Uniden iGo Cam 750 Review

UnideniGo750_1
Uniden’s iGo Cam 750 would benefit from slightly streamlined menu controls, but as a basic small trip recorder and crash cam it’s quite adequate.
You never want to actually get into a car crash. Well, maybe if you’re a professional demolition derby racer you might, but for the rest of us, car accidents are things to be avoided at all costs.
You can’t always avoid them, however, and when you do have an accident, it’s not going to take long for fingers to start pointing and blame to be attributed. Recent years have seen a rise in onboard crash recorders to be used in an evidential way with regards to car accidents, because the cost of halfway decent camera optics for this purpose have tumbled. Uniden’s iGo Cam 750 is a very small and very portable example of a “crash cam”, and it’s one that’s relatively simple to set up, although not always that easy to use.
The iGo Cam 750 is itself a unit not dissimilar to many GPS units. There’s a rotary suction cup dial that connects to a 2.7″ LCD display screen, which itself hooks in via USB to a standard car cigarette type charge plug. It’s all quite standard stuff, although the suction cup that connects to your windscreen isn’t all that great. I struggled quite a few times to attach it, and had more than one instance where it simply came unstuck mid-drive.

Getting the iGo 750 to stay properly in place can be a bit of a chore.
Getting the iGo 750 to stay properly in place can be a bit of a chore.

There is one additional step that you’ll have to perform with the iGo Cam 750 before setting off, and that’s adding some storage to it. The iGo Cam 750 uses microSD cards for storage, recording in small discrete chunks and whenever the inbuilt gyroscope detects a large scale change in momentum. A crash, in other words.
With full disclosure in mind, I’ve got to note that this is the one thing I haven’t tested the iGo Cam 750 with. I may go to some extremes when testing technology, but putting my life on the line in the extremely random scenarios around vehicular accidents is just a little bit too extreme for my tastes.
As a regular road recorder, however, it’s quite effective for the most part. The iGo Cam 750 is GPS enabled, which means it can offer red light camera warnings from an inbuilt database, as well as track your speed as you drive. That information is embedded within its files, so you can map your drives with Uniden’s PC-only software, as well as see quite how quickly you were actually driving. For those with heavier feet that could make for some interesting viewing.
By default as long as it has storage, the iGo Cam 750 records all the time, although it only shows its display when first powered on. That’s actually quite a sensible step, because if you place the iGo Cam 750 in your eyeline on your dash, the temptation to look at it is quite high, and that could be dangerous.
Try to avoid watching yourself driving while driving, because you'll rapidly be watching yourself crashing.
Try to avoid watching yourself driving while driving, because you’ll rapidly be watching yourself crashing.

The iGo Cam 750 also provides lane assistance when calibrated to the current colour of road markings, although this is very touch and go. The idea is that it’s useful for drivers on long haul trips who worry about falling asleep, but in my own tests I found that even once calibrated it was quite twitchy in its detection.
The default recording resolution is 1080p, which sounds quite impressive, although the recorded footage won’t entirely blow your socks off. I’ve recorded quite a bit of footage with the iGo Cam 750, and while I won’t embed that, if only for my own privacy’s sake, Uniden’s test footage is quite representative of what you’ll end up with at the end of a drive.

As you can hear from that footage, the speaker on the iGo Cam 750 is pretty rudimentary. It’s adequate for the job at hand, but it’s never pleasant to listen to, even when it is warning you of upcoming red light cameras.
As a reminder, the easiest way to never get nabbed by a red light camera is simply not to speed through red lights — but I’m probably spitting into the wind with that comment.

Menus are slow, basic, and somewhat annoying. You won't need to use them often, however.
Menus are slow, basic, and somewhat annoying. You won’t need to use them often, however.

Audio pickup is also relatively sharp given the amount of noise in the average vehicle, which means feasibly you could end up with whatever exclamation you choose to utter just prior to your crash footage immortalised for all time.
The iGo Cam 750 offers a number of onscreen controls and visual indicators on its tiny display, but this is easily the most frustrating part of using it, because its menus scroll slowly and the 2.7″ display screen isn’t terribly high resolution. Ideally you’d want to review footage via a full HD display screen, where it’s generally quite easy to make out licence plates as you come up to them, were you to need such a thing.
The iGo 750 is entirely portable, but that protruding lens means it won't easily stow in any kind of pants pocket. Bring a bag.
The iGo 750 is entirely portable, but that protruding lens means it won’t easily stow in any kind of pants pocket. Bring a bag.

The iGo Cam 750 is Uniden’s entry level model, and it’s priced accordingly with an RRP of $199. At that kind of price point it’s got some genuine appeal if you’re worried about crashes or simply keen to record your on or off-road adventures. Although it strikes me if you were taking it off-road, you’d probably want a more secure screen mount than the iGo Cam 750 offers.

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