Travel Tuesdays: Vava 2K Dual Dash Cam

Initially front-facing affairs deployed to prevent insurance scams (and spot meteors), dash cams have transformed into two-camera affairs that also monitor drivers and passengers—and can even record the police during pullovers. Not just for Lyft drivers any more, one of the better dual-camera dash cams we've tested is Vava's 2K VA-VD009.

Put through its paces over several hundreds of miles of city, highway, and country roads, the $200 Vava 2K Dual Dash Cam delivered crisp 1600p recordings and worked well with its smartphone app. It doesn't include a microSD memory card (a 32 GB card is about $8 on Amazon), but it does come with a remote snapshot button that enables you to take a quick picture without having to awkwardly reach up or over to push a button on the camera itself. With a 2-inch LCD display, it's easy to aim and the camera's barrel-shaped body is relatively small at about 4.25 inches wide and 1.5 inches high. (Some localities will give you a ticket if there's anything bigger than 7-inches across stuck on the windshield.)

We found the Vava 2K Dual Dash Cam's features were comparable to others in the category: a parking monitor mode, loop recording, and automatic crash recording in standby mode. Its battery lasted for several days watching a parked car without incident, and it dutifully recorded moments when we triggered its motion sensors by closing the lift gate or slamming a door. The front 1600p camera produced clear video in a variety of circumstances. The rear or interior camera did an impressive job with its 1080p wide-angle lens. It captured not only driver and passenger positions up front but also both side windows and rear seats and out the back windows of our test SUV, certainly enough video coverage to show any events that transpire.

Using built-in Wi-Fi, the associated free app allows you to play or download any videos to your phone and make adjustments like the length of loop recordings, G-sensor sensitivity, and disabling the parking mode. You can also turn off audio recording, the LED indicator (to make it less conspicuous) and the rear camera for privacy.

While $200 for a dash cam may sound profligate in a market where models are available for as little as $30, the Vava 2K Dual Dash Cam delivers a quality picture and security features that make it worth the investment.