This is my first dash cam, so other than reading reviews, I new very little. It's been my experience that the accompanying instruction manuals are often of little help, although this one was slightly better. I also turned to youtube but even they, left things out, that I wanted to know. How do you turn the unit on and off, how do you pause a recording, why are there only four buttons and so many icons and how am I supposed to remember how to use the same button for a variety of functions? There was a phone number in the manual, so I figured I'd better call it in hopes of reducing my frustrations. They were extremely accommodating and ran me though a one on one, step by step, assistance. I also kept trying to use this cam as a touch screen, since after all, every phone these days has this feature. It was explained to me that there was a touch screen but that I had ordered a model without. Believe it, or not, they helped me out with that and I now have a Touch model, F7NT. I gave this five stars because this company is amazing and the cameras are superb. I therefore did not detract a star because I am convinced that they will listen closely, make a few changes and then they will have the best possible cams. Negatives: Too many icons on the cam video screen. The icons are too small and virtually useless because they are on your windshield, which is difficult to reach. All this does is create confusion. Sometimes the cam wants you to turn off wi-fi to access features, which is ridiculous. Wi-Fi should always be on whenever the phone is nearby and it should record to your phone so that you can access all features as you like on your phone. The small screen on the cam is virtually useless. Playback choices should not be visible on the cam. Remove as many icons as possible and apply them only after video is downloaded to your phone or to a computer. Negatives: Downloading to a phone is nearly impossible or at the very least, far too tedious. Solution: Remove the SD card from the cam, utilize a thumb drive for the SD card and view your video on your laptop or PC. There is a Redtiger Player available that you can and should download that contains all of the functions for playback of this cam. Negatives: When playing back the video the informational text for things like time stamp, GPS, etc. shows up at the bottom of the screen, which can sometimes make it hard to read, since it's also very small. Solution: Place the informational text at the top of the screen, which generally is viewing SKY, and make it larger since this area is not of importance in any way. Negatives: There is a time setting where when files are created, you must choose - 1 minute, 3 minutes or 5 minutes. Thereby after downloading files you can select from a bunch of files, presumably to facilitate finding the file you wanted. Still tedious indeed. Solution: As the cam is recording, allow the recording to directly access and download to your phone without interruption. Perhaps have a 1 hour period and then over write to withhold no more than one hour on your phone. If there has been an occurrence you can simply SAVE the file. To view it you could easily see it on your phone or you could send it to your big screen tv. The SD card would merely become a backup for emergency situations. Bottom Line: The suggestions above are really about User Friendliness. If anything, I believe that they have attempted to input too many features. I'm recommending simplifying the process with slightly different thinking. I also recommend buying the Touch model, as without it, it's somewhat awkward to use. The picture quality is great, front and back and the service is excellent. You get what you pay for. The method of operation and the thought pattern for usage should be that you view your video on a laptop, or pc, on the Player app that is provided. In short, the cam records, the app provides viewing via computer. I really like the app since it provides both front and rear at the same time, plus you can zoom the view and even choose only front or only back as you like. All info is visible like GPS, a google may of travel, speed of travel, date and time. This app is a very important part of the operation. Still it could use a bit of tweaking. Overall, I love this thing. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have this in the early 80s when I was a private investigator.
