Cowon AW1 / AW2

Poor Memory Storage – We had the unit installed by Toyota in our new car, sorry that we did not read the reviews, we just had an incident and the next day we were not able to retrieve any footage. The product should be explained it was $1000.00 we spent.  Show details

Hate heat and cold weather – Paid a fortune for this to be installed. Won't work if its to hot and won't work in Victorian winters. Complete wast of money. Do not buy if you live in Australia. Show details

Poor connectivity, bluetooth fail – Hardwired by tech at the dealer and still had unsatisfactory connectivity. I wouldn't know what the footage is like as i could never connect. doesn't work as described, overpriced, non-user friendly. Stay away Show details

Disappointing- Stay away – The Dual units (Cowon AW2) were installed and hardwired during the purchase of a new vehicle. Was recommended these dash cams, however I've had nothing but disappointment and money wasted. The dashcam regularly overheats, causing it to malfunction, where it will attempt to "restart" itself, however 99% of the time, will fail to do so due to… Read more

overheating so you won't have any footage recorded until you manually fix it.

The features of the dashcam itself are gimmicky at times, especially the wifi connectivity of the dashcam, where it will decide not to work 50% of the time, or just decide to cut off when connected to your smartphone. As stated above with the recording, it regularly malfunctions so it will not record majority of the time, and when it does decide to record, sometimes It will just decide to "cut out"/not record certain intervals of your journey.

I cannot count the number of times where the dashcam has malfunctioned/overheated resulting in me unplugging and re plugging in the wires, whether it was for recording footage or just trying to connect via wifi.

Firmware and overall support for the dash cam itself hasn't had an update since 2017, so I would recommend you stay away from this brand, and go look at other alternatives such as blackvue etc, that are well supported, updated and function properly.

Cowon AW1 keeps failing – I purchased this unit new with my car and after 8 months it died. Had it replaced under warranty and now my second unit has died. Even when they were working they were somewhat unreliable. I would not recommend spending your money on this unit. I am now looking for alternative brands.

Overheats every day – Had this installed with a new vehicle purchased. Ideally to record a vehicle hitting my vehicle and leaving. Sadly the Cowon overheats almsot every single day in Australia. When I return to my car after work it will take 10 to 15 minutes for it to sufficiently cool down to begin working again. Often I have returned home before it is… Read more

recording.

The Quality of the video when it is recording is good and sound is captured.

For the price we paid there are better options.

Not Worth the Money – I had a Cowon AW2 but it gave up only after a short time, . Swapped for another one and the new one would only work occasionally when it wanted. I removed both units in disgust and frustration and purchased a cheaper unit that works better than the Cowon. I am much happier now.

Disappointed – We had the Dual Camera (AW2) installed in Jul by December it has fully drained our battery in our new vehicle. The unit itself also heated up significantly and then died. We will be ringing the supplier on Monday, to see what they say. The device is meant to have a self shutting cut off if battery volt does below an acceptable value, but that… Read more

didn't seem to work. Interesting to find out what went wrong with this device, because I was quite happy with it.

Battery problem – Hi, we bought a AW1 through the dealership, brand new Mitsubishi Outlander may 2016. 2nd week September, my battery was flat, had to get nrma. Happened again 3 weeks later, nrma for jump again, took it back to dealership and was told voltage had been set too high at instal, the technician adjusted volts. All good till 3 weeks later, flat again.… Read more

This time the dealership told me too bad, not their problem so I contacted the installers direct.

John came out and replaced the unit, ensured all settings were correct and we haven't (so far) had a flat battery.

The dvr is sometimes slow to start, 2km up the road before it kicks in.

It's good points are the vision on AutoCapsule, small size and motion detection while parked.

The battery problem was always after the vehicle was not driven for 3 days.. I haven't had this situation yet so am still not sure if this problem is fixed.

Definitely not worth paying all that money for something that doesn't work properly, and replaced tw – I decided to have a COWON AW1 dash cam installed on my brand new car, for peace of mind, and also knowing that the footage could be used in the future for investigations, etc. well, was I wrong!!!! Having the device for two weeks only, I had to have it replaced as it was faulty, not recording or talking to mobile, then yesterday on way to work, a… Read more

truck ran a red light, almost taking me with him, but I thought, that's okay, I have the evidence on the dash cam which with all good intentions I was going to download and take it to the Police this morning, but oh well, the dash cam had stopped recording ten minutes prior to the almost 'accident', no reason, and no indication that it was going to switch off, so I have since purchased another dash cam through Repco, and considering the price difference, most expensive doesn't mean it will definitely work!!!!! If I had known then what I know now, I would not have purchased this dash cam, especially the price of it!!!!

Does exactly what it is designed to do – My system is wired direct into the fuse box and therefore is on 24/7 and records even when I'm not driving. The cameras sit neatly in the windows and are not a distraction whatsoever which was an initial concern. The manual is not the best and setting up the app on the phone to remotely log into the cameras is not for the non technically minded. … Read more

Even the garage that fitted the cameras were not sure how everything worked and just referred us to the manual and the accompanying CD. This had just the same manual so was not a help. However, for peace of mind I would definitely recommend this product to anyone looking at installing cameras in their car. My son recently put these in his new car and is also happy with them.

Most happy with my Cowon AW-2 Saftey cameras with GPS speed and location – After 16 months have just a little issue, However with that said I am sure it will be resolved. At one point the local boy's & there lazar were proven to be mistaken by the recorded speed of my car thanks to GPS SPEED & TIME & LOCATION that the kind Judge developed a different view then the charging officers, THANK COWON AW-2 However this week I… Read more

now have a minor problem, I say minor as it is the front camera still working & only a rear that appears to have a malfunction.

