Customer Ratings & Reviews

I have had the dashcam for a few months and have had issues with it powering up when starting the vehicle. Now the power button doesn't seem to work at all.

I purchased this camera for $400. It did not work from the start. After a recent firmware update the touch screen quit. It is junk now. Hard to imagine why Cobra is in business. Do yourself a favor and buy any other companies product. This one is awful. I would not recommend it to my worst enemy.

Item appears to be solid and meets my requirements.

This would be better if the rear camera was WiFi instead of wired But all n all it works great and when my horn my Elantra failed I could not warn this lady in a while Toyota who blew threw a light and almost T Boned me I was able to use my I phone and look and save this and show it to Hyundai as proof

I like it I have not used it yet but I already installed in my truck

This is advertised as a radar detector/dashcam, but it’s only is useful as a dashcam.

The main reason I am giving this a 4 star. I don’t like the mounting option myself. I feel it makes it more of a permanent solution. I have a couple other cameras that I have used and one goes over your rear-view mirror. While the other one has a section type mount. I like those because I can take them easily to another car and back as needed. This set comes with a double back tape and once mounted its mounted. My other gripe is the app is not the best. I feel like as I do things within the app, it disconnects and then has to reconnect. This, I am sure can get fixed thru updates. So not a deal breaker, but just annoying. Lastly, I wished the rear camera was universal with the option to have it be able to mount next to the camera to capture inside vehicle with a short 6 inch or so cable, or provided a third camera for that. I also wished it had a screw mount so that I could just use it as a webcam lol. But that, I don’t count towards giving it a 4 star, just an idea. Overall, though, with the 4k this looks amazing. Video quality if great. It also comes with a 64gig SD card. Other brands I have tried out don’t come with a SD card at all. I love how it looks. Its small and looks like a camera and not all huge and bulky. If you are looking for a high end quality camera, I do suggest this if you don’t mind it installing on a more permanent level.

