Hi, I'm an IT Pro, and so while I understand the technology, I'm not familiar with dashcams as I have never had one. I'm also a car nut, but car stereos/headunits/speakers never interested me, I'm good with stock speakers, though I always wanted a full PC in a double DIN headunit when I was younger and had an '89 Mustang. Anyways, recently my buddy's father (also a friend) asked me to help with a new headunit and dashcam for his older vehicle (temporary, up to 2 years or so). So I looked into these for him and I was shocked to find very few known, reliable, trustworthy manufacturers, with good reputations actually made dashcams. All the "best" dashcams seem to be from seemingly unknown (at least to me, despite working in IT for nearly 20 years and being a nerd, so being a tech enthusiasts for 30 or so years) companies. Ok, so some are Korean, some are British, but the most commonly recommended is Viofo, an unknown Chinese company (which in and of itself isn't an issue, I use Lenovo and TP-Link regularly, but they aren't unknown, nor are they connected to the CCP like Hikvision and Huawei).

Who are these companies? Where are the known tech manufacturers?

Ok, so digging a little deeper I found Garmin and JVC (which is Kenwood), but they aren't well reviewed (at least most of the Garmin models aren't great). I found Cobra and Escort (brands well known to car people), and further research found what appear to be very good dashcams from Kenwood (the DRV-N520 dual camera system), Alpine (DVR-C320R dual camera system) and even Pioneer! Great, now we're gettinf somewhere here. But no one who focuses on dashcams seems to include these brands, nor can I find much of their hardware specs such as which sensor or SoC they use. But at least the Kenwood and Alpine do support WDR (a new term for me, but it appears to be basically HDR). Not even the Linus Tech Tips dashcam review roundup included these dashcams. But the few YT videos and reviews (which are more marketing, such as the Crutchfield site) I can find on the Kenwood and Alpine seem to indicate these are very good cameras.

Does anyone know why these aren't including in review roundups? Where I can find proper thorough reviews on these models? Where I can find technical specifications such as the image sensor, hopefully both use at least a Sony Starvis, or Starvis 2 (doubtful based on age) sensor.

Any thoughts on these cameras?

The thought process with the Kenwood and Alpine would be to pair them with a compatible headunit so that the dashcam can be configured from the headunit and video played back from the headunit (when not driving of course) and keep it as simple as possible for my friend. He's in his late 60s/early 70s and while not intimidated by technology, he, along with most people of that generation are getting left behind by UI/UX designers (even I am starting to have issues with the way app UI/UX design is going these days and I am only 40 and work IT lol, but at least with me, it's fundamental differences of opinion the subject). Integration with the headunit makes a lot of sense for ease of use. I think I'd prefer the Alpine dashcam and headunit, the UI/UX looks slightly more modern than the Kenwood, but the Kenwood headunits that are compatible with the Kenwood dashcam have a model that has a CD/DVD player, which is a preference for my friend.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Alternatives? Any have either of these dashcams and headunit pairings and can tell me about your experiences with them?

Thanks in advance!