The Jomise K7 1600P Dashcam Is Great If You're Always Stuck in Traffic

The Jomise K7 1600P offers standard dashcam features, but also some handy driving aids.

Most dashcams are sort of like auto insurance: you're glad you have it, but if you need it, you're probably not having a great day. The latest and greatest dashcams keep increasing the resolution and even number of cameras in the package to cover every possible angle, but don't offer much else to aid your day-to-day driving.

The Jomise K7 1600P Dashcam is different.

It's a dashcam, yes, but that's not all it is. In fact, it has a few features that help your everyday driving—not just those awful cases where you have an accident and need to prove it wasn't your fault.

What's in The Box?

Some dashcams come loaded with various accessories. That wasn't the case here. In the box you'll find the dashcam itself, a USB cable for power, the power adapter, and a piece of electrostatic film used to attach the dashcam to your windshield.

We've seen dashcams that include tools for properly hiding the power cable inside your vehicle's interior trim, but not the Jomise K7. Granted, this part is optional, but if you want to integrate the K7 into your interior, you'll need your own tools.

Specifications

As the full name implies, the Jomise K7 records video at up to 1600P. Specifically, it uses a video resolution of 2560x1600 at up to 30 frames per second.

To capture that video, the K7 features a Sony Starvis IMX415 and an f/1.6 six-glass lens. Like the six-glass lens on the AUTO-VOX V5 we reviewed earlier this year, this is meant to filter out glare. That said, unlike the 145-degree angle on that dashcam, the camera in the Jomise K7 shoots at a 170-degree super wide-angle.

Features

At the top of the review, I mentioned the Jomise K7 1600P Dashcam has features you won't often find in other dashcams. Now let's take a closer look at what exactly they are.

Two of the most interesting features aim to help you keep your attention on the road, or rather, they force your attention back to it.

The first is a traffic light change reminder. The camera will let you know via its built-in speaker when the light changes from red to green, meaning you won't hold up traffic behind you.

If instead you're stuck in traffic, waiting for someone who hasn't noticed that the light has changed, the Jomise K7 can help you here too. After you've come to a stop, it will let you know when the car in front of you starts to move.

These two features may not sound like much on paper, but if you drive home from work in heavy traffic every night, they'll help you relax on your way home, however slightly.

The Jomise K7 also features a built-in GPS tracker, with no external dongle necessary.

In a less useful but more flashy move, the K7 also boasts it's the only driving recorder with a custom screensaver. I'm not sure exactly why you'd need that, but hey, it's there.

Installing the Jomise K7 Dashcam

Mounting the Jomise K7 1600P is slightly different than any dashcam I've tested to date. Instead of simply peeling the protection from the adhesive on the back and mounting it to the windshield, there's an intermediate step.

You get a small sheet of electrostatic film that you are meant to place on the windshield first. Then you attach the camera to this. It may seem unnecessary, but it means that if you remove the dashcam, you're not stuck with any leftover residue.

I learned this the hard way, so I'll mention it before I mention anything else: Before you mount the camera, make sure to insert the Micro SD card you're going to use and plug in the power cable. This is much harder to do after the camera is mounted, so you'll save yourself some time and headaches this way.

Once the dashcam is mounted to your windshield, all that's left is to plug it into the included power supply, which plugs into your vehicle's power outlet. As I mentioned earlier, after this, it's up to you to decide how you're going to deal with any excess cabling.

Initial Setup & Configuration

The first thing you'll notice after you plug in the camera and start your vehicle is the welcome message. This is nice. Immediately after this message, the camera will rudely display a QR code and start shouting at you to download an app to activate the camera. This is less nice.

The app this QR points to is the hiDashCam app. I've never used this before, but it wasn't as bad as I initially feared. While this does use the cumbersome "connect to the dashcam's built-in Wi-Fi" approach, the app actually found this on its own and connected without much trouble.

This app isn't just how you activate the camera. It's how you do any sort of setup with the camera. Even if you just want to adjust the resolution or turn WDR on or off, you need to connect the app to the dashcam and adjust things this way.

While the dashcam has a touchscreen, there isn't actually much you can do with it. You can swipe from a preview of what's recording to a setup guide that lets you line up the horizon and another option to preview a given recording, but that's it.

Using the app you can set the resolution and enable the various driving aids mentioned above. You can also turn on Emergency Recording, which will automatically record when the camera notices sharp braking, sharp turning, or anything that could be a collision.

Using the Jomise K7 Dashcam

Once you've got the Jomise K7 set up to your liking, you should largely be able to forget about it. It turns on and starts recording whenever you turn your car on, so as long as you leave it plugged in, you shouldn't ever have to think about it.

Like many dashcams, the K7 uses loop recording by default. This means that as your memory card fills up, it will remove overwrite old recordings with new ones. You don't need to worry about manually formatting your memory card, but in case it is in the wrong format when you insert it, you can use the app to format the card without removing it from the camera.

The Jomise dashcam has a built-in G-sensor to detect possible accidents. When it notices these, it will automatically lock the current loop recording, so you won't accidentally overwrite footage of a possible accident.

The K7 also features a Parking Monitor. This means that even when your car is turned off, if the G-sensor notices a bump, it will start recording so you don't miss any possible parking lot hit-and-run incidents.

Some dashcams, especially older ones, didn't always make their footage the easiest to access. With the Jomise K7, you don't even have to pop out the Micro SD card. One of the advantages of the app-based approach is that it makes it easy to add any videos of possible incidents to your phone's built-in photo gallery, no matter whether you're running an Android or iOS device.

The driving aids that Jomise advertises are truly handy. Even if you're an unusually attentive driver, hearing the prompts for light changes and the car ahead of you moving can make driving a subtly nicer experience.

Picture and Video Quality

Dashcams are by their very nature utility cameras, so I've never looked at dashcam footage and thought "wow, that looks amazing." The Jomise K7 1600P remains firmly in that camp, but I will say that it recorded some of the best-looking dashcam footage I've seen to date.

Part of this is because of the near-4K resolution. Another part of it comes from the optional Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) color. This is somewhat similar to HDR, but here it's meant to be more practical rather than flashy. For example, it could better help police to track down a hit-and-run by letting them better see the color of the car that hit you.

WDR also helps with night vision. Between the glare filtering from the six-glass lens and the additional visibility provided by WDR, this is among the best night vision we've seen in a dashcam. It's certainly a big step above any dashcam without either of these two features.

It's not all down to resolution, as the Jomise K7 produced better-looking footage than some 4K dashcams I've reviewed, like the Viofo A129 Pro Duo. Compared to that camera, nighttime image quality was noticeably better.

Should You Buy The Jomise K7 Dashcam?

If you're going to have a dashcam, you might as well have one that's useful for driving in addition to lowering your insurance rates. That said, you're not exactly getting the extra features built-in to the Jomise camera for free.

There are two negatives here, neither of which are deal-breakers. The first is that you need to companion app to control any of the settings. The second is that this is only a front-camera setup. Jomise sells other cameras with included rear cameras, but that isn't the case here.

Assuming you've already got a dashcam, you may not want to upgrade just for the handy features here. But the Jomise K7's resolution, simplicity, and extra features do make it worth recommending. If you don't have a dashcam already, this is absolutely one you should consider.

If you're looking at buying the Jomise K7 1600P soon, you can even save some money, as the company is offering a coupon code to our readers. With the code 8HN286QR, you get 30 percent off the price, which combined with the on-page Amazon offer means you'll pay just $109.99 compared to the list price of $199.99. But be quick, this offer ends at midnight January 31st 2021.

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