Mio MiVue 658 Touch: Two things you should know…

The Mio MiVue 658 Touch dashboard camera is generally a good piece of hardware.

Unfortunately, among some extra features (like included safety cameras warning feature) and some obvious things, found in most dashboard cameras (like being able to use it for just 10-20 seconds without external power source) it also has two huge fuckups, which may not be so obvious to people willing to purchase it.

First fuckup: Cable

Question: How to force your customers to use only your own power cable and block him from using any 3rd-party alternative, in today world, where hundreds of legal acts, in most countries, fights single company market domination?

Answer: Design camera holder in the way that only your cable will fit there. Everything is OK from legal perspective -- you're still following world standard and your customers are using miniUSB cable. The only tiny thing is that they will not be able to power camera with any other cable.

In other words, if you have your own power source in your car -- forget about it.

Here it is in a big picture:

This is even OK from logical point of view. If you call Mio support, they'll more than happy to gently explain you, that this is for your own good. As they had "a lot of reports with previous dashboard cameras about malfunctions or battery or even device destruction due to the fact, that users were using a 3rd party cables".

Are you buying this shit?

Second fuckup: Backup

Mio MiVue 658 Touch is marketed as the only dashboard camera with two microSD slots and "an autonomous backup functionality".

When I heard about this for the first time, I said to myself: "Wow! Automatic backup. Every video recorded on two separate SD cards. In case one gets damaged, second one can be used to retrieve essential video recordings".

Well... not.

Only marketing idiots at Mio knows, what "an autonomous backup functionality" means, but the fact is, that in reality this is nothing more than a marketing shit. All you can do with this, is to... browse video recordings directly on your dashboard camera and manually copy selected ones from first microSD card to second on.

I've been using my previous dashboard camera for two and a half year and I have never browsed recorded videos directly on it!

For me, a dashboard camera, with its tiny screen, is a recording device. If I want to browse something, I'm putting my microSD card into my computer and doing everything from there.

So, I assume that Mio MiVue 658 Touch's has actually no backup features at all.

Conlusion

As said in the introduction, Mio MiVue 658 Touch is generally a good dashboard camera. Especially for all those idiots and all-the-time overspeeding morons, who just can't live on road without good safety camera's warning features.

However, if you're looking for something that will fit to your own powering solution or some dashboard camera with real backup features, then Mio MiVue 658 Touch is certainly out of options for you.