FineVu GX30

Only half works, but that's not the half you bought it for! – This is a South Korean camera that costs about $600 if we include the expanded sim card, so I was disappointed that the companion app (through which you view your recorded clips) has a shaky Wi-Fi system when paired with the most common mobile phone on the planet - an iPhone. Sure, you can remove the sim card, pop it into the adaptor card then find a computer and check files that way, but the whole point of paying $600, plus $200 installation in my car so I could use all the features, was that I could, well, use all the features. The bug recurred all over town and it was often not even possible to see the Wi-Fi connection on the phone's list, and sometimes it showed as connected but would not connect to the app, and I had to shut the thing down, turn the engine off, then restart the device then turn the engine on again and reconnect after it had booted. Boooo.

I was assured that the latest firmware update would fix this iPhone compatibility issue, so I went to my computer and downloaded the latest firmware zip (but had to get it from their support team as the company website download appeared to be broken - which is a bit embarrassing for a tech company). I inserted the sim in its adaptor and copied the file as instructed to the "top level root" of the memory card which would have been a good name for an Australian Band (Top Level Root!) but was probably a bit wordy for your average consumer.

Firmware updated successfully, went through the whole palaver of turning it off, car off, on and on etc., then successfully viewed one short bit of footage before the connectivity issue recurred. My last dashcam was pretty unreliable and feature poor but I didn't mind so much as it didn't cost so much..