The SC400D will be my second dashcam, my first being a unit from Escort that shares power with my Escort radar detector. The SC400D’s front-facing camera is quite an improvement over my older one, what with Ultra HD 4k pixel resolution and more options. This system also comes with a rear-facing camera, and it can additionally support an additional1080P cabin-view camera. The SC400D has Alexa built-in, and I’m sure many people will be familiar with it. Not me, however, as Google Assistant has been my go-to assistant for years. The SC400D has an accompanying app called Drive Smarter – which provides real-time alerts for Red Light and speed camera locations, as well as police activity, viewing your videos/photos, and more. In my time using the Drive Smarter app, I found the app to be a work-in-progress. The functionality mostly works, while some features are a bit flaky. For example, when I bring up a video for viewing, the Drive Smarter app connects to the dashcam. Once you view the video and return to the list of other videos, the app once again must connect to the dashcam to see the next video. These connection efforts can take 5-15 seconds each time. I’m doubting that that’s what the developers had in mind. I found it quite irritating and plan on connecting the dashcam to my laptop for quicker transfers. The dashcam itself feels solid. And it offers a good number of selectable features. Features can be turned on using the Settings option on the dashcam’s screen (recording has to be turned off), or by using the Settings option in the Driver Smarter app. The front- and rear-facing cameras offer Ultra HD 4K resolution, while the cabin-view camera offers Full HD at 1080 resolution. 4k recordings, by the way, have 4 times the resolution than 1080 has. The cabin-view camera has a swivel-mounted design that gives you 140 degrees field of view of the cabin’s interior and includes Infrared vision for clear inside video. I don’t have the cabin-view camera, but t from what I know about it, it should install in just a matter of seconds. Front-Facing Camera: ----------------------------- The front-facing camera looks and feels like a small point-and-shoot camera, although it feels solidly built, not flimsy like some I’ve looked it. On the top of the camera, there are two ports. One is a Micro USB port for the power. The second is the port where you plug in the cable to the rear-facing camera. The top/front of the dashcam is where the GPS/magnetic connector sits along with the adhesive pad to secure the dashcam to the window. On the right side of the camera is a slot for your Micro SD card slot, as well as a button that functions as a Lock Video/Emergency Recording button. A 32gb Micro SD card is included with the camera. On the bottom of the camera are two buttons. One is the camera’s power button, while the second is the Alexa mute button. On the left side of the dashcam is the mounting port for the interior cabin-view camera. Rear-Facing Camera: ---------------------------- This camera is small, barrel shaped, and very light weight. On its side is a USB port that connects this camera to the Front-facing camera by way of an included cable. After testing the dashcam out for a while, I made only a few changes from the standard settings. One such setting was the G-Sensor. This setting, which defaults to “1”, determines the amount of jarring a vehicle must experience to automatically generate a video. This could be something as simple as going over a speed bump to experiencing an actual vehicle accident. Changing the G-Sensor setting to a “2” makes it less sensitive, while a “3” is the least sensitive. If you find the camera is automatically recording too many unnecessary events, change the G-Sensor from a “1” to “2” or “3”. Mine is set to “3”. I’ve ordered an installation wiring kit so I can permanently wire the dashcam to my car’s power. Once done, I plan to turn on Parking Mode and Motion Detection. Do keep in mind that these functions will only work if you have constant power going to dashcam. If the dashcam is powered down when the vehicle is turned off, then you can ignore this. If you plan on having continuous power going to the dashcam irrespective of the vehicle being turned off, I suggest you use the Auto-Shutoff setting. If not, you could slowly but surely wear down your car’s battery due to the dashcam’s continued power draw. Let’s say that you have Auto-Shutoff set to 4 hrs because the dashcam is always powered. That means that four hours after no more motion is detected by your dashcam, the dashcam will automatically shut itself off. However, when you start your vehicle the next day, the dashcam will not auto-start recording. If you set Auto-Shutoff to 20 hours, then the dashcam will likely still be active the next time you start your vehicle (as long as it is within 20 hours of the last time your vehicle was used). That means you won’t have to manually turn the dashcam back on. If Auto-Shutoff is not used, you could conceivably run down you battery if left running for too long - especially if the battery is old. For local storage, a 32gb SD card is included with the SC400D. Creating 4k recordings with a 32gb card will probably only last 3.5 – 4hrs before the oldest videos are overwritten. Because of this, I replaced the 32gb card with a 128gb card. Please note that videos/photos that are locked will not be overwritten. One last feature is the Cloud storage. This is a planned free service in which any/all locked videos/photos will be auto-copied to the Internet for later retrieval. Per my research, this free service won’t be available until sometime in 2022. From a purely functionality perspective – that is, its ability to record video/photos using the front- and rear-facing cameras - I very much like this solution and believe 5 stars is appropriate. From a whole system perspective, meaning using the Drive Smarter app and Cloud storage ability, I think 4 stars is appropriate.

