70mai A900 Series Goes Official With Dual 4K HDR and Up to 30 Days of Parking Protection

Dash cams are getting much better at recording what happens on the road, but the everyday annoyances are still there. Thick cables, poor night footage and parking modes that drain the battery can make even an expensive camera frustrating to use. 70mai thinks its new A900 Series can fix some of those problems.

The new lineup includes the 70mai A900 and A900 Ultra, with both models set to launch on September 20. The A900 is positioned as the more affordable dual 4K HDR option, while the A900 Ultra is the new flagship.

The biggest upgrade is image quality. The A900 Ultra uses Sony STARVIS 2 IMX678 sensors on both the front and rear cameras, recording native 4K HDR rather than upscaled footage. That's more than eight million pixels per frame on each camera.

There is also much more control over the image. Drivers can adjust color tones, contrast and exposure, while HDR can automatically switch based on the time of day. That could be particularly useful at night, when headlights can easily wash out license plates.

70mai also introduces Lumi Vision for very dark environments. According to the company, it can operate in lighting as low as 0.1 lux by adjusting exposure, gain and noise reduction.

This is one of the changes I find more interesting. Instead of using a bulky rear-camera cable, the A900 Ultra uses a slim LVDS connection. It carries the rear 4K video without re-encoding it and cuts latency to around 20ms. More importantly for most owners, the thinner cable should be much easier to hide behind the car's trim.

Pairing the camera with the optional Battery Pack Mini also means you don't have to modify the car's factory wiring. That's a small detail, but it could make installation far less intimidating.

Parking protection is another major focus. The A900 Ultra drops standby consumption to just 5mA, with 70mai claiming up to 30 days of parking surveillance when used with its Battery Pack Mini.

It can also save up to 190 seconds before an impact, rather than recording only what happens after a collision. Meanwhile, 4G Cloud+ 2.0 adds remote access, including live viewing and playback.

The A900 isn't quite as ambitious, but it still gets 4G Cloud+ 2.0, Wi-Fi 6, five-system GPS, voice control and support for microSD cards up to 512GB.

The A900 Ultra looks like the star here, though. Dual native 4K recording is nice, but I'm more interested in the practical improvements: cleaner installation, much lower standby consumption and better footage before an accident happens. Those are upgrades drivers may actually notice every day.