A dash cam is a great holiday gift if you have someone on your list who frequently travels for work or pleasure. It’s one of those items that just about every electronics retailer will have some special on. And if you’re looking for a good deal on a dash cam, Black Friday 2022 will be a perfect time to score a great deal on a top model.
Our entire family has dashcams in their vehicles, and I’ve recommended that everyone I know buy a dashcam. Why? I have had two accidents where my dashcam helped me settle claims in my favor. You can’t argue with video evidence, and it’s the best evidence to have when an accident occurs. In most states, operating a dash cam in your car is allowed.
There are over 17,000 car accidents that occur each day, with a large majority of them settled by one driver’s word versus another. If you or someone you care about is in the car a lot of their day, a dash cam can provide real peace of mind. You can find our picks for the best Black Friday dash cam deals below.
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Pre-Black Friday Dash Cam Deals
We still have weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday arrive, but we’ve looked through Amazon and other retailers to find early deals on top-rated dash cams. We’ve shared those below.
- Car-key sized dash cam allows you to hide it behind your mirror, and attract less attention
- 1080p video
- Parking view and live view available if continuously powered and in range of Wi-Fi
- Supports up to 512GB memory cards
The Garmin Dash Cam Mini 2 is a great dash cam. It records 1080p video in an impossibly small form factor and handles 512GB memory cards, both equally impressive. Connecting the dash cam directly to the car battery unlocks a feature that allows you to view live footage from your car when it’s near a Wi-Fi connection.
Garmin also offers a service called the Vault, which allows you to save a recording; you can connect up to four cams through the Garmin app for video coverage in every nook and cranny of your vehicle. Usually $130, picking this well-rated dash cam up “renewed” saves you a ton of money — and Amazon’s renewed inventory is guaranteed to work, or your money back.
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- Outstanding Night vision capability
- Dual 1080p video cameras
- Crystal clear video
- 18-month warranty
- No app or connectivity
- Cumbersome controls
Our
The N2 Pro’s menu system is a bit of a pain to deal with and does take some fiddling to get what you need sometimes, which is an annoyance. But otherwise, it’s a great dash cam, even if it doesn’t have all the fancy features of some newer dash cams. We can make it even better: We have an exclusive coupon code, SASN2P, which gets you 30% off when you buy through The Smart Home Spot, bringing the price below $120 (how cool is that)!
- Offers 4K front-facing video, 1080p rear
- Built-in GPS and Wi-Fi
- Internal battery to power parking monitor
- Automatic crash detection
4K dash cams used to cost quite a bit, but over the past year have dropped dramatically in price. If you’re dead set on 4K, we’d recommend the V1PMax. It supports 4K for the front camera and 1080p in the back and offers a parking mode that doesn’t require it to be hardwired into your car.
All this power doesn’t fit in a small package, so the V1P is pretty beastly. If you’re an easily distractable driver, the size of this thing might annoy you. But that size allows Rexing to pack better lenses and image sensors into this unit, making it one of the best 4K dash cams currently available.
- Turns your mirror into an interactive touchscreen
- Front 2.5K and rear 1080p cameras
- Sony Starvis Night Vision
- Automatically switches to rear camera for reverse
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Going the full mirror replacement route might be better if you’re a little handier. The Vantrue M2 turns your mirror into a dash cam, with the 2.5K dash cam built into the mirror, and has all the features we like to see in a dash cam, including motion and collision detection, excellent night vision thanks to a high-quality Sony sensor, and more.
You’ll need to run the rear camera back through—your cabin and through your trunk, as it is not wireless. However, we’ve seen some dash cam owners with wireless rear cameras have trouble keeping those wireless cameras connected from time to time. So there’s a bit of a tradeoff here, but we think the better reliability of a wired camera is the better way to go.
What features should I look for in dash cam deals on Black Friday?
While we don’t know specifics of which dash cams will be on sale on Black Friday (it’s way too early), we can provide some ideas on what to look for. If you want quality video out of your dash cam, 1080p is the minimum resolution you should choose. Most modern dash cams record video in 1080p, so this shouldn’t be an issue.
A few dash cam models record in resolutions of 2K, 2.5K, or 4K, offering progressively better video quality, but you will pay more. These also require more storage space, so they often can’t store as much video footage as a 1080p dash cam could.
Lens quality and image sensor quality are also important factors to consider. You’ll find many of these cameras using lenses and sensors from companies such as Sony and Zeiss. Both are respected brands in the camera industry, and these dashcams will typically offer better picture quality.
This is not to say there aren’t good cheap dash cams. There are, but you’re compromising somewhere, and typically it’s in these two vital components, which can mean the difference between getting a license plate off your video and not.
Night vision capabilities will be very important. If you’re a rideshare or delivery driver, you’ll want a dual dash camera that records what’s happening inside the vehicle. We recommend looking through real-world footage when doing your research, a simple google search with the dash cam model name and “video” should pull up some footage to look at (you can see sample footage from Nexar Beam here and the
Another nice feature to have is motion detection. This allows the dash cam to turn on when motion is detected in its field of view or if it detects movement. Those living in the city know how often we get bumped when people park: now you’ll know who did it.
Dash cams with a wide-angle lens are preferable, even if it results in a little image distortion (called the “fisheye” effect). It will see more to your right and left, which can be useful in accident situations.
Other features like Wi-Fi and voice control are nice but are less necessary in our opinion than some of the other features we’ve discussed. We also are big fans of free cloud storage, which does come with both the Nexar Beam and Nexar Pro GPS dash cams.
Wrapping Up
We will update this page throughout the holiday season as more deals show up as the Holiday shopping season draws closer. But there are already some great deals to be had, so we don’t blame you if you begin your shopping a bit early this year 🙂 Happy Holidays!
