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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Great Features and Parking Mode, meh Video

  • Verified Purchaser
  • Best Buy Employee
  • Incentivized
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 1 week

  Overall, the U3000 is a pretty solid camera. Starting with features, it is packed with almost everything you can think of. It has a GPS, includes a rear camera and a really good parking mode, which I will talk about in a moment. It includes an OBD 2 cable to power the camera, which makes it really easy to get parking mode working without having to hardwire the camera. The camera can stamp your current speed in the video and it also records some extra data which can be viewed through a program in a computer. You also get an app for your phone through which you can connect to the camera, change all the settings, get a live view which can also help you mount the cameras properly and see all of your videos. Cable lengths are pretty good and you should be able to reach the back of your car even if you have a large SUV. The camera also includes A polarizing filter, which you can stick on to reduce reflections from your windshield. The pictures I posted are with a polarizer installed. At first I was concerned with the lack of a screen, but it turned out to be a non issue. If there is an error with an SD card, the camera will speak it out loud. And you can use an app on your phone or a program on your computer to change any of the camera settings relatively easily. The LED indicators are easily viewable from the driver seat, even in direct sunlight, and do a good job of providing some information as to what the camera is doing. There are also some more gimmicky features like the lane departure or the go notifier. The go notifier alerts you if the vehicle in front of you is moving, and the lane departure lets you know if you're drifting out of your lane. They don't work super well, but they're also not annoying, so they don't bother me at all. The go notifier is super sensitive and will trigger constantly, if you creep forward, if a pedestrian walks in front of you, if the car in front of you creeps a bit, etc. It definitely needs a bit of work, but as I said it is not annoying. I also wish that the buttons were backlit, they’re impossible to read at night. Parking mode is excellent. Easily the best I've ever tried. The camera includes an OBD 2 cable which can be easily plugged in and ran to get the same effect as a hardwired connection. The camera will remain powered even with the car off, and you can set a battery cutoff voltage. When the car is off, the camera switches to a motion recording mode. When it detects motion, it records a 20 second clip. If it detects an impact, it also stores the clip into a separate folder and it will notify you when you get into your car. The camera also has a radar, but it isn't very clear to me what it does. Supposedly the camera is supposed to record only if it detects something getting close via the radar, but mine just records whenever it detects motion. It's not the end of the world, but it also means I get a bunch of clips of people just walking by. I had really high expectations from the radar, but it doesn't seem to be super useful, although it doesn't hurt the cameras performance or functionality in any way. One complaint I do have about parking mode is that it's not very clear what each video is supposed to be. Some of the videos are stored in the same folder as your regular driving videos, and some of them seem to be stored in a separate folder called Motion Timelapse. It isn't very clear what the difference is between these and it can make the videos hard to find if you’re looking for a particular moment. However, if you have impact detection on and the camera detects an impact, it will store the video in a separate folder called parking event. Personally, I care about looks and this camera is OK. Definitely not the best looking camera out there, but it is not ugly or anything. I do wish that all the cables came straight out of the back of the camera, but the power cable comes out at an angle which makes running the cable a little bit awkward. I also wish that everything connected through USB type C instead of proprietary connectors. Just like the front camera, the rear camera has the cable coming out on an angle, which makes it a little bit awkward to run. The rear camera isn't super small, but it isn't huge, especially considering that it also has radar. Both cameras have a small blue light which illuminates when the cameras are recording. It looks very cool and is a neat gimmick, but I don't think it's super useful. I still like it though. Video quality is a big disappointment for me. Compared to other dash cams, the U3000 is excellent, but considering the price and comparing it to other cameras in general, it is still very underwhelming. It costs nearly five times as much as my $120 Xiaomi camera, but it does not record five times better. A $500 phone’s camera will absolutely mop the floor with any dash camera, and a phone has to do way more than just record video, so I can’t grasp why in 2025 a camera of this price still has such potato quality video. At its default settings, the camera seems a little bit prone to overexposed video, especially at night. License plates can often be washed out and unreadable. The video is also a relatively low bit rate, which leads to a lot of compression artifacts. Even in good daylight, with ideal conditions for the camera, any license plates that are more than about 100 feet away are basically unreadable. The front polarizer filter definitely helps the front camera because it reduces a lot of glare. But there is no polarizer for the rear camera and it could really use one too, as you can see in one of the photos. While the camera will do a great job of documenting an accident, it won't do a great job at documenting a face or a license plate.

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  Posted 2 years ago by MrFastFox666

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Great Dash Cam

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 1 month

  Overall I'm very pleased with the Thinkware U3000. Here are my thoughts. Pros: Sleek and quality build. Installation was easy with the OBD cable. Connecting to the dash cam to review footage and download is fairly easy. Footage is clear and crisp (when you download and view from your phone). Includes safety/warning features which you can enable/disable. Various Parking Mode options including Radar mode which allow it to last far longer than other dash cams without draining your battery. Thinkware customer service is easy to contact and very prompt in assisting you to help dial in your settings. Cons: Super Night vision 4.0 is nothing like having HDR. Street, head, and taillights are intensified and make it hard to read plates (disabled in Continuous and left on in Parking mode). In order to review footage through the app you need to have your vehicle running (or else it goes into parking mode). You also need to disable Carplay on your phone when reviewing footage (then remember to enable it again when you're finished). Impact notifications through Thinkware cloud connection doesn't work with Radar mode. For the money it's still a solid dash cam. Plus it comes with the OBD cable, 64 gb memory card, and CPL filter which are add-ons when purchasing other dash cams. Just wish it had HDR.

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  Posted 10 months ago by RM456

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Love this dash camera

  • Verified Purchaser
  • Best Buy Employee
  • Incentivized
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 3 months

  This camera is even clearer than my older u1000. Love the features. Connecting to the camera is easier than with the thinkware cloud app. All of the features have been working great for me. As a 12 volt technician, Thinkware is the brand I recommend most.

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  Posted 1 year ago by GSRR