Innovative and Invisible Safety with the Rexing V1: An In-Depth Review of a Steal Deal

4.2

Rexing V1 DashCam

Lifewire / Danny Chadwick

What We Like

• Records footage in full 1080p HD
• Fits the curve and angle of your windshield
• Easy-to-use controls
• Intuitive interface
• Automatically protects footage from accidents

What We Don’t Like

• Hard to remove mount from windshield

The Rexing V1 DashCam is a worthy consideration if you’re looking to buy a dashboard recorder. It won’t knock anybody’s socks off, but it definitely does its job.

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4.2

Rexing V1 DashCam

Lifewire / Danny Chadwick

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in this article

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• Design
• Setup Process
• Camera Quality
• Performance
• Price
• Competition
• Final Verdict
• Specs

We purchased the Rexing V1 DashCam so our expert reviewer could thoroughly test and assess it. Keep reading for our full product review.

The Rexing V1 DashCam is a great choice if you’re in the market for a security-style dashboard camera. Its size and shape are more suited to windshield mounting than other models we tested, plus it captures high-definition footage, decent sound, and is an overall reliable device.

It has all the additional features you’d expect from adashcam , like loop recording and crash detection, and even some unique ones like timelapse recording. If you’re in the market for a dashcam, the Rexing V1 is definitely worth considering.

Lifewire / Danny Chadwick

Design: Fits perfectly on your windshield

The Rexing V1 Dashcam has a more distinctive form factor than other models we reviewed. Unlike many popular dashcam models, the V1 doesn’t resemble a point-and-shoot camera that hangs from your windshield. Rather, it’s angled to fit the curve of the glass. This makes for a more integrated, smooth look.

And it’s not just looks that make the design appealing. The fact that it’s not a simple square allows easier access to the control panel, improves the viewing angle of the display, and makes navigating the already-simple interface a bit easier.

There’s only one way to install this camera in your car, and that’s via a mount that sticks to your windshield with an adhesive strip. Fortunately, this works really well and the mount stays in place—throughout our testing, jolts and bumps on the road didn’t budge it. And once the camera was installed on our windshield, it was very easy to slide it on and off the mount.

Throughout our testing, jolts and bumps on the road didn’t budge it.

At just 2.7 inches, the display on this dash cam is the smallest among the devices we tested, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. All the icons, menus, and video footage itself are perfectly visible up close. And you probably don’t want to be paying attention to the screen while you’re behind the wheel, anyways—the at-a-glance view of the camera’s status is all you need.

It also has an internal accelerometer that can detect the impact of an accident, as well asGPS capabilities . Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with all the necessary equipment to use the GPS feature—if you want to enable these, you have to buy theRexing GPS Logger separately.

Lifewire / Danny Chadwick

Setup Process: Be sure that’s where you want to put it

For those concerned about the hassle of installing a dashcam, don’t worry. The user manual for the Rexing V1 was the clearest and most detailed of all the dashcams we tested. The instructions are written in easy-to-understand language, and every button, feature, and tool is explained in detail so there’s no guesswork when you turn the device on.

Attaching this dash cam to your windshield is easy. Simply pull the plastic off the double-sided adhesive on the mount and stick it where you want it to go. However, you should be very careful when you’re doing this and make absolutely certain that you want it where you put it the first time. After a few seconds of being attached, it’s on there for good, and it takes a decent amount of ingenuity and elbow grease to get it off. Once it’s off, you can’t reapply it.

One of the things we appreciated about this dash cam is that it includes a 32GBMicroSD card so you won’t have to put out extra cash to get one. However, there is no microSD card adapter, so if you want to review your footage on a computer you’ll have to buy one of those.

Also included in the box is a special tool that helps you hide the power cable. To prevent the wire from hanging down in front of your windshield, you need to wedge it up under the edge of the roof and through the side panels (the instruction manual shows you the best route to take). It may seem complicated at first, but this whole process only took us about ten minutes to accomplish.