I have had many dash cameras and the video quality of this one is by far my favorite. 4K video is amazing and allows me to see license plates more clearly than ever before and with a 140 degrees field of view. That being said, the Cobra SC 400D has some flaws currently and I recommend you wait to purchase to see if they can iron out the issues that the Drive Smarter app currently has. If you just want something to record video and don’t care about the “smart” features, then by all means, you can’t go wrong with this unit. It was easy to set up and install using the adhesive stickers that are already attached. They have provided a spare set incase you want to relocate the cameras. The main mount is magnetic, so you can remove the dash camera and hide it away if you want very easily. The screen is easy to see in the right light, but with some sun glare, you won’t be seeing much. It is a bit small for my liking, but it is not too bad. In the box you are given a short USB cable, a long 12V to USB micro cable for the main camera, camera mount with GPS built into it, two sets of adhesive stickers, rear mounted camera, and a long rear mounted camera cable that is a small single post connector to USB micro. It took me a little while to figure out that the rear camera connector is located on the top of the dashcam and the side connector spot is if you wanted to add an additional in cabin camera, which would be great for those who do ride sharing. Also included is a 32GB microSD card, but you really should upgrade this if you want to record more than a few hours of video, especially at 4k resolution. The microSD slot is located on the side of the camera, and it is easy to get to. The camera lens also has a feature to reduce glare on the screen. The camera does not have any type of battery or capacitor built in so if you have a car where the 12v power turns off when you turn the car off, then the dashcam will power off as well and not provide any of the advanced feature such as parking mode using the g-sensor or motion detection. If you want to use those you will have to purchase a hard wiring kit. They are not very expensive; just be sure you find one that is compatible with the micro-USB connector…most of them are Mini USB. It would have been nice for them to have included some sort of internal battery though. My main gripe with this unit is the terrible Drive Smarter app. It is pretty good to make the settings changes to the dash camera and the map feature with reporting police, traffic, or cautions seems to work well, but they are reliant on a network of other users to all do the reporting…think Waze. So, I am not sure how many users there are, but over time it may grow and depending on where you live, this might be a useful feature. For me the main feature of this app is to view the video on the camera. It will use a Wi-Fi connection to the dash camera to view the list of videos. Each time you view a video, you must reconnect back to the Wi-Fi connection, and it is quite annoying. I am not sure if this is an issue with my phone (Galaxy Note10+) or I am doing something wrong here. Each connection takes about 5 to 10 seconds to reconnect and if you don’t know what you are looking for exactly, this could be time consuming. Hopefully this will get resolved on an update, but for now this is the main reason I cannot recommend this dashcam. Pros: Video quality included rear camera ability to add in dash camera bright screen built in GPS micro-USB included 32GB card Cons: Price no internal battery Drive Smarter app

Best Buy Tech (a great guy) tried to install this dash cam twice and the wiring harness failed. I am done with it.

Useless camera ! Only records when the car is on ! My parked car got hit lastnight and didn’t record nothing !

Dead out of the box. Returned for refund after it took a month to arrive.