My Cowan AW crash cameras have been doing well until last week when the back/ rear camera will no longer connect to my Android phone, went in search to see if I could correct the issue and found a update.

I installed that still no joy, I have connected & disconnected the units, I have formatted the card all with no success.

Can someone please tell me if I can do anything else to get a fix or is it a case of find a repair shop in or around my location of Redcliffe QLD 4019

Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers

Cowon AW2 Front & Rear dash cams – I purchased this camera system and had some small glitches and then the shop swapped them for a newer model due to faulty batch that they received, currently this camera is now working ok and I don't currently have any issues with them. The shop was very responsible with accepting the cams had a few issues.

Review of Cowon AW-2 AutoCapsule Car Camera – I have been using the Cowon AW-2 “Auto Capsule” Car Camera for a month. Installation: The kit supplied includes holders for front & rear camera holders, cameras, sticky pads, lighter plug power cable, cable to connect rear camera – as it operates by connecting it to the front camera which receives the power input. The optional GPS unit (I… Read more

have one) plugs into the rear camera, and is used by both cameras. The cameras are a compact “bullet” shape, easily held in the hand. (Some “rear” cameras operate from the front unit and require clear line of sight through the car).

With no built in screen, the front camera tucks neatly behind the rear view mirror, even with a motorway Tag already there. Only one set of adhesive pads supplied which could be a worry if you need to change cars or move the mounting after it’s been fitted.

The unit is reasonably easy to set up. I was limited with where I mounting the rear camera due to demister “tracks” on the window, so it sits on the brake light housing on the parcel shelf. You will need a tablet or phone with the Cowon AutoCapsule app and WiFi to see in real time where the cameras are pointing, so you can adjust them. I had a few issues connecting as I was within range of my home network but the WiFi connected fine when I was anywhere else. (the PDF manual has better info on this than the paper guide - it really should be in the paper guide as it's needed for set up).

Once set up, live viewing on my Blackberry Z30 (using the Android app) was easy, I could view front, rear or both at once. The quick start manual is OK but there is better info in the PDF version on a small Disc supplied with the unit, along with the program for PC/Mac installation. I did find that on first use, the camera lens got very hot, too hot for comfort – up to 55 deg, measured on my infra-red temp sensor. This didn’t occur again until about a month later, with the car stationary & WiFi on. Apart form this the unit was normally warm to touch but within a range normal for electronic gear of this type.

Use:

Video quality is very crisp, with a good field of view and the GPS gives on-screen speed readings (not legible on phone but much better on PC) .

Tech Specs for those that want them – HD recording at 1920 x 1080 p, 30fps, Recording angle : 140˚ and Video encoding : H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC)

Depending on the orientation of the camera, you may need to play with the screen orientation to get the picture the right way up and not reversed. Playback of files by phone was sketchy, none of the players on phone streamed the video files very easily, one of the biggest gripes was that after playing a file, you get returned to the top of the list – you then have to search again to play the next file.

As files usually consist of a minute per file, there can be a lot to scroll through! If you opt for a “permanent” power cord (lighter plug only powers when ignition is on) the unit will record in Parking mode, to detect when the car gets bumped. I only had the lighter plug so wasn’t able to test that. Footage keeps recording over oldest files, you can even prioritise which types of files get over-written first. The unit came with two 16Gb cards, which lasted me for about a week before being “recycled”.

Setting/Saving:

The micro SD Card can be easily removed for direct playback in a PC (installation of PC Manager program is required – I found it easy) or archiving files. Files are sensibly categorised to sort between normal driving, “event” or Motion – there is a handy little USB adapter supplied that allows you to plug the SD card straight into a USB port. If you have the GPS unit, it displays your speed and tracks your journey on a Map!

The PC Manager is also used to change camera settings, by saving these on the SD card which then changes the camera settings once back in the car. You can set whether audio recording default is on/off, LED notifications on/off, volume of effect and menu prompts, default recording duration and the sensitivity of the shock sensors. It is a very configurable unit.

Summary:

The heating of the unit was a strange issue and a minor concern. It would be nice to be able to play files more easily from WiFi (that may be a limitation of the phone/apps – I couldn’t rule that out) and to have a few spare sticky pads – I’ll have to contact Cowon Australia to see if they supply them separately (I would think so) but they should be able to be substituted easily enough by any clear Silicon-based sticky pads. Overall I am very pleased with the unit, it is compact enough not to interfere with sight lines and visibility, very configurable and yet easy enough to use. Configurability, compact size, good video quality, easey to use & to save files Hard to view streamed files on phone, unit got very hot once or twice

AW1 COWON AUTOCAPSULE – This is an exciting dashcam with great quality images. Placement on the windscreen was good for my vehicle as most of the unit is hidden by a "blacked out area" behind the rear vision mirror.The optional GPS has a long lead which needs to be folded up so that it can stay out of sight. The power cord is of adequate length but there was… Read more ·  1

insufficient supplied stick on cord holders to hold the cord in position. Hard wiring will fix this.

Setup is relatively simple but due to the length of my trips I still need to adjust the sensitivity so that I do not record so many "events" Even getting over the dip between the driveway and the road made the AW1 record an event ! I could not adjust this when driving by myself with the mobile phone, one needs to park to abide by the law.

Images both day and night are excellent and number plates are easily read if close but need to be magnified when at a distance. This is possible on most computers and probably on a mobile phone.

The GPS speed and location works well and corresponds to my checked speedo.

Due to the mild weather in April I was not able to check how it performed in a Perth Summer exposed to a 40 degree day exposed to the Sun.

Overall worth considering a quality product at the top end of the market. size , Images, ease of control of xyz axis movement from wifi mobile phone I think that the price may deter some buyers