If you’ve ever spent any time on Youtube you’ll be well aware of the genre that has popped up of “Russian Dashcam” videos. Apparently, the roads are so wild in Mother Russia that many ordinary citizens record their driving for insurance purposes.

The trend has caught on in tamer parts of the world, and dashcams are becoming more common car accessories. After all, if you footage of an incident or accident you’re involved in, it goes a long way towards your insurance company, the police, your boss or maybe even your parents that you were the wronged party.

Memory company Transcend, has their own line of dashcams called “DrivePro”.  We’ll be reviewing the three that are available in the country, starting with the DrivePro 100. Check back to htxt.africa for the reviews of the DrivePro 200 and DrivePro 220 in the coming days.

Seeing as how the 100 has a RRP of R1 799, you’re getting quite the feature list for the price.

Opening the box you’ll find the unit that, while sturdy, is cast in rather cheap-feeling plastic. There’s also a suction cup mount, a mini USB-to-cigarette lighter cable and a Transcend 16GB microSD card.

Setting up the 100 is quick and easy; insert the microSD card, plug it in to charge and set up time, date and recording preferences with the included face buttons.

It’s important to pay attention to is the recording quality, Loop Mode and recording times.

In terms of recording quality you can choose between 1 920 x 1 080 @ 30FPS and 1 280 x 720 @ 30FPS. We suggest you keep the quality at the highest setting and enable Loop Mode, which will delete the oldest recordings when storage becomes full. You have further control over this by setting the recording time to 1, 3 or 5 minutes.

There’s also an emergency option, which activates automatically through a G-sensor (ie when the car experiences a substantial impact. You can also activate it manually by tapping the red button on the cam’s side. These recordings are kept in a separate file in the memory and won’t be deleted in Loop Mode. You can, however, manually delete them easily.

The G-sensor, incidentally, is far too sensitive; even on the lowest setting a mild bump or dip will set it off, and it will drive you insane if you need to travel on anything other than freshly-laid tarmac.

To save you time in the menus, here are a few of the other options available:

• The option to turn an embedded time and date stamp on and off.
• Voice alerts with the built-in speaker.
• Automatic turn-off of the display at 1 and 3 minute marks.
• Light frequency of 50 or 60 Hz.
• Memory card format.
• Upgrade firmware from card.
• Restore defaults.

The video is surprisingly clear and crisp. It manages to maintain focus as light and perspective change as you  drives.  While the recordings are prone to some visual distortions at times, they eventually stabilise.

The microphone is of fairly standard quality. If your windows are closed it can’t pick up all that much outside the car – apart from hooters and the odd 18-wheeler . With the windows open any speeds over 20 km/h will drown out most audio. However with the engine off and the windows open, the mic can pick up conversations outside the car – handy if you’re being verbally abused by another driver.

The life of the battery in the review unit we were given left a lot to be desired. The unit could only be disconnected from a power source for thirty seconds before it shut down. Now, we’ve been told that the unit can  “record up to 30 minutes on a fully charged battery without a power supply”, but tis wasn’t the case with out review unit.

Despite playing around with settings we couldn’t get the 100 to stay on when it had been disconnected. It’s possible the review unit was faulty and it’s a pity we couldn’t  test the battery life thoroughly.

The DrivePro 100 really surprised us: we did not expect this level of video quality at this price. While the far-too sensitive G-sensor and the faulty battery are concerns, it’s still a steal.