Lifewire / Danny Chadwick

Camera Quality: Basic

You can set this dash-mounted camera to capture footage in either 720p or 1080p resolution, which is pretty limited. Similar dashcams can capture footage up to 2560 x 1440 resolution, with others going all the way up to 4K. However, if all you’re looking for is a simple security device, 1080p will do just fine.

When we reviewed the footage captured by the Rexing V1, we found it to be highly detailed and clear when the car was moving along city streets. However, when we hit the freeway, the picture became a little less clear. Signs were hard to read unless you stopped the recording, and small details such as license plates and bumper stickers on other cars couldn’t be made out at all. Nevertheless, the videos yield a good picture of what happens when you drive.

Lifewire / Danny Chadwick

Performance: Set it and forget it

During our testing, we took the Rexing V1 on several lengthy drives through the cities and countryside of northern Utah. In the week that we had it, we never had a problem with how it functioned. It stayed firmly attached to the windshield, powered on every time we turned the ignition and never missed a frame while we were driving. This is one of those devices that embodies the “set it and forget it” mentality.

This dashcam uses loop recording, which means that it is continuously recording while your car is on, but splices it up into manageable bits rather than one long file. Rexing recommends setting this to three minutes, but you have options to set it to five- and ten-minute intervals as well. When your memory card fills up, the device automatically overwrites the oldest files.

It stayed firmly attached to the windshield, powered on every time we turned the ignition and never missed a frame while we were driving.

This dashcam is also equipped with an internal accelerometer that gives it the ability to detect a traffic accident. When it senses that an incident has occurred, it automatically locks the video for that time to prevent it from being overwritten. This is a common feature among the dash cams we tested, but it works well and is a great way to protect yourself if you ever need to prove what happened in an accident.

One feature that is unique to the Rexing V1 is time-lapse recording. It is turned off by default and Rexing recommends you keep it off for your day-to-day driving. But if you’re taking a road trip with scenic routes or want to record a particular journey, this feature is fun to have.

Like the rest of the dashboard cameras we tested, the Rexing V1 has the ability to record audio, but it does a middling job of it. Voices in the car and sounds coming from the interior speakers were clear enough to understand, but sounds from outside the vehicle were muddy at best.

Price: A good value

The Rexing V1 retails for $130, but as of the time of this writing, can typically be purchased for closer to $100. We feel like this is a perfectly appropriate price for this device—it falls right in the middle of the typical dashcam price range, providing better performance than super budget models, but without the high-tech features of the more expensive options out there. In short, it’s a good price for a solid, basic device.

Competition: Z3 Plus vs. Rexing V1

If you’re wondering if you want to pay the extra $25 or so for the Z-Edge Z3 Plus dashcam (which retails for $125), the decision will come down to form factor and image quality—everything else is pretty much the same.

The Z3 Plus is square and hangs from your windshield from a suction cup, so it can stick out like a sore thumb. The V1 doesn’t have that problem since it’s angled to fit your windshield, but the adhesive tape that holds it on is one-time-use only. If you make a mistake when installing it, you may end up wishing for the Z3’s clunky suction cup design.

If the Rexing V1’s 1080p resolution is good enough for you, there’s no need to put down extra cash for more pixels. The video is definitely high-res enough to use as a security device, and can effectively capture an accident or other incident. But if you want great video footage that you’ll enjoy watching in the future, an extra $25 isn’t too high a price to pay.

Z-Edge Z3 Plus Dashcam Review

Final Verdict

It delivers on what it was designed to do, without any extras.

There isn’t much to complain about with the Rexing V1 DashCam. Its innovative form factor combined with a wide array of video capture features and decent picture quality means you won’t have any buyer’s remorse if you choose this dashcam.

Specs

• Product Name V1 DashCam
• Product Brand Rexing
• MPN REX-V1
• Price $99.99
• Weight 14 oz.
• Product Dimensions 6.6 x 4.9 x 2.8 in.
• Warranty 1 year
• Display Type LCD
• Recording Quality Up to 1080p
• Night Vision No
• Connectivity Options MicroSD, USB