Foretravel Owners' Forum For owners and Fans of Foretravel Motorcoaches September 15, 2025 ...

There have been some Forum discussions about Dash Cams, but not recently.  I just purchased one and thought a "User Review" could benefit others who might be "shopping".  This is my first dash cam, so I have no objective basis for judging quality or value.  However, the one I chose seems, to me, to deliver excellent performance for not much cash.  Since this was my first foray into this market, I sought a simple inexpensive device, without all the extra-cost features or capabilities.  The camera I purchased seems to meet this objective.

You have to be careful when buying this type camera.  The available quality ranges from worthless junk to professional grade.  It is best to select a product (and seller) with predominantly high ratings by a large number of recent customers.  After some due diligence research, I settled on a camera called the Black Box G1W-CB, most commonly sold on Amazon:

Amazon.com : Black Box G1W-CB "Black Bezel" Capacitor Model Dashboard Dash...

This is a basic no-frills dash cam - 1080P HD, 2.7" screen, capacitor (instead of battery), and supports up to 32Gb Micro SD card.  It is dead simple to operate - take it out of the box, insert the memory card, connect the power supply, and it starts recording!  File output format is .MOV which works great with my Mac computers.  The TFT screen is sharp and clear, and the simple menus are easy to navigate.  The supplied mount is very sturdy, and sticks well to the windshield glass.  For my initial test, I mounted the camera in our car, and left the settings in "default" mode.  After we drove around town and returned home, I popped the Micro Sd card out of the camera and inserted into my computer.  The files can be viewed without requiring any extra software - just click and play.  A 5-minute clip is 481.5 MB (at highest quality setting) so I figure the 32Gb card should hold about 66 (5-minute) clips or roughly 5.5 hours of video before it starts automatically "overwriting" the oldest clip.  Good enough for my purposes.  I was quite impressed by the high quality of the video!  I will include a link to a 5-minute sample below so you can judge for yourself.  I plan to install the camera permanently in our coach, and will post another sample clip after our next test drive.

About the sample clip:  It is LARGE, so if you are on a "tight" data plan, you might want to skip it.  It is a 5 minute clip - the first 50 seconds we're just sitting still while I monkey with the camera settings (Sorry, I should have edited it. ).  Once moving, watch for me nearly rear-ending a Prius (because I was watching the camera).  Also, at the highway on-ramp, notice the cop car parked in the grass on the left side.  The cop was helping a guy put out a FIRE in the bed of his pickup truck.  Never a dull moment in Midland, TX.

Black Box G1W-CB DVR (Dash Cam test clips) - cja

A year ago I posted a review on a budget dash cam, the Black Box G1W-CB.  I thought it might be nice to update my old review with a current report.  The news is all good!  My inexpensive little camera is still working perfectly, and I have had zero problems.  I can still recommend this camera without reservation.  The price has even come down $10 since I bought mine, and the 32GB memory card is also cheaper.  If you want a dash cam, and don't want to spend a lot of money, I would say give this one a try.

I do have a couple pieces of advice to anyone contemplating the purchase of this particular camera.  First, make sure you only get it from the "Authorized" distributer of Black Box products.  There are cheap rip-off copies of this camera out there, and they are not all the same quality.  If you buy from Amazon Prime, you are most likely getting the "good one", and if you DID happen to get a lemon you are safe knowing Amazon will always cheerfully refund your money.

Second, there are two different models - one has a rechargeable battery, and the other has a capacitor.  I bought the capacitor model a year ago, because it was supposed to stand up to high heat conditions better.  It works fine, but has one drawback: if you don't exercise your coach fairly regularly, the camera "forgets" it's programing items, including the date and time.  So then you have to reset those items when you go to drive the coach.  I finally got around that problem by wiring my camera direct to a "battery" power source.  The constant power supply keeps the memory intact, and when the camera is turned off the power drain is negligible.  I just manually turn the camera on and off when I want to use it.  If I had it to do over again, I would have purchased the model with the battery, and taken my chances with heat killing the battery.

In fact, that is what I just did!  I liked the first camera so much that I just bought another one to use in our car.  This is the battery model, so I just plugged it into a "Ignition" power source.  So far it is also working perfectly.  The quality of video is really quite amazing considering the low price.

I will post two links below - one is for the capacitor model I purchased originally, and the other is for the battery model I just bought.  Be sure you also get a 32GB memory card - that is the largest card supported by the camera.

Amazon.com: Black Box G1W-CB "Black Bezel" Capacitor Model Dashboard Dash...

Amazon.com: Black Box G1W-B "Black Bezel" Dashboard Dash Cam - Full HD 1080P...

Edit:  It appears the test film clip I linked in my original post (a year ago) is now dead.  To see some current film clips, go to my SmugMug photo hosting page (cja.smugmug.com).  Click on the appropriate folder.