Viofo A329 Review

Introduction

Many high-end dash cameras now come with smart features and driver aids, but the Viofo A329 is focused on image quality. Viofo says it’s the first dash cam to record 60 frames per second at 4K (3,840 x 2160). I’m testing it in a two-channel bundle that also includes a 2K (2,560 x 1,440) rear-facing camera. You can also buy extras, including a permanent wiring kit, Bluetooth remote, and circular polarising filter.

As you’d probably expect, this dash cam has a Micro SD slot, supporting cards up to 512GB. However it’s also the first I’ve encountered that supports external SSD storage – that could be an important option, as I’ll explain in my review. Other than that, this camera is quite short on standard features. There are no AI assistants to give you lane-keeping warnings, for example, and there’s no connectivity to let you monitor your car remotely.

Design and features

• Discreet wedge shape
• Easy to fit, with nice accessories
• Very high video specifications

Like Viofo’s A139 Pro dashcam, the Viofo A329 is a wedge shaped device that mounts almost directly to your windscreen. There are pros and cons to this; while it helps get the dash cam up out of your eyeline, the lack of a hinged hanger means there’s no scope to adjust its left/right roll or yaw – the lens itself can pitch up or down. Fortunately, Viofo provides two electrostatic stickers, which make it much easier to reposition the whole dash cam until you’re happy. Its 6.1cm colour screen helps out with a live view and, in the worst case, there’s a setting to flip the rear camera’s orientation.

This dash camera is only the second I’ve tested to come with a USB-C car power adaptor, and it’s a good one. While the camera’s power port is rated at 15 watts, there’s a second socket that goes up to 30W – good for charging smartphones more rapidly than the standard USB-A port you’ll find in many cars. It’s also worth noting that the two-camera bundle uses a comparatively thin coaxial cable to link the front and rear cameras – that’s a help when it comes to hiding it in your car’s headlining.

Here it’s worth mentioning that the rear camera has a white power LED that could be distracting for you or the drivers behind you, especially at night. There’s no option to turn it off, although you can turn off all the main camera’s LEDs, which does also extinguish the rear one.

Where possible, I like to install products without using the supplied manual, to see if the process is intuitive. Here I fell victim to a gotcha. The Viofo A329 has a USB-C port on its left side, labelled USB.

I assumed this was for the power lead, but it’s actually for connecting an optional external solid-state disk (SSD) – the real power port is unlabelled, discreetly tucked into the top of the windscreen mount. Confusingly, the camera actually works with the power lead in the SSD expansion port, although it proved very unstable until I reconnected it properly.

Having the power in the windscreen mount is a good thing: it means you can click the dash cam on and off its mount and take it out of the car without having to unplug its power cable. That said, I bet I’m not the only user who’s tried to use the on-camera USB port and experienced problems.

Recording at its maximum resolution and frame rate, the front camera creates a huge 308MB file every minute. The rear camera adds a second, 138MB file – together that’s enough to fill a 64GB Micro SD card in less than two and a half hours. With that in mind, it’s great to have the option of using an external SSD up to 4TB in size.

Alternatively, you could adjust the resolution. The Viofo A329 supports 3,840 x 2,160, 3,840 x 1,600, and 2,560 x 1,440 pixels at either 30 or 60fps. The rear camera offers only 30fps, at either 2,560 x 1,440 or 2,560 x 1,080.

You can connect to the A329 with Viofo’s app, which gives you a huge range of settings. This also lets you browse your recordings and download them onto your phone – this is a bit quicker than the norm thanks to fast Wi-Fi 6 connectivity. Alternatively, you can remove the MicroSD card or SSD and browse your recordings from a computer.

The Viofo A329 doesn’t offer cellular connectivity, so it has no smart monitoring functions as you’d get with rivals such as the Nextbase iQ. There’s also no onboard AI to warn you of things like the car ahead moving off, or when you stray out of your lane. In my experience, while the former can be excellent, the latter are of limited use, and usually not as good as the equivalent features built into modern cars.

There is a parking mode, which supports motion-triggered video, timelapse video, or continuous low-bitrate recording. With no onboard battery, however, you’ll need the optional hardwiring kit to support it. This camera also has a knock sensor which can automatically protect recordings in the event of a collision – alternatively you can press the central button to lock files should something important happen.

Performance and video quality

• Very storage-hungry
• Exceptional front video quality
• Unremarkable rear quality

The Viofo A329 is the most storage-hungry dash cam I’ve ever tested. Fitted with a 64GB Micro SD card, it didn’t have enough space for a two and a quarter hour drive. Had I been involved in an incident near the beginning and forgotten to protect the files, they would have been overwritten before I got home.

I regularly drive an eight-hour round trip, and sometimes cover long distances abroad, so at full resolution even a 256GB card might not be enough for my needs. With that in mind, this dash cam’s SSD support makes a lot of sense – especially for professional drivers who might want to keep a few days’ worth of footage. The maximum 4TB disk size ought to be enough to save around twenty, eight-hour shifts. But even if you only drive short distances, I wouldn’t recommend less than a 128GB Micro SD card, which would give you around four hours’ recording.

This huge amount of data would be pointless if the Viofo A329 didn’t deliver on its high specifications. Fortunately it really does. This dash cam produced simply the best quality front-facing videos I’ve seen. Sharp, brilliantly exposed, and incredibly smooth thanks to their high frame rate.

I tested the Viofo A329 in the depths of December, where it was subjected to a mix of murky, rainy conditions, short days, long nights, and harsh, low sun.

It coped brilliantly, never failing to expose detail from shadowy areas, and never struggling even with extreme contrasts. Details such as number plates were captured well, even when moving quickly relative to the camera. Individual frames were remarkably crisp even in low light.

The Viofo A329’s front-facing camera was utterly exceptional at night. It exposed dark, streetlit pavements better than any other dash cam I’ve tested, without being washed out by oncoming headlights. I could decipher many of the number plates I encountered on my trip around the block, with the extra frames compared to 30fps footage sometimes helping me resolve digits that weren’t clear at first.

Like every other two-channel dash cam I’ve tested, the Viofo A329’s rear camera wasn’t as impressive, but it’s still OK. Despite its lower resolution and 30fps limit, it was easy to identify cars and read number plates in daytime footage.

Things weren’t bad into the evening, with the rear camera picking up reasonable, if less crisp footage, well into dusk.

At night, as with other dash cams, video quality was quite dependent on there being a suitable source of light. In many cases my own brake lights were enough to read number plates in rear-facing footage, but this camera wasn’t the sharpest I’ve seen in these conditions. That said, there was generally more than enough detail to show what had happened behind me, even if I couldn’t always resolve a car’s plate.

Should you buy it?