Cobra - SC 250R 4K Dual-View Front & Rear Dash Cam, works with Apple CarPlay/Android Auto - Black

The Cobra SC 250R is an excellent high quality 4K front cam and HD rear cam. Pictures and videos are clear as day but I wish there were more recording options. This is my 2nd dash cam for my vehicles so I am a little savvy with them. Cobra includes in the box the 2 camera, SD card preinstalled, very and I mean very long power cables to plug into the front cam and another cord to connect front cam with rear. Additionally there are extra mounting pads incase you want to relocate the cams at a later date and not near enough cable holders. The instruction booklet leaves a lot to be desired but you can make out the jist of how to mount and use the cams. There is also a QR code to download the app to pair it with the cams once you are done installing. Installation -------------------- Long story short, I am going to get the adapter to hardwire the cams to my Jeep as cable management is a nightmare for a SUV imho. A little tip, don't be like me and install both cams only to forget peeling off the protective covers on the lens. Once I found and cleaned the perfect spot for the cam, I laid out the entire line for the power delivery. If not using adapter kits to install it directly to a cars power source, the included power cord plugs directly into the cars 12V outlet and has a massive length. I used the included spudger tool to tuck the cord all along my roof, to the door, along down the trim and finally hidden under the glove compartment area and plugged it in. The excess cable I bundled up and zip tied it out of place. The rear camera was the hardest. Even though I plugged it directly into the front cam, the wiring path from the ceiling, around the pano sunroof, down side the trim, and finally to the rear cam mounted dead center near the top. It sounds easy, but man, removing panels to hide cables is time consuming. Performance -------------------- Once all that was out of the way, it was time to see what the Cobra can do. Once powered on, you get your initial set up screen. One thing I was losing my mind was I thought it was touch screen. It totally isn't. There are 4 small buttons at the bottom that you use to navigate around the menus. For a 4K camera, I really wished it did more than 2 different options for video recording. It's supposed to be top of the line, cream of the crop, but instead you are stuck with 4K @ 25fps or 1600P @ 30fps. I mean this should be able to easily handle 1440p @ 60 or 1080P @ 60. The rear cam is ONLY 1080P but @ 25 or 30fps. Sorry I am just spoiled by 60-360fps displays and wished Cobra followed suit. Another thing is the 1 minute recording clips. I guess it's too limit the file size when xfering vids/pics to the app, but I would really like an update in the future where you can control the length especially if you have larger size SD cards. Nonetheless the quality of the videos are still great. I can pause and clearly read street signs and license plates. You can change the view to see only front, back or PIP it as I prefer. App feature are pretty rich. It's called Drive Smarter and pairs with the cam to access videos or change settings on your phone instead of manually doing it on the camera itself. Playback is smooth. The only thing I don't like about the app is the navigation. It just doesn't work for me. The car icon never moves, even while driving. All in all, this Cobra SC 250R is a great all-in-one system for any vehicle. Comes with everything you need to get started and features and quality are close to top tier.

Cobra - SC 250R 4K Dual-View Front & Rear Dash Cam - The Cobra car Dash Cam has a full set of the features, although I would have loved a more user-friendly guide to using them and for the installation. It delivers a high quality image no matter what. The box provides all you need to get this front and rear dash cam working and you can buy more accessories for expanded usefulness. For this type of set-it and forget-it technology — these cameras are often forgotten as they work in the background for months without incident — it is crucial that the system is very intuitive. I’m not sure this is true. Let me explain. SETUP: Cobra includes everything you need for a standard setup, the necessary lengthy wires to connect your camera to a (likely) center console power outlet and also to a rear window camera. They’ve added into the box some temporary mounting film because your first mount location may not be well thought out. There are some cable mounts and a tools for lifting the rubber seals to conceal your cables. That camera mounted pair of inputs (power and rear camera) are snug together and require sufficient space to clear all of our vehicles top-of-windshield technology in our autos in 2024. This is a permanent mount with some strong adhesive, so a temp location is a nice touch. Not necessarily permanent. The camera slides off the amount with a firm push off to one side. You need some space to accomplish this, hence the “temporary” mounting tape, because you may judge the space needed incorrectly. The camera, once located where you want it, can be powered up. An image appears and the recording light is on. Actually you have some other activities that need to be completed. In my case, I managed to eject the thoughtfully included 32GB memory card across the room as I was checking it out. And lost it, as it appeared to attain escape velocity. Fortunately I have a few 128 GB memory cards so it was not a problem as these are readily accepted. Powerful ejection spring there, Cobra! I was prompted to format the disk. After that I was prompted to download the DRIVE SMARTER App to add and/or control features on the camera. PERFORMANCE: The LIVE VIEW on the camera can be either the front or rear view and there is an option to do Picture-in Picture. Even on this somewhat larger screen, it is too small for me. The controls on the lower part of the screen are merely place markers for the 4 sensitive touch buttons that manage selections, scrolling and settings management. You get used to it, but this type of offset control throws me off a bit. It’s here that I hoped the App might be an alternate way to choose settings, but, alas, that is not the case. The App does offer added features.It will, for example, allow you to find a route which is sent to the Dash Cam, but this will be redundant for many people with they phones directly offering this route guidance. It facilitates a live view of your parked car, but added hardware is needed along with creating a Wi-Fi HotSpot. The camera uses its Motion and G-sensors to accomplish this. It’s also on the camera that you can call up the accumulating video clips for review and management. I found it cumbersome to do in the car. But, remember that sliding camera mount? I slid the camera off, came in out of the current 103 degree heat and connected the camera to a USB-C cable and a power brick in my comfortable recliner, inside. Now I could manage the video clips. Or, as I discovered within the phone App, you can also view those same clips and download them. Those clips, using either method are richly colored and have sufficient detail to see license plates. Cobra uses Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) for imaging which contributes to the ability to deliver details no matter how contrasty the scene is. It was some effort to download to my computer. t figured it would be even easier for me to use Quicktime or the photo App on my Mac. But getting the videos off the memory card was a chore. My Mac couldn’t do it (“Can’t read this file type, Format media?” ___ yikes, no!) without first dragging it into a PC. This could be a problem only with my setup, but it was frustrating. My major Issues: I need a computer based App, or at least a tablet App, that gives more intuitive control (and help screens) so those infrequent searches for video clips isn’t a re-learning exercise. A better guide is needed to understand the very few actions, and probably far more settings, than we need to manage our cameras. I can see buyers being intimidated by a screen of uninformative icons and no simple guide to help. I’ve never had a memory card not readable by my Mac. While I understand the card uses FAT formatting, I can’t understand why my Mac couldn’t pull in its files, as it has before. With a couple of new cards, what starts out as a readable FAT is changed into an unreadable (on my MAC) FAT card. Odd. Add a USB power connection along with the cigarette light plug. I could shorten my cable run by two feet with USB. Speaking of cables, wow, that’s a nest of cables to slip under trim, or window and door trim. Cobra offers no guidance here and end users do not know what they do not know concerning air bags or other installation concerns. CONCLUSION: The included suite of services, recordings, front and back cameras, saved downloadable clips, sensitivity settings, local storage, basic cabling needs, a phone App for apple and Android, Wi-Fi connectivity to the camera from your phone are all well implemented. They justify the price of this compact dash cam. You can add some accessories to broaden the features (parking security watch), a 3rd camera, and even a subscription to participate in a shared community of users who can give you info about speed traps from Cobra radar detectors and other travel info. The camera can control Google Maps as part of its mapping feature. Those are extra and not necessary to get full functionality from the Cobra SC220R. I like everything about the Cobra SC250R but Cobra can make it more user friendly.

