Aussie review: Vantrue E1 Mini 2.5K Wi-Fi dashcam with voice control, GPS, app

Aussie review: Vantrue E1 Mini 2.5K Wi-Fi dashcam with voice control, GPS, app

The E1 is the smallest and most affordable dashcam made by Vantrue but that doesn’t mean it has a low image and video quality thanks to the 2.5K (5 megapixel resolution) sensor which can record at up to 2592X1944P@30fps.

Interestingly this dashcam is capacitor powered, which is more reliable than batteries and can withstand Australia’s extreme temperature range from burning heat to freezing cold, ensuring that your dashcam is more likely to work when you need it.

Unboxing and Installation

Inside the box you’ll find the dashcam, remote, warning stickers, charging cable etc as shown below.

As you can see by the size comparison to a watch, the Vantrue E1 is quite a small dashcam with a small screen but it has 3 features to work around that:

• great voice controls
• a very useful app
• a physical remote

After unboxing and putting a 64GB microSD card into the slot on the dashcam installation following the Youtube video instructions below was super easy.

Then I screwed on the optional Vanture Circular Polarising Filter (CPL). The benefit of this is it really cuts down on the dashcam recording reflections from inside the car and also glare from the sun, road etc.

The downside is while the daytime dashcam video and photos are greatly improved, the CPL does slightly reduce the amount of light the dashcam receives to take good video/photos and during nighttime driving that is not ideal.

You’ll have to decide whether you don’t use a polarising filter to get better night vision but less good daytime results.

Snapshot on-demand quality is shown by the examples below. I think it’s quite good during the day, the filter means there’s no glare even if the dashcam is looking at the sun front and during dusk driving, you can still read the licence plates. The video quality is just as good as the snapshots.

I mentioned the app earlier, here are some screenshots showing how you can view the photos and videos taken by the dashcam and the many ways you can customise settings to your liking.

As mentioned previously the Vantrue E1 supports voice commands which are quite convenient and coupled with the phone app means you rarely need to touch the physical buttons.

Note though that if your car radio is on sometimes the dashcam mic doesn’t hear the commands because of music playing or radio hosts talking. What I did was turn off the radio and then tell the dashcam to take a photo.

This useful video below goes through all the voice commands and shows what they do.

Should you buy the Vantrue E1 dashcam?

What it’s good at are all the basic things you want like a small size so it doesn’t block your view, GPS for speed and location stamped on your video, collision & motion detection, detailed paper manual, Wi-Fi to make accessing photo snap and video easy from your phone, 2.5K resolution for quality images, a good mic to pick up your voice commands, optional polarising filter to reduce daytime reflections/glare, optional hard wiring kit for 24/7 recording (not tested) and clever mount so it can be detached easily.

The downsides include that the small size means a small screen which means you have to watch the videos and photos on your phone to be able to see them properly. It’s only one dashcam rather than a pair so you can use it at the front or back but not cover both directions at once. Resolution at 2.5K is quite good but 4K would still be better to see licence plates more clearly.

Balancing those both the Vantrue E1 is a good value purchase for $240 on Amazon, especially with the current $40 off coupon making the effective price $200.