K1S 2-Channel Full HD + GPS Hidden Driving Recording System

After some near misses on the road I decided to protect myself and purchased this Koonlung K1S dual camera car DVR. With cameras covering front and back I can record any events should they happen. Recording quality is top notch with 1080p recording capability. Works great either day or night.Easy to install and has enough rear camera cable length to run from the back of a 2011 Honda Insight to the DVR unit.Cable for the rear camera starts at the top of the rear hatch glass, right to the rear pillar, down the rear pillar, tucked under the right rear seat, along the floor to the front passenger side, and up under the dash to a cubby in the forward center console. And with cable to spare. Front camera should ideally be positioned in the center of the windshield for best coverage.Sound quality however isn't the best. But still can make out interior chatter if the volume is turned up on playback on a PC. Overall an impressive little addition to my car that is essentially install and hands off with the right settings. Start the car it starts recording. Stop the car it stops recording. I'm quite happy with the K1S.

UPDATED 12 October 2017:Whatever you do, DO NOT PURCHASE THIS CAMERA SYSTEM. It is a complete and utter piece of crap. My husband and I have this installed in each of our two vehicles. The one in his car is one month older than the one in mine. We've had them for 19 months and 18 months, respectively. Both systems are unreliable! His system gets used 5 days a week and is not hooked to permanent power. For the last few months it has started to freeze up and stop recording - but the start/stop/save file button is still lit red as though the system is recording. It has also stopped accepting input from the rear camera and now only records from the front camera - that is, when it records. He's never used it while parking and reformats the memory card at least bi-weekly (his fills up before the week is over and starts deleting old files to make space for new ones).Both of them somehow forget the date and time, leading to the files all being created and named like "20150101-0000_CAM1_0001.mp4" and that makes it impossible to find the correct file you want to view. They both randomly stop and restart recording. His will sometimes just stop recording and not restart (and not freeze up). Other times, he'll plug it in and get the three tones that let you know it's powered up, and yet the camera will either never start recording or it will wait a random amount of time before recording (sometimes as long as 10 to 15 minutes).These cameras are among the worst purchases we have ever made! Do yourself a favor and buy a different dash cam for your car. This is not the dash cam you're looking for.Original review follows...Just received this via Fedex today. Took a couple of hours to install in my husband's car with his help. The cameras are even smaller than we expected and are probably not going to be noticed by a casual observer. Some things to know about placement and installation:1. If you have the third brake light at the top of your rear window and a fair slant to the rear window, then you'll want to mount the camera as far to the rear as you can without getting too close to the rear defrost wires. Otherwise, the camera's view may be quite impaired by the third brake light's housing.2. The cables can be hidden behind the edge of interior trim, such as the headliner. This enabled us to use a grand total of three cable clips for camera installation.3. The DVR unit fits perfectly in the glove compartment, with the cables routed up from the bottom with no danger of pinching them.4. Be sure to do a dry run of the placement of the cameras before actually sticking them to the window.5. If you can, I would recommend providing power to the unit in order to check exactly what the cameras see before you stick them to the window.6. Remember to remove the protective covering over the camera lenses. My husband initially forgot to do this on the front camera and you could definitely see the difference between the "before" and "after".7. The GPS device works perfectly fine from inside the glove compartment. We haven't seen a need to use the 3M sticky tape to install it elsewhere in the vehicle.Other things that are helpful to know:1. The unit functions perfectly fine without the battery - EXCEPT that the file containing the last few minutes of your trip can be corrupted due to the sudden loss of power.2. Due to #1, we installed the button on the center console to enable my husband to power the unit on and off. This appears to terminate recording, but the unit may still have power until you unplug it from the cigarette lighter, at which point it will sound some kind of alarm and then power down.3. The DVR unit is actually very small; slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes.4. Video playback on the DVR unit will only be suitable to view the overall event - not for getting fine details such as a license plate.5. There is a playback executable stored on the DVR unit (the software doesn't require installation). If you connect the DVR unit to your computer to watch the files, plug the microUSB connector into the port marked USB - NOT the port used to provide power to the unit from the cigarette lighter in your car. The USB port is on the opposite side of the DVR unit.6. When playing the video back either using the executable or simply playing it back using QuickTime, you can actually make out license plates very well when they're within about 10 or 15 feet of you. (We weren't sure how well we'd be able to see them since the only good review footage we had seen was from Techmoan, who lives in the UK where their license tags are quite a bit larger than in the US.)7. The playback executable doesn't allow you to drag the time indicator back and forth and seamlessly watch the video. However, it does include a nice map that shows you the start and end points of the route driven for that set of files.8. Using QuickTime, you can drag the time indicator back and forth and seamlessly watch the video, but all you get then is the raw video footage. It's also played back in a slightly larger video window than with the executable.9. Configuring the DVR unit is pretty easy, but it should be done outside of the vehicle to maximize