Over the years there have been many iterations of the dash cam. For the most part they are quite limited in their functional capacities, and typically don't offer much of anything new or useful. However, the Cobra SC 400D is an exception as it strays well off the path of simple duplication. Cobra is well-known for production exceptional quality radar detectors. There is Cobra, and then there are "all the others." So when the opportunity arose for me to get the SC 400D, I knew that I was going to get a high-quality product. In all honesty, I wasn't really prepared for a product that so outweighed my expectations. As I unpacked the camera from the box, the first thing I encountered was a quick-start guide that is built into the box, that is, when you open the box, the quick-start guide pops up. Pretty cool. So I followed the very limited set up, and in a matter of minutes I was ready to install and start using the dash cam. (This included the download and setup of the companion Drive Smarter app.) Basic installation is nothing more than choosing the spot on the interior windshield where you want to mount the camera, and then peeling the sticky tape on the mounting base and attaching it to the window. Then plug in the power cord to a lighter outlet and plugging the other end into the camera. After connecting the power, the unit goes through a startup routine and makes itself ready to use, and begins recording. What I first noticed was how unbelievably clear and detailed the display is. I have mine set to record at 4K. There are also two other settings, which although not 4K, are QHD and full HD...both very high and clear quality. I then left it in the car the rest of the day, and when I got home that evening I checked out the recordings. Before I cover the quality of the recordings, I want to point out that the camera is capable of understanding a basic set of voice commands, such as "Turn Screen Off," "Turn Screen On," and "Take Photo." There are a few more as well. As I was driving, I made it a point to take several photos, including night-time photos, full-direct-sun photos, and various other photos under differing conditions. I disconnected the camera from its mount, took it inside and connected it to my computer via the included USB cable. In all sincerity, I was stunned by the superior quality of both the videos and the photos. My expectations were exponentially surpassed. I have included a few photographs for you to see. Once the camera is connected to your computer, it is just a matter of accessing the photos and videos via your file manager. As far as the very basic operation of the dash cam goes, that just about wraps it up. HOWEVER, there is so much more to know about the Cobra SC 400D! The unit is Alexa capable. After enabling the blue tooth and connecting the camera, the Alexa app pretty much set itself up. The dash cam comes with built-in GPS. The app will display a map that can be used to give an overview of notifications supplied by other users, such as speed traps, traffic patrols, accidents, etc. There are several touch buttons on the screen you can use which change depending on whether the unit is set to record or not. When set to record, these are "Stop Recording," "Take Photo," "Toggle Audio Recording," "Lock Video/Emergency Recording," and "Alexa Wake Button." When recording has been stopped, there is the "Begin Recording," "View Videos," "Toggle Audio Recording," "Enter Settings," and "Alexa Wake Button." In "Settings" there are several items to choose from. That is a basic overview of what the dash cam will do. So let me go into a few other aspects. The voice commands make using the SC 400D fairly simple to use as far as basic functions go. There are seven commands you can use, most of which can also be accessed via the on-screen buttons. The GPS component allows a watermark of your location to be imprinted on the videos and photos. Although these are the numerical coordinates, you can simply plug these in to google maps to find out the exact location. The watermark also includes the date, time, and the speed at that moment. All videos are recorded in one-minute intervals. So, with all this being said, what do I think about the Cobra SC 400D? Overall it is a superior, very-high-quality dash cam. The video resolutions available are all extraordinary. It is easy to use and it is a very user-friendly piece of equipment. The learning curve is very small, and even first-time users of dash cams will find the SC 400D easy to use. The camera has a ton of features and options, including automatic crash detection, and automatic alerts. Seriously, it is an amazing product. With that being said, there are a few downfalls. Let me explain. One of the first things I noticed is that once you mount the base via the sticky tape, it is mounted. There is no changing your mind and moving the base somewhere else without risking damage to the base. To Cobra's credit, they utilize only very-good quality components, including the sticky tape. The base is designed to swivel front to back, but not side-to-side. This is a bit disappointing as I can visualize a multitude of situations where one might want to adjust the field of view right or left. The complete library of recognized voice commands is limited to seven different commands. There is no ability to voice control the unit to stop recording video. There are various other voice commands that would go a very long way in making the SC 400D easier to use. If one doesn't want the power cables visible, it would take a lot of effort for a novice to run the cords along the trim and/or through the headliner, especially the rear view camera. I intend to hide all my cables, and will have to figure out a time when I can set aside a couple of hours to do so. The last thing that is somewhat of an issue for me is that the network depends on drivers providing useful information. There is no ability to do this without serious distractions if you are driving. This surely creates a lack of provided information as most people would probably be unwilling to pull over and upload this information to the network. So the question remains, is the Cobra SC 400D a good investment? Would I recommend it to a friend or family member? The answer to both is a very loud "YES!!" There is no product on the market that doesn't have some issues that some people won't like. Those same issues for one might never cross the mind of another. So all criticisms should be taken with a grain of salt, and these have been provided simply to help you make an informed decision. This is the absolute best dash cam I have ever owned. It's quality is flawless, and I truly expect this to be one product I will consistently encourage others to buy. As I said, I would HIGHLY recommend the Cobra SC 400D to anyone who is thinking about purchasing a dash cam.

Can’t sync to phone. Customer service not knowledgeable for this item.

Very nice unit. What I like about this vs. the Nextbase 622 is that this rearview cameral WILL broadcast a mirrored image to another monitor, i.e., to another smartphone, ipad.

Installed in one week... doesn't work. No rear second camera that came with it. No time to return to Best Buy.

