Noyato Sphere Series NX-500 Dash Camera Review

Performance

As this is a dash cam, the proof of its usefulness is entirely in its functionality and practicality. If, for example, the video quality is poor or it’s too complicated to use, then it’s not going to encourage you to make the regular effort to fit it to your screen. So, with this in mind, we did decide to put this through some practical testing.

Firstly, however, we will display the video Noyato created for the NX-500. On the whole, despite this being the manufacturers own video, we would say that this is a fair reflection both of the recording and audio quality.

Real World Testing

Despite Noyato providing their own video, we wanted to put this through a more practical application. As such, we have undertaken three separate video tests. Specifically, daytime with good light, daylight in poor weather and night time. We feel that this should provide you with a good idea of how this dash cam operates in real-world conditions.

For the purpose of a fair test, we should note that the footage has been recorded in 1080p with 30fps. As such, we have rendered it to show it in exactly this quality setting as well.

Daylight – Good Weather

In good weather conditions, the Noyato Sphere Series NX-500 does really well. The quality of the images is exceptionally good. In addition, you will note at the very beginning of the video how the internal camera successfully captures the cyclist approaching from the vehicles right (that eventually passes on the external camera).

Admittedly, it does suffer a bit in direct sunlight. Then again, point me out a camera that doesn’t!

Daylight Poor Weather

During poor weather, a camera is clearly limited both by rain, the screen, and the amount of light available. The lack of bright (good quality) light does affect the external camera in terms of image sharpness. This, of course, isn’t helped by the rain on the windscreen. As you can see though, the internal quality barely changes and, on the whole, despite the poor weather, the dash cam did remarkably well.

Night – Fair Weather

As you can see, at nighttime, the dash cam does struggle a little more in terms of the definitive quality. You can see other vehicles and in fairness, under the headlights, the detail is surprisingly good. Beyond what the headlights illuminate, however, very little else is visible. For the majority of the video I deliberately did not use my main beam, because frankly if you’re driving around (with other cars that could hit you), you likely wouldn’t have it on. On lit-streets, the camera did pretty well. On darker (unlit) roads though, it did struggle.

You will also note that with no lighting, the ‘cab’ camera is almost entirely black.

Evaluation

Despite having a little bit of weakness at night, the Noyato Sphere Series NX-500 performs remarkably well at capturing images both internally and externally. As you can see in the videos it does exceptionally well in good conditions, better than expected in poor conditions and also manages to record decent footage at nighttime (albeit, doing better when street-lit).

As a camera to use all day and night and in all conditions, it ticks all the right boxes as far as we are concerned.