Mio MiVue 658 WiFi Dashcam Review

Performance

The car mount fits flush, with just a small opening for the USB cable to pass through it. I like this system as the camera slides forwards onto the car mount, meaning you can easily pull it off and put it in your pocket while leaving the suction cup and the cable in place. This is great for those who don’t want to leave their shiny new camera in their car overnight.

It’s been a busy week here at eTeknix HQ, so I didn’t get a chance to do many runs with the car. I did manage a few runs to the local school to pick up my daughter, and it’s a nice and snappy route to give us a few run in various weather conditions. As you can see from the videos below, we’ve got a nice mixture of sunny, intermittent cloud and overcast weather.

With the camera mounted to the windscreen on the left-side of my rear view mirror, we can see that it gives a very nice and wide field of view. You can adjust the angle, and admittedly, I should have it tipped a little more to the right here. At 1:20 you’ll here a few bongs from the speaker on the camera. I told it there was a speed camera on my street (there isn’t) by setting a custom warning just to see if they worked, and it seems they do. The km/h readout on the camera is a little sluggish with the rate it updates and doesn’t seem particularly accurate to me either, but for a rough guide on videos, it’s not so bad. One thing is for certain, the video quality is bright and clear.

Another little run out, and much to my own amusement I inadvertently tested the microphone on the MiVue, which records way better than I ever would have expected, so be careful what you say when you’ve got it set to record. For now though, you’ll just have to enjoy the musical talents of Devin Townsend. What I do like about this run is that at around 2:00 you can see that the sun looks really blown out in the sky, which can wash out some cameras, but it kept the ISO high enough to keep the road and surroundings in focus, which was nice.

And now for another run, this time in darker and much less desirable weather. Some darker areas are basically just black here, but everything on the road seems to be clear enough and you can see the ISO adjusting to deal with some of the glare on the clouds, but otherwise, I’m still very happy with these results.

Powered on, the unit is nice and bright with a nice resolution and good backlight to help make it easy to see, even when the sun is shining. It powers on when you start the car, and auto records constantly, although you can quickly save off a set time (such as a five-minute block) by hitting the orange button on the side.

The touch screen isn’t anything amazing, and does lag a little, but this isn’t a high-end tablet, it doesn’t really need to be touched much at all once it is configured. The settings tab offers all the obvious stuff, and I doubt you’ll find yourself reaching for the instruction manual anytime soon.

You can play back files directly on the device, or if you pair your mobile to the MiVue’s WiFi mode, you can transfer files to your mobile, although admittedly this does so quite slowly, but it’s still very handy if you need to email off some photos or video to your insurance company, or just post some cool stuff on social media.

Interestingly, you can take the camera out the dock, use it as a handheld video/picture camera too. It doesn’t have a huge battery life, but it’ll get the job done when needed.

SafetyCam is a nice addition too, allowing you to be notified (at your chosen range) of upcoming speed cameras, as well as setting your own custom warning zones should you need them. It’ll also warn you if you go over the speed limit (set at +5mph at default) if you so desire.

The video settings are easily tweaked too, although we found the default 1080p @ 30fps video to be the best balance of video quality and file size, but you can increase/decrease them to suit your needs.

Everything else is pretty straight forward to work out, and we didn’t really need to toy around with any of these settings.

The read out while recording is nice and clear, with a red record symbol letting you know your live, WiFi, GPS status, and signal at the top, as well as a battery indicator, which I must stress isn’t a huge battery, but if you lose power in a crash or need to use the parking motion detector mode, it’ll work a few hours just fine.

Overall, the Mio left us impressed, plenty of features, great performance and very easy to use.