of having a dash cam which had not occurred to me while reading an article by a couple driving through Scandinavia towing their caravan.

In the couples’ six-week odyssey, they spent much time driving through beautiful valleys, over spectacular mountain passes and beside stunning fjords. The author mentioned they had a dash cam with them, which they used to record the views as they drove.

Eureka! That is a fantastic use of a dash cam. With the ThinkWare X550’s 1080 HD camera, it would have captured some memorable, high resolution views.

3. Safety on your side

The third benefit of buying a dash cam is safety-related. The X550 has safety functions which add to its core business of recording what’s in front of you. I found these aspects out when driving along the A1 one weekend this summer, but which reminded me of an incident many years ago that frightened the life out of me for a moment.

Driving down an A road late one night, momentarily, I fell asleep. My sleep lasted milliseconds. Nonetheless, I woke up on the opposite side of the road, heading towards a barrier at speed. My body reacted with a rush of adrenalin and I regained control of the car before stopping to calm down and have a rest.

The ThinkWare X550 dash cam has a feature which could help overcome you drifting out of your lane on a motorway or dual carriageway. Every Time it thinks you are drifting out of lane it beeps. That could save you from hurting yourself or others, and could have helped me all those years ago.

Why you should buy a dash cam for your caravan tours

Given I was sceptical of the value a dash cam offers, the X550 converted me to being a believer. It’s not only a great device for providing visual evidence of the stupidity of some drivers on the roads. It’s a safety device to prod you into focus, or for warning you about a speed camera ahead.

Its positive use for caravanners is to record the amazing places you tour. You’ll get an angle of your touring holiday which you may never have even believed possible before buying a dash cam like the ThinkWare X550.

Price: Amazon £179.99 RAC £259 (fitted)