Noyato Sphere Series NX-500 Dash Camera Review

A Closer Look

The Noyato Sphere Series NX-500 has a nice sleek black presentation. The camera itself is around 5″ in length and about an inch tall and wide. The short height but long width is a nice feature as many dash cameras can be rather fat and blocky creatures. Despite it’s small size though, it does have a nice ‘weighty’ feel about it.

With a 190 degree camera to the front and rear, the concept of the design is to provide ‘total coverage’ when recording. The camera itself has Sony IMX 323 motion imagery technology and combined with the 2 190 degree cameras, this is the first time that this has been used together. At least specifically for a dash cam.

Ports And Input Control

In terms of the functions, everything is located on the ‘internal’ side of the camera. This includes the 1.5″ LED display, a 5 button control circle (not dissimilar to those seen on a digital camera), an on/off button, a ‘hard save’ feature (more on that later) with the inputs for the charging, memory and GPS camera on the end.

I always think it’s a little unfair judging a screen quality by taking a picture of it. What I can, however, say is that the screen for the Noyato Sphere Series NX-500 is surprisingly clear and vivid. It provides a nice image of what the cameras can see and can be adjusted to display each camera separately and both together. When both are displayed together, it does get a little cramped and in terms of finding the optimal positioning in your car, this can get a little tricky. It is, however, not impossible nor overly tricky.

The main controls for the dash cam are via push buttons. These have a nice resistant feel about them which makes the modes and menus easy to traverse. We should note that the controls are not entirely intuiative, so while you can fumble your way though, a quick read of the manual would certainly be to your advantage.

With the main power button to the top right, you’ll note a red button with a triangle. This is your ‘safe save’ feature. Pushing this will ensure that the 15 seconds prior and 15 seconds following are secured on the SD card. This will be saved to a very specific folder which will ensure that you can’t accidentally delete vital footage.

In terms of the inputs, these are rather straightforward. You have a USB port (to charge), a micro-SD card input (supporting up to 64GB of capacity) and a GPS input. In regards to the GPS input, this is included should you wish for the camera to also record speed, location and other things a GPD can do, but a dash camera can’t.

Camera

The Noyato NX-500 has 2 190 degree cameras (both at 1080p quality) to record both externally and internally. As you will see in the video demonstrations later, this provides excellent coverage of the car from practically all conceivable angles. The wide scope surprised me particularly by fully recording from the driver to the passenger window. An excellent factor in case of side-swipes or accidentally pulling out on someone. These cameras, in conjunction with the Sony IMX 323 image sensors provide the worlds first integration of this technology in a dash camera.

The above is an image of the external camera while the below is the interior. You will note that the interior can be adjusted to suit the internal angle based on your preferred fixed external angle.