Products: Nextbase In-Car Cam Duo dashcam review

• Rating: ★★★★☆
• Price: £199.99
• Buy one at: Halfords.com

DRIVING has tested a lot of dashcams over the past year  or so (see our comprehensive reviews page, with info on how a dashcam works, here) but the new Nextbase Duo is only the second we’ve been sent that includes a rear-facing camera.

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The concept seems to be gathering pace as we’re aware of a third, rival model in the works (stay tuned for the review). It’s easy to see the appeal of dual-camera dashcams: a lot of “crash for cash” incidents involve fraudsters driving into the back of your car, so having a second camera pointing towards the rear is especially useful.

There’s a major difference between the Nextbase Duo and the Crash Catcher CC3, though: the latter model uses two identical wide-angle lenses and so captures events inside the car more than what’s going on through the rear window, which makes it popular with taxi drivers, for obvious reasons. The Nextbase, however, combines a 140-degree wide angle forward-facing camera with a rear-facing camera that employs a telephoto lens with a 50m zoom, so its gaze is focused almost entirely on what’s going on through the rear window — very little of what’s happening inside the car is shown.

Does it work? In fact, yes, the rear-view camera is very effective, clearly showing the cars following your own and the drivers/number plates were clear to see with sharp, high contrast picture quality.

The forward-facing camera we tested effectively captured the view in front of the car but there is a compromise here in terms of picture quality when compared to other top-spec dashcams with a single lens; the image is not especially bright and the 720p image ratio can’t match the clarity of 1080p full HD footage. The frames are also cropped at the edges so it’s a compromise over the full-width single camera footage. Still, it’s more than adequate for insurance/peace-of-mind purposes.

The Duo is also exceptionally easy to install and remove from the car, with a twist-grip suction mount, and it includes a two inch screen to help set up the shots/navigate the menus. It also comes with GPS tracking (for speed/position) and a G-sensor (to recognise accidents and automatically protect the related footage), so all-in-all the Duo is a very nifty bit of kit. You will need to buy a Micro SD memory card (up to 32GB) separately, however.