your comfort. Remember to change the time zone that the DVR unit thinks it's in so the time on playback is correct. The default appears to be GMT +4, while US Central Time is GMT -6. You'll also need to set the time and date when you first receive the kit.The owner's manual is not terribly helpful, though it seems they've made efforts to improve it. The DVR unit's settings can be a little confusing since they aren't always clearly named. For example, the “Split Time” setting controls how long a file is before a new file is started. The default is five minutes and my husband reduced this to two; the only other option is 10 minutes. Longer files will be harder to provide to an insurance agent over the Internet. We have not yet found the setting to disable audio capture inside the car. The sound quality and volume is also better than we were expecting; however, this may be due to the fact we're in a hard-top vehicle, rather than a convertible. Also, the default unit for speed now appears to be miles per hour and my husband has not been able to find the setting that would let him change it to kilometers per hour. (Not that he would change this, but it's important to him to know where it is.) The kit comes with a connector that enables you to route video through the DVR unit to a deck or head unit, which would let you use the rear camera as a back-up camera. And the rear camera's video can be mirrored to make it look as though you're looking at a rear view mirror. The video quality is outstanding! We're both very happy with it and are looking forward to purchasing another one of these for my car.EDIT: When you get this, it's useful to flash new firmware. You can get the updated firmware here: https:// dashcamtalk . com/koonlung-k1s/#Firmware. Once you have it, unzip it, connect the DVR to your computer with the USB cable, copy the file over to the DVR (don't put it in a folder on the DVR), safely disconnect the DVR from your computer, then power up the DVR. It will prompt you as to whether you want to upgrade the firmware. Once you confirm, it takes about 15 seconds and you're done. Upgrading the firmware will give you additional configuration options, such as file lengths as short as 1 minute, and the unit will now talk to you ("Recording starting", "Recording stopped", and something about the GPS).I also found out that the time zone setting controls the time and date the file appears to be written to the SD card, while the time and date setting controls what's actually shown on playback. You have to manually change these both when Daylight Saving Time begins and ends. If you change only one, they will be an hour different, which is confusing.SECOND EDIT: I was having a problem where there would be 6 second gaps between files and I would receive the notification "GPS Ready" multiple times during a trip. Both of these things only happened when the memory card was full. A manual/factory reset (using the small button on the bottom of the DVR) has prevented the 6 second gaps from ever happening again. The "GPS Ready" notifications from the DVR still happen multiple times during a trip when the card is full, but I have verified there is no loss of GPS data. So, this is really a non-issue. I've also learned that this kit works best with a UHS speed class 3 memory card (I purchased a UHS speed class 1 memory card). Overall, I am delighted with this product and its performance. So much so that I'll be purchasing a second one today (30 March 2016). If you're considering a dash cam, I can confidently recommend this one for your consideration.Added photos showing how it's installed in the car. Some were taken at slightly odd angles. Hopefully, this will give you a better idea of the size of the cameras, GPS puck, and start/stop/lock file button.

I have had the Koonlung/Spytec K1S dashcam in my Toyota Highlander for about three months now, and have logged over 5,000 miles using this dash cam. I love this dual-camera dashcam, and cannot imagine driving a vehicle without the protection that a front-rear dual-camera dashcam gives. And, since a dashcam records your own driving as well as that of others, it's a further incentive to drive carefully and count-to-ten even when provoked by the idiots you sometime unfortunately encounter when on a public highway.The small size of the remote cameras make them inherently stealthy. The separate digital video recorder (DVR) unit is about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Installing the cables for the remote cameras and DVR is non-trivial if done right, though: I paid a professional car stereo firm to make the install, which took a day and cost more than the K1S itself, but no regrets. The cables are beautifully routed, and the install was done exactly how I wanted. See the attached pictures.The K1S does not come with a micro SD memory card, so you have to provide your own: Make sure it's a card specifically designed for memory-intensive applications such as security cameras or dash cams. For example, the SanDisk "High Endurance" SD card. SD cards have a large, but finite, number of write cycles. If you read the warranty fine print for most SD cards you will discover that the warranty is void if used in a dash cam or video monitoring system; only a high endurance SD card, designed to accommodate the much larger number of ongoing write cycles that a dash cam system requires, has a valid warranty when so used. Fortunately, the cost of a high endurance SD card, specifically designed for dash cam use, is not that much more than a regular SD card.Before choosing the K1S, I read the reviews, and was concerned about reports of DVR lockup if an intermittent camera cable or connector occurred. And this happened once during the initial install. The fix is to press the tiny "reset" button on the bottom of the DVR (you will need a straightened paper clip or similar to do this). That resets the DVR, and you're good to go.Yes, the K1S runs surprisingly hot when on, but so far that hasn't been a problem. The K1S uses a battery to supply graceful shut down power, and not a large capacitor. So far that also hasn't been a problem; that is, no evidence of battery swelling or other battery problems.The K1S gives a re-assuring confidence beep when starting and stopping recording, and there is a small, unobtrusive LED that is lit when in the record