Photos and Features
With the accessories all aside, there are just the two main cameras that make up the Vantrue Nexus 5. The larger of the two is the front-mounted camera which has the screen and controls everything. That is just under 5 inches at 123 mm long and 43 mm tall. The rear camera is smaller at 86 mm wide and 30 mm tall, significantly smaller than the front camera.
I touched on it in the packaging section but the main camera for the Nexus 5 does come with a white sticker covering up the entire screen to protect it. This gave Vantrue a nice location to put instructions on how all of the buttons work. Specifically touching on press and long press actions which each of the five buttons has. With the sticker off you can see the 3.19 Inch display which takes up most of the space. Next to that on the right is the inside-facing camera. The Nexus 5 has 4 cameras in total. The front inside-facing camera is a 1080p camera and has a lens angle of 160° to pick up most of the interior. You can twist the camera independently from the display part to angle it down or up depending on your installation. Around the display is a black bezel that has the Vantrue branding as well as the Nexus 5 model name.
Flipping around to the front of the front main camera we have the grey section on the left with the Vantrue branding, this is where the interior camera is. Then in the middle is a recessed area for the magnetic mount. This has a five-pin pass-through to pass the power from the USB connection that hooks to the mount as well as to communicate with the GPS which is in the mount. Then on the right is the main camera which is set apart from the other three with a large lens and it also supports a CPL filter that Vantrue sells to cut down on reflections and increase contrast. This camera has a higher resolution than the rest with a max resolution of 2592x1944P at 30 FPS. This is a Sony STARVIS 2 IMX675 5M Ultra-low light sensor and supports a Wide Dynamic Range.
The ends of the main camera are round, fitting the overall design of both cameras which are tube-shaped. One side has the N5 branding, this is the end that would be farther away from the driver. Facing the driver is the side with a bright orange button in the middle. This is the power button when you long press it, but a short press will trigger an event and save all four current videos. That same end also pops off and under it, you have a small reset button and the micro SD card location. The Nexus 5 doesn’t come with a MicroSD card, you will need to provide your own. Vantrue does break down what you can expect for recording length depending on card size as well as how many cameras you are running at the time. It’s too long to break down here but with 4 cameras you can expect 3 hours with a 64 GB card up to 25 hours with a 512GB which is the largest size supported surprisingly.
The top-down view shows off a lot of venting to help keep the Nexus 5 running cool but it also has a Type-C connection for the rear-mounted camera. I’m going to touch on it more when I talk about the installation and performance but I would love to see this also be included in the base mount. In short, you have a nice magnetic mount to make the camera easy to remove but then if you are running the rear camera you have to unhook it still. It just seems like an afterthought. On the bottom, you do have more vents but there is a row of buttons that cuts down on the number of vents possible here. They also have your serial number printed on the bottom and a small IR receiver for the optional remote as well. The four buttons will function differently depending on what screen you are on but there are a few base functions like turning the wifi on or off, turning the microphones on or off, swapping between different picture-in-picture modes for the display screen, and turning on parking mode manually. Right next to them, there is also a small microphone hole as well to make sure it picks you up singing to your music.
I did also get a few shots of the included mount attached to the main camera. You can see the power input on its side and how the mount is angled to fit a windshield angle and keep out of the way of the camera.
Like with the front-mounted camera, the rear camera for the Nexus 5 has two cameras as well which is how we get to a total of 4 cameras. The inside-facing camera has a square design, which houses infrared LEDs just like the inside-facing front camera to light things up at night. For the rear camera, both the side and outside cameras can be adjusted because the mount is built in and isn’t adjustable. This inside-facing camera has the same 1080P resolution and 160° lens angle as the front inside camera. Beyond that, there is another microphone back here, and facing the inside it has the FCC certifications as well as a note that both are 2 MP CMOS sensors.
The outside-facing end of the rear camera has a smaller camera side but that is only because it doesn’t need infrared LEDs to light things up. This camera has the same 1080p resolution but is slightly wider on the frame of view with a 165° lens angle. This end also has the Vantrue branding facing out but most of that is covered by the built-in mount in the center which has 3M double-sided sticky tape preinstalled.
The end view once again shows off the tube shape with both ends being rounded. One has the same wave-like design as we saw on the front camera. Then the other has a Type-C connection that runs all the way and plugs into the main camera.
The shot showing the front and rear camera together really puts the size difference into perspective. The compact design of the rear camera is nice, I do wish that the front camera was a little smaller even if it meant losing the display. Other than when doing a few small adjustments I have mostly just used the app in those situations.