The Cobra SC 400D Dual-View Smart Dash has great image quality, even in low light, and lots of cool features! Installation Installation had me a little concerned. I wasn't sure how I would run the cables but it didn't turn out to be bad. I mounted the camera towards the top of the windshield in the center. I was able to run the cable for the back camera under the edge of the trim at the ceiling the whole way back the passenger side of the car. The included cord is pretty long so I had some coiled up at the end. I didn't use any glue or tape. I ran the power cord under along the top of the windshield on the driver's side and then down the front pillar, under some trim, and then to the floor and under the mat. I brought it back up the center console and did use two small cord holders that stick to the plastic in the car to help hold the cord in place. This works very well keeping the cord in place and out of the way. There are directions that talk about how to adjust the camera to avoid glare. I have not had any problems with glare and actually was impressed at how good the video is even though the window isn't always very clean. Image Quality I was impressed with the image quality! Colors are bright and the image is clear. Low light performance is good too. You can take still pictures besides capturing videos. I let the resolution setting on the default which is 4k for the front facing camera and 1080p for the rear facing camera. You can view the images or video using the app from your phone or you can take out the memory card (it comes with a 64GB MicroSD card gives plenty of space) and plug it in any computer. The videos and images are organised well on the card so you can find them from the front or back camera easily. Having 4k for the front camera does help quite a bit to capture some more detail. The 1080p camera on the back is good too. Drive Smarter App The app has a lot of features. I like to use it to change the camera view on the display. You can change this on the main camera itself but you need to stop recording and go into the settings menu to do it. The app let's you change that and many other things. For instance, you can turn on/off watermarking of time, location, and speed information. While the app is loaded with features it uses Bluetooth and WiFi to connect to the camera depending on what you're doing. There are some connection issues but it's gotten much better as they have updated the camera and the app. I find myself having connectivity problem less often but the app behavior can be odd sometimes where it gets stuck and I need to tap "back" and then try an operation again. You will want to use the app for sure. For one thing this is how you update the camera and for another it lets you enable other advanced features like the lane departure warning and collision warning. Features Of course it's supposed to record while you drive. It does that well. By default it records 1 minute, saves it, records the next minute, saves it, etc. There is no break in-between. It just keeps recording. You can adjust that 1 minute time if you want. It will eventually overwrite these. You can tap a button to take a picture or another button to save a recording so it is not overwritten. There are some crazy features that you can enable if you use the app like lane keeping warnings and emergency calling if you're in an accident. The camera has a built in GPS and motion sensors to enable some of that. It has four different camera views it will display on the screen, front camera, rear camera, and then two picture in pictures one with each camera as the primary and the other camera in a corner. There is a mic too so you can hear what's being said in the car. That works well and some family member were concerned about me hearing of Christmas presents. You can also buy a third camera that snaps onto the front camera for a 1080p cabin view. That could be a lot of fun for a road trip! Did I mention that this dash cam has Alexa?! :) Ease of use The camera is easy to use. The only button on it I press sometimes is to save a recording and it's big and easy to press. The touch screen works well but navigating some of the menus on the camera itself is a bit tedious. I do prefer using the app which you can use for most things. Setting up the app was interesting since it uses Bluetooth and direct WiFi but it works. The best thing is that the default configuration works great and does what I want for the most part. It's easy to turn Alexa off if you want and if you want it you can set it up. But however you configure it, I just start my car and drive and don't think about it. When I turn the car off, it shuts off. It really takes no thought. And sometimes it's really cool to go back through footage and look at something I saw while driving. Overall The Cobra SC 400D works great for me. The only thing that brings it down a little is the odd behavior of the app at times but the cameras to a great job and there are a lot advanced features to use if you want. It's a dash cam that I would recommend.

This dashcam looks very premium and beautiful. It's very packed with features as well such as Alexa, real-time alerts, and GPS tagging for the videos. The 4K quality is really good and the rear camera as well gets the job done. Only issue is the price. Cobra could have done away with some of the extra features and dropped the price down. If price isn't an issue, then this dashcam should suffice for all the dashcam needs since the video quality is really good.