mode. I find these work great for where I had the DVR mounted; again, see the pictures.The quality of the K1S images is excellent; no problem there. Night time sensitivity is also fine.The K1S can be hard-wired to your vehicle's switched ignition system, so every time your ignition is on the K1S begins link recording, generating user-specified 3, 5 or 10-minute long video files. MP4 format, one file for the front cam, a second synchronized file for the back cam. Seamless transitions between files. When the ignition is turned off, the battery in the K1S allows proper shutdown and closing of the in-progress MP4 files. However, you will need to order the hard-wired kit, which converts your vehicle's 12-volts to the 5-volt micro USB power the K1S requires. The standard K1S comes with a cigarette lighter to micro USB power supply, and it is possible to cannibalize this power supply to a hard-wired power supply, if you're sure you will never need the cigarette lighter version.The K1S quickly formats a blank SD card; I like to zero-out my 64 GB SD card every few thousand miles, if there are no events I want to save.If there is an event of interest, I remove the SD card and use an SD card reader with my iMac, to view and transfer the appropriate MP4 files. The iMac Quicktime program reads these files no problem, and will even allow basic editing, which has so far been limited to trimming an MP4 file to show just a portion of interest.The K1S comes with Windows (.exe) software to allow more extensive editing and the combining of the front and rear cam MP4 files into a single, split-screen MP4, but since I have a Mac I cannot easily run a Windows program. While this can be done using the Apple Bootcamp or Parallels software, it's cumbersome. I instead use a Mac-compatible program called Filmora to combine front and rear cam files.I was so impressed with the K1S that I bought a second unit and installed it on my motorcycle. There is even a hardened version of the K1S, made by Innovv, that offers weatherproof and hardened versions of the remote cameras, and shorter cable lengths for those cameras. However, I found that the automotive version of the K1S worked fine, and has the advantage of swivel adjustment for the cameras that the hardened version does not. Although for the 140° wide-angle lenses, it's not that critical.Although not explained in the too brief user's instruction manual, the microphones on the front and rear cameras can be turned off if desired by toggling the "up" record button while in record mode. When the audio has been turned off, a barred microphone icon will show on the display screen. I keep my mic turned off, first to avoid any wiretapping issues, and second because I don't want my sometimes R-rated verbal comments about another driver's bad driving included with the video; such comments could be embarrassing in retrospect.The K1S comes with an excellent GPS module, locks up quickly and highly sensitive. But while I had the GPS module installed and connected, it can be turned off in the user setup, in which case the vehicle speed is not imbedded at all in the MP4 file. That way you are not creating a record of perhaps exceeding the posted speed limit, even by a small amount, in the event of an incident. You can also user-program the K1S to quit displaying the speed above a user-specified trigger, but I suspect in that event the metadata might still be imbedded in the MP4 file somewhere. Better just to turn off the GPS, I think. But, it's nice to be able to turn the GPS back on if ever needed, since of course you never know when you will want the latitude and longitude of your location (grin). But be clear, that's all you get, just the latitude and longitude (and speed); the K1S is NOT a real-time GPS mapping system.The K1S solves the problem of obvious and possibly view-obscuring windshield-mounted dash cams, and the cameras are so small that even if you know what to look for they are hard to spot. So it's not a theft magnet, or even a red flag for a police officer to spot and "request" (hah) the SD card, in the unfortunate event of an incident involving your vehicle. Another reason for not announcing the presence of your dash cam is what if it turns out the critical event wasn't captured (and the K1S has so far performed flawlessly in that regard, I have been checking the generated files just to satisfy myself that they are being reliably saved), then it will look very bad for you: That is, it will appear that you engaged in "spoliation" because you apparently erased a video file that showed you screwed up, when in fact the video file had not been properly created, as you thought. So best to keep your mouth shut until you have confirmed that there is indeed a video, and you have had a chance to review that video in private.UPDATE: February 2017. After four months of use the control unit died; completely dead. Swapping battery didn't fix. Reset button didn't fix. Temporarily substituted another K1S control unit that I had installed on my motorcycle and it worked fine, so I knew the hard-wired power supply and front and rear cameras were not the problem. Contacted Spytek and requested RMA for warranty exchange, which you can get online from their web site. Sent dead control unit back, got a replacement without any problem. No explanation, though, from Spytek of what failed. The replacement unit has been working okay for about two months. Nevertheless, have downgraded my rating to three stars because of this disconcerting failure. Reliability is critical for a dashcam.FURTHER UPDATE: April 2018. Had another DVR control unit failure. Swapped out with a spare control unit I had available and back in business, but have further reduced my rating to two stars because of these failures. The whole point of a dashcam is that it automatically and RELIABLY creates a video record, available if needed. A shame, because the features of the K1S dashcam are otherwise exactly what I was looking for in a dashcam system.

Randomly stops recording and has to be powered off and on or have the SD Card formatted. Tried various cards all class 10 (32Gb, 64Gb and 128Gb) but all have the same issue. Mine also degrades the DAB radio signal in my car. If I unplug the Camera kit the radio works fine again. I tried putting a ferrite block on the power cord but makes now difference.