Cruise Cloud Technology Corporation has announced its release of the Miofive 4K, Wi-Fi connected, AI-enabled smart dash camera with the intention of providing a unique product for those looking to monitor their own driving as well as protect their precious cargo as well as their property.
The Miofive dash camera comes with plenty of features designed to give you the highest quality recordings of your driving in order to capture and store every moment for easy access through a smartphone application.
It features AI drivers assistance to give you suggestions on improving the safety of your driving by measuring the smoothness of your trips with a built-in G-sensor. It also comes with GPS tracking so that you can record your driving routes and speed, as well as seven different transmittance lenses to provide you with 30FPS, 4K resolution, and 140 degrees of wide-angle view day and night.
The Miofive can be easily mounted to the interior of your windshield and you will have to run a cable from any sort of outlet to the camera to plug into the micro-USB port on the camera. This will provide the camera power while you are driving but the camera also has some battery powered features like time-lapse and Parking Guard to protect your vehicle while the engine isn’t running.
Right off the bat, it sounds like some pretty cool tech for a dash camera priced just $150.
Setup
The setup is probably the most difficult part of the experience with the camera, but it wasn’t a huge deal. You will be provided with all of the tools necessary to make sure your camera adheres properly to the windshield without having to worry about leaving behind sticky residue or melted glue from intense heat.
With a quick application of an electrostatic film sticker to the windshield, (and removing the inevitable bubbles) you can then adhere the 3M adhesive mount to the windshield. From there you can go about your own method of routing the cable from its power source to using the provided plastic pry bar to sort of wedge the cable between interior panels.
I was actually very surprised to find how easy it was to hide the entire cable, running it from the center console, down the side next to the passenger seat, under the glove box, up the passenger-side A-pillar, and across the top of the windshield to the camera in the center behind by rearview mirror. Of course, it may be a different experience with each car, so I’d suggest looking in your own car for cable routing options. Any small channel will likely be enough to tuck the cord in and forget about it.
Fortunately, there is an extra set of adhesives in the box in case you mess up the initial go around, and besides that, the camera can be quickly and easily detached from the mount to remove it from the car for whatever reason.
The actual mounting point of the camera can be freely swiveled up and down to change the angle of view, but up and down is the only range of motion of the mount, so ensure the mount is level before you apply it to the windshield!
The Miofive App
The Miofive app is designed to help you get connected with your camera through a 5GHz Wi-Fi connection so that you can view all of that stored data and get everything you need from it.
You will have to register an account to use many of the drive logging features, but once you have created the account with only your phone number you will then be able to see your recorded trips and some metrics about each trip.
You can also use the Parking Locator feature of the app in case you often find yourself wandering through a parking lot in search of your vehicle. Just enter the app, apply the feature and the app will automatically drop a pin at your current location so that you can return to your vehicle stress-free.
The app is also going to be your best friend for getting access to all of those recordings. I would suggest messing around with the camera for a while before setting off, though.
There are a lot of unique features that you should be considering in the settings of the camera that are useful for maximizing the likelihood that you can get proof and protect yourself in the case of an accident. All of the videos that your dashcam records will be found in the Album of the app, including Loop recordings, EMER videos, Parking Guard, Time-Lapses, and Photos.
You can also see a live view of the camera through the app, but with a 2.2-inch display on the camera itself, I don’t think it’s the most useful feature. I can see the potential if you wanted to check the camera while away from the vehicle but there would be no way to do so unless the car was running and very nearby, or you have purchased the hard-wiring kit for the device.
Additionally through the app you will be able to access the quick settings of the camera, to adjust things like EMER recording sensitivity, Parking Guard sensitivity, camera quality effects, and just about any other feature you could think of.
Recording Quality and More Features
Essentially, the Miofive functions as many other normal dash cams do. Once you start the engine, the camera will boot up and begin recording.
With the loop function, the camera records in the regular, 30 FPS, 4K resolution, and each loop clip (one minute long) will be stored on the camera for around three days, it seems.
In addition, the Miofive has what is called EMER recordings, in which the camera will sense an aggressive movement in the event of an accident, hard acceleration, braking, or turning, and then proceed to store the few seconds of video afterwards in the EMER section of the album. In my opinion it is rather sensitive as to what is considered ‘aggressive’ enough to trigger the emergency recording, but it is a useful additional feature to have.
EMER videos were stored for much longer in the app, but I am not too sure whether this is intentional or it is just because there are fewer clips to store. It is worth mentioning now that the camera has up to 64GB of external storage, but this may be less than you think when recording in 4K resolution.
As far as the actual camera quality goes, it does seem to be pretty high quality. It doesn’t quite look like true 4K in my opinion, but the Miofive will definitely provide you with all of the camera quality you need for a mid-range dash camera.
While they do advertise its apparent improved night-vision over other dashcams, you shouldn’t expect to be wildly impressed by it. You won’t be recording many things outside the range of your headlights on darker roads. Rain and glare are nothing to be concerned about, as nothing seemed to impact the focus of the camera as long as it was set up to the right angle and calibrated correctly.
A couple features that I didn’t get any use out of, but are worth mentioning: Parking Guard, Time Lapse, and Photos. With no power being supplied to the camera when the engine is off, your Miofive dash cam will not be able to record any time lapses or parking guard clips. Essentially, you will have to purchase an additional hardware kit to act as a power supply for the camera, otherwise these features are unusable.
Parking Guard is designed to start recording when your camera senses an accident or other disruption with the G-sensor while the car is not in motion. Time lapse functions exactly like you would expect it to, (I can only assume) and both features together will basically act as the loop and EMER recording features while parked. It’s also worth mentioning that photos can be taken with the camera either remotely or directly through the buttons on the LCD display.
AI-Enabled?
While the AI assist features of the camera are pretty useful, the driver assist suggestions can get pretty bothersome. It’s nice to be able to just mount the camera and forget about it.
The camera will automatically start and stop recording on its own, detect accidents and aggressive driving, and can even detect the locations of vehicles in front of you. However, I quickly realized how irritating it can be when the dash cam tells you that you are driving too aggressively at every intersection.
It has a nice little speaker that will tell you to “keep up!” if you are falling behind the traffic ahead or remind you to drive safe when any significant G forces are detected. Fortunately the sensitivity of this can be adjusted like other features but I preferred to mute the voice altogether. If you’re not the smoothest driver or just don’t like being told how to drive by an AI, then you may end up doing the same.
Overview
For a mid-range dash camera, the Miofive is pretty great. It comes with all the tools necessary for the mounting process, tons of cool features, great resolution, decent framerate, a useful and easy-to-use interface and application, and a convenient LCD display.
After the initial mounting process and application setup as well as settings customization, you will never have to think about it until the unlucky scenario of an accident. Or maybe you can just use it to record some cool footage of your fastest lap time with some basic metrics like elevation, distance, and speed. In my opinion $149.99 is a fantastic price when there are plenty of dash cameras doing less and costing twice as much.