This setup comes with the front dash cam plus a separate rear camera. The front cam has 4K resolution and produces great quality videos. It mounts with a strong adhesive pad that secures the camera to the windshield. The camera itself is high quality and is easy to setup and operate. It's equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Alexa connection, and Motion Sensor. Paired with the app you can get real-time alerts such as caution areas, speed traps, police presence, red light cameras, and speed cameras. The app itself has bugs. Initially it will connect to the camera and display in real time while you're driving the front camera video with the navigation map below showing your vehicle's progress on the map with speed and direction. The trouble comes when you try to replay the video clips. (The camera allows 1, 2, or 3 minute recording clips.) The app is slow connecting with the camera and whenever you change to an app screen that has to access the camera is has to reconnect, again very slowly. When you play a clip, it's slow and there's a lot of buffering, and the map is blank. There's no metrics or location information displayed. The playback is a split screen with the video on top and map below. The map on all my clips was always blank. One time I got an on-screen message saying location information not available, but the rest of the time just the blank map. I tried calling customer support and got this message on two different days: "We are experiencing high call volume, the waiting queue is full, try again later:" Then the phone disconnects. Actually I'm not sure if the fault is with the app or the camera. Since I can't get support on the phone it's impossible to know but I've gone through all the settings on the camera and app more than once and can't find anything that would prevent location recording.(I've read the manual front to back several times.) I'm using an Android 12 phone with plenty of storage space and I've given the Drive Smarter app ALL permissions. I downloaded the videos from the camera to my laptop and they show that the map info is not being captured. The files labeled Mapsforge Offline Vector Map are all basically empty. No location information or other metrics have been recorded. I guess if you just want videos without map info or metrics, plus alerts and the parking monitoring feature, it's a nice camera. But you can get alerts, metrics, and voice assistants on apps that are probably already on your phone.

Cobra is ambitious in its attempt to integrate technology with their SC 400 dash cam. Unfortunately the implementation falls a bit short. To be fair, not everything is bad. Beginning with the unboxing which includes a 64GB SD card. The dash cam is slightly on the beefy side, boasting a large beautiful 3” 1600x1200 touch screen. There is a solid feel and weight, no loose or flimsy parts, and overall has a premium aesthetic. Like most dash cams, setup times and experiences will vary depending upon your familiarity with dash cam installations. I have a mid-size SUV, prior installation experience, and chose to run and hide the cords. Total install time was approximately 30 minutes. The dash cam is powered by a cigarette adapter, which does have an extra USB port built in. I understand cigarette adapters are common in many cars, but it would be nice to have the option of powering via USB. The dash cam is held securely into the mount, which is attached by very strong adhesive to the windscreen. The 140 degree field of view does allow for several placement options, however the mount itself does not provide for many adjustments to be made. Essentially you have excellent vertical adjustment, but poor horizontal. Video and audio quality is excellent. This is really where the Cobra SC400 shines. Recording in 4K yields incredibly beautiful, clear video in both day and night settings. Of note - you do have the option of recording in less than 4K which will obviously produce lower quality images, however the SC400 still does a great job with the lower image resolutions. The SC400 audio quality is above par as well. Voices and internal noises are captured clearly, while distant sounds such as road noise (unless excessive) is seemingly diminished. This dash cam has the rare capability of actually incorporating three cameras, all viewable from the main screen. There is the included rear camera, and an optional cabin camera, which I do not have and cannot speak to. The rear camera also produces great images in both day and night settings. This camera secures to the rear window much the same as the main camera. It does have vertical tilt adjustment, but no horizontal. The main front dash cam is a beautiful touchscreen, with large responsive buttons. Cobra touts their Drive Smarter app, along with Alexa integration. This is where the SC400 experience falls apart. The Alexa setup was frustrating. Alexa found the dash cam after multiple attempts, however it has continually lost connection and integration. Reconnecting with Alexa yielded the same original frustration and the vicious cycle starts all over. Now the Drive Smarter app. Excellent idea, but very poor execution. Again, connection issues galore. It takes forever for the dash cam to connect to the app (my device is an iPhone 12 Pro Max). The app randomly disconnects during use. The app itself is incredibly slow overall. Pulling up videos takes forever, AND you have to be connected to the dash cam. While the app is not required, if you’re going to have an app and attempt to integrate some great tech features - make sure it works! So at the end of the day here is my final verdict. If you want a dash cam with a large touchscreen that produces brilliant 4K video and clean audio - this is a contender. If you are looking at this SC400 for the Alexa integration or for the app features - you may be disappointed. Would I recommend - yes and no. I would recommend the SC400 for the actual core feature which is recording footage. I would not recommend the SC400 for the integrations, which are frustrating, inconsistent, and seem like a gimmick at this point.