Nexar Pro dual dash cam with free unlimited cloud storage

The Nexar Pro dual camera dash cam. Picture: Nexar.

There are lots of reasons to buy a dash cam including evidence for insurance claims: In the event of an accident, a dash cam can provide clear footage of what happened, which can be used as evidence in insurance claims. It can also be used to record interesting events, such as beautiful scenery or unexpected happenings on the road. Another feature that should be top on your list of reasons to get a dash cam is that it can be used as protection against hit-and-run. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been testing the Nexar Pro dash cam which offers lots of excellent features at a great price.

Design

The Nexar Pro dash cam consists of two separate devices: the smaller interior camera is designed as an interior camera and it connects to the main camera unit. The camera records footage in 720p HD and includes 10 infrared lights for capturing video at night — albeit in black and white.

The primary Nexar Pro camera has an elongated oval design, a front-facing camera and two status LEDs in place of the normal back LCD panel found on most dash cams. A video screen may seem like a crucial component that has been omitted, but in reality, streaming live video from your large high-resolution smartphone screen is much better anyway. The Nexar streams video directly to your smartphone using the exclusive Nexar app and the camera's built-in WiFi.

The main unit has a camera that can record 135-degree wide video in 1080p Full HD quality and comes with a microSD card slot and Nexar includes an SD card in the box. The base price includes a 32GB card, but you can also buy the Nexar Pro with 64GB, 128GB or 256GB SD cards.

Key features

Every time you drive, the dash cam smoothly streams live footage to your phone, ensuring that you always have access to video footage in case you need it. You can use other apps while driving because the Nexar app runs in the background.

Video clips are automatically backed up to your free and unlimited Nexar cloud account. This is incredibly significant because it means your valuable footage is backed up to three different places. This ensures you won’t lose your critical video clips and you always have quick access no matter where you are.

If you happen to go for a drive and forget your phone, the Nexar Pro will still capture the footage and save it automatically to the SD card.

You can reserve 20%, 50% or 70% of your available phone storage for recorded video and the SD card will record over old videos when it runs out of space (32GB is enough storage for 3 hours of footage). However, the free Nexar cloud storage is unlimited. It’s important to note that clips that you delete from your phone will also disappear from the cloud.

Most dash cams will save short video clips of your journey, but the Nexar Pro records the entire journey. You can quickly create shorter video clips within the app, which is convenient if you want to save a particular incident or perhaps, just to have a memory of a scenic drive. It saves this as a single video on your phone along with a map of your drive.

You can also enable parking mode that will record video if it detects a sudden bump from someone hitting your car but this requires the device is always powered and hardwired to the main battery.

When dealing with insurance claims, Nexar can generate thorough post-collision records at the touch of a button, saving you time, money and needless stress. Key details from the incident, including video footage, driving speed, G-force impact and location, are outlined in Nexar's report.

The Nexar app can stream live video from the cameras on the Nexar Pro but it also comes with a built-in GPS Navigation system. This allows you to have the live stream open while also displaying a navigation map.

Verdict

The Nexar Pro Dual is an excellent system and I love the app and free cloud storage features. I didn’t miss not having a distracting screen on the back of the dash cam, but being able to quickly access and review captured video is a game changer.

The video quality is crisp and clean with a decent dynamic range, but there are good dash cams that offer higher resolutions of 2K and 4K. For most people, 1080p is good enough.

Nexar Pro dash cam from €166.54 Nexar