I currently have a 4K dash cam that I have been pretty happy with, but I have always wanted one with a dual camera setup so I could also record what was going on behind my car as well as in front. I have one long highway on my commute that is notorious for aggressive tailgaters! I decided to give this Cobra camera a try because it checked all the boxes for me. Out of the box it comes with pretty much everything you need for installation. The camera itself with the double stick tape to mount. I found the adhesive sticks very well. I even had to reposition mine and even after re-sticking it, it still is staying strong on my windshield. I found the power cable that goes to your cigarette lighter port was long enough to route it where I need to in order to conceal it. I did find that the cable for the rear camera was barely long enough to reach the back of my mid-sized SUV. If you just wanted to run it straight back it would easily make it, but if you have to route it through trim around doors and things, you might find the cable is a little too short for you. I’m sure you could probably get some kind of USB extension cable to solve that though. Once I got it wired up, I fired up my car to see what this thing could do. I did notice that the screen is angled down pretty far (see pictures) which made it a little hard to easily see. I guess that would vary depending on the slope of your windshield. Would be nice to have some kind of adjustment to tilt the screen up a little bit for easier viewing especially if you are using its navigation features (more on that later). I don’t really use the navigation, so the angle was OK for me. I basically just wanted a camera that would record video while I was driving that I could access later in the event of anything happening, and the Cobra did that very, very well! I was able to easily see license plate numbers of vehicles in front of me and even passing me at high rates of speed. The rear camera is only 1080p, so its not as good. But I feel it has enough detail for me to call out those pesky tailgaters! Next, I got it hooked up to the companion app called Drive Smarter. Here is where things took a little bit of a turn. I had no problem installing the app and getting it hooked up to my camera. The app did want a lot of permissions, such as access to my location at all times instead of just when I was in my car using the app. That right there will make me never use the app and I will be deleting it after my review. It does offer a map service with turn-by turn directions which I found did work fairly well, apart from the problem I mentioned before with the display being tilted down too far to be able to easily read. I didn’t really find that it offered much more than I could get on google maps that is already on my Android Auto display. It does offer things such as radar alerts and things like that. You can also input things you see like accidents or police or roadside hazards and things like that and it will alert other drivers using the same app of those things. While I see that could be beneficial, it can also be a distraction while you are driving trying to notify people of those things. Honestly, if this was just the dash cam without all the extra bells and whistles, I think it would be a great product, and that’s the way I intend to use it. I think the app really clutters things up and makes it a lot more complicated than it needs to be. A couple other small annoyances is that the camera records clips in 1-minute increments, and at the time of this review, there is no way to change that. I can understand that they do that for faster transfers of clips to the app if you are watching or downloading them to your phone. For someone like me though who will just take out the SD card and transfer the videos to my computer if I need them, it makes it hard to find what you are trying to find. It would be nice to have the option of recording at the very least increments of 5 minutes. Hopefully this is something that can be changed with a firmware update. One other thing I noticed is that there isn’t a way to view or download clips from the rear camera in the app. I searched high and low and read every manual I could find, but I don’t see that option anywhere. In order to get to those videos you will have to take the SD card out of the camera and put it in your computer to transfer or view them. Overall, this is a very solid dash cam with very good video quality and I will highly recommend it based on that alone. A few firmware tweaks could make it even better. As far as the app and all the other bells and whistles. I think the majority of people wont use them, and won’t want to give certain permissions required to even use the app. So I have to knock it down one star because of that.