Well, lots to say. Firstly, it is a great unit, the camera is quite clear and the screen is a good resolution and a good size, especially if mounting it on top of the dash, not too large to be intrusive of your forward vision and not too small so you have to squint to see anything. I only give the "Packaging" a 4 and "Ease of Setup/Use" a 3, I would have given these a higher rating except for the following (Worth reading);
After having said everything below, this product is still worth buying and is great for the price.
One thing the camera is not, and that is, a night vision camera. The product is advertised as a "Weatherproof Nightvision Camera", if anything it is only "Low Light". At night all you can see through the camera is lights that may be illuminated from some other source, such as a car, or whatever. You cannot see anything being illuminated by the camera's LEDs.
The camera I'm reviewing here I have installed in a 2006 Toyota Corolla and you can't see anything by the car's own reverse lights either. So if you want a night vision camera, I would suggest you look at one of the other options with more LEDs.
Another gripe is the instructions for the kit. There are no instructions of any kind whatsoever in the box the kit comes in. There is only a small leaflet for the warranty. And even on that, the translation from Chinese to English is virtually unintelligible. I have to quote this so you know what I mean...
The warranty leaflet states (direct quote),
"The product shelf-life of 12 months. Warranty period from the purchase date. (Not the best English, but we understand it)
Outside the scope of the following three guarantees:
1, more than three bags; (???) 2, due to damage caused by improper use (we understand this); 3, split of the Company moving repairer damage; (???) 4, wear the appearance of shel.(???)"
The manufacturer most definitely needs to source someone who can read Chinese and actually understands English, in other words, a proper translator.
After contacting Chinavasion about the lack of instructions they kindly emailed me a pdf file entitled "The lnstallation of Visual reversing". It does show how to connect the cables to one another, but if you try and follow the written directions that is even quite difficult to understand. You're better off just looking at the images on the product's web page. What it doesn't explain is how to actually install the devices.
If you want instruction of how to actually install the unit into your car you need to Google it using a search term something like, "How to install a wireless reversing camera"
Here's a quick installation tip;
The power wire from the monitor needs to be tapped in to any power source available when the ignition key is turned to "ACC" (Accessories).
The ground needs to be earthed to the car's chassis, i.e. drill a hole and secure the ground wire with a screw.
The camera power wire needs to be tapped in to one of the reversing light power wires.
And as above, the ground needs to be earthed to the car's chassis, i.e. drill a hole and secure the ground wire with a screw.
And also due to the lack of instructions you will have no idea what the three buttons on the rear of the monitor do until you have it installed and working and start playing around with them. I discovered that they are for adjusting the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Tint and changing the view from 16:9 to 4:3.
To my mind this is highly unprofessional. This is a great product, but the issues mentioned only serve to portray an image of these products being cheap and nasty, certainly not one of quality, especially for products sold internationally. Chinavasion, you need to take this issue seriously and do something about this type of problem with whomever you source the products. It is a major issue with many devices.
And lastly, being wireless you can expect to get some intermittent interference of the signal from transmitter to receiver displaying as static lines on the monitor. You will find this being the case with any wireless camera like this. It is only relatively minor interference though and for the sake of not having to feed cables from one end of the car to the other and having to pull the trim apart to do it neatly, it's a minor issue one can easily live with.
