The Breakdown
Dash Cams have been around for some years now, but until today they were all simple means to capture specific driving events. I wrote “until today”, because the 70mai Dash Cam Omni is one gadget that has some unique features worth checking out. Let’s take a look at its review.
The 70mai Dash Cam Omni is a dash cam that attaches to the inside of your vehicle’s windshield to record your trips. Nothing interesting here. The unique feature of this dash cam is that it can rotate 360° to take selfies and videos at your command – but also works as a parking sentinel – even when the car is engine is turned off.
Main package
The 70Mai Omni dash camera comes in a silver, futuristic box. Inside you get the dash cam itself, a power cord, a car charger, 2 electrostatic stickers, a wiring crowbar, an adhesive sticker, and some paperwork. I also bought separately the hardwire kit that allows you to connect the dash camera to your car’s battery, which is required for parking security features, like 24 hour sentinel guard.
- 70mai Dash Cam Omni
- USB-C Power cable
- 12V vehicle power adapter
- Installation stickers and tool
- User manual
Design and features
The camera sensor on the Dash Cam Omni is designed for panning your vehicle smoothly and continuously managing your car from all directions. It works on its own but also when you want it, via voice commands. Omni comes with Enhanced Collision Detection, which has a specially designed collision detection algorithm to protect your car while driving.
When an accident occurs, the camera can detect the direction of motion, then turn in that direction and emergency recording will start 5 seconds prior to a collision – recording up to 30 seconds of video after the accident. This is a useful feature for documenting any accident and what happened shortly after it happened. During my use of the device, it sensed 2 times that a possible accident could occur and did in fact record video – without being in accident thankfully. But the content was there for me – available if needed.
On one side of the 70mai Dash Cam Omni there is a USB-C port that powers the camera. The opposite side has a power button and an up/down button which is used to scroll through the camera’s menus.
The top of the 70mai Dash Cam Omni is the mount that attaches to your windshield. It has a hinge that opens up so that you can adjust the angle of the camera vertically.
Installing the 70mai Dash Cam Omni
Using one of the 2 included antistatic stickers, we can easily install the Omni Dash Cam. The idea is that you attach the sticker to the inside of your windshield and then you attach the 70mai Dash Cam Omni on the sticker so that the mount at the top of the camera is positioned inside the circle.
When it’s done, we can adjust vertically the field of view of the camera. Quite easy as well. That’s it. Job done. The 1.2-inch display is rather small but is used mostly for basic operation. You can see the live view of the camera. And adjust the basic set. You can turn on or off the Wi-Fi hotspot sound recording. And Watermark mutes the device format the storage reset the device. And so on, you can also turn them on or off the display by pressing the power key.
Gizchina News of the week
After the camera’s angle is adjusted, it’s time to route the power cable. I think it’s cool that 70mai includes a plastic pry bar type of tool that you can use to help you stuff the excess cable under the edge of the headliner of your car. Once it is physically installed, the next step is to install the app on your mobile device.
70mai Dash Cam Omni app
The 70mai Dash Cam Omni functions like other dash cams in that it will automatically power up when you start your vehicle and then it will automatically start recording video. By default, audio is turned off, but you can go into the settings and enable audio to be recorded in addition to video.
It’s helpful that the 70mai Dash Cam Omni has its own built-in file storage. This means that we can easily connect via WiFi to it, and easily get all video/photos to our phone without the need of a PC. We just use the 70mai Dash Cam Omni app. The app connects to the camera using WiFi and will show you thumbnails of all captured videos, images, events, and vlogs. You can watch the video directly through the app including adding an interesting overlay (image above on the right) that provides a HUD display type overlay with your speed and detected vehicles.
The app will also let you enable voice commands that you can use to control the camera. You can tell it to shoot left and right to have the camera turn to shoot video in that direction. You can tell it to take a selfie and it will rotate and take a picture of you and anyone else in the car. It can also shoot a 15 second vlog. For some reason, there’s no way to adjust the length of the vlog though…
Another feature in the app maps your trips using the GPS. This way you can easily check previous routes.
Night Vision
Another great feature of the omnidirectional dash cam is the top-notch night vision, which ensures you get high-quality recordings daily and at night. 70Mai Omni Equipped with a large F1.5 aperture and PureCel®Plus-S HDR technology, the camera is designed to deliver excellent low-light performance and color performance.
While many dash cam available today record video at 30 FPS, the Dash Cam Omni records video at 60 FPS, which makes picking out important details like car license plates much easier.
AI Parking
The built-in AI parking monitoring function is like a digital security guard for your car. It uses an upgraded AI motion detection algorithm that can detect people around the vehicle. It can also see their movement and locate their location.
Artificial intelligence can differentiate between someone passing by your vehicle and a suspicious person approaching your car. It’s a great feature that adds an extra layer of security to your vehicle and keeps you safe while parked.
ADAS
A full-featured dash cam with an array of high-end features, the Omni is also designed as a driving safety aid. It comes with an upgraded ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) that alerts you to potential hazards while driving.
For example, it can alert you to pedestrians, cyclists, vehicle braking, and more. It also comes with a built-in lane departure alert, a useful feature that alerts you if you drift into another lane, which often happens when people are tired.
Built-in GPS
The 70Mai Omni dash cam omnidirectional comes with built-in GPS, another useful feature that can help you with route tracking and finding your car when you can’t remember where you parked it. This feature is available for 4G hardwired kits, which will be available in Europe and Southeast Asia in 2023. The 70mai app will sync with your dash cam for route tracking, and you can also check your route and GPS information after the journey.
Voice Control
The 70Mai Omni also features smart voice control, another great feature you don’t usually get on dash cams of this price range. You can move the camera in any direction with simple voice commands. You can also use voice commands to start recording on your device. This ensures you can focus on driving while using the Omni.
Here are all the available voice commands:
- Shoot left
- Shoot right
- Take photo
- Shoot emergency video
- Take selfie
- Shoot vlog
- Shoot inside
- Stop audio
- Record audio
- Disable hotspot
- Enable hotspot
70mai Dash Cam Omni Optional features
You can purchase an optional hardwire kit for $19.99 that will allow the 70mai Omni to always stay powered by connecting to your vehicle’s battery. With this kit, the camera will monitor your car for collisions 24/7.
PROS
- Great photo/video quality (60 fps)
- Easy to install
- Comes with built-in storage
- Easy to shoot vlogs with 360 degree videos
- 24 hour parking mode
CONS
- Parking mode requires extra hardware kit
- 4G module for notifications still not ready/available
70mai Dash Cam Omni review: Conclusion
I loved the 360 degrees field of view and the ability to change direction of view instantly. If you want a dash cam that automatically records you driving and will also take selfies and super short vlogs at your command, then you will love it. Add the optional hardwire kit and it will also let you know if there is damage to your car when it’s parked.
The Omni comes with eMMC storage, which is more reliable than the memory card storage used in many dash cams today. You can check out more about 70Mai Omni in their official webpage.
