Battle of the Dash Cams: VanTrue N2 Pro vs Falcon Zero F360

Protecting yourself and your drivers with a dash cam is a great idea for all drivers. But with the number of options out there, it’s hard to pick one that’s right for you. Two of the top cams are the Falcon F360 and the Vantrue N2 Pro dash cams, so I had a correspondent from The Rideshare Guy review both cams.

If you’d like to get either cam, you can use our referral links for the VanTrue or the Falcon.

VanTrue N2 Pro vs Falcon Zero F360

The first thing that you can see from this picture is that the Vantrue N2 Pro is a much smaller camera, and the Falcon is a much larger camera. But, notice how the Falcon mounts on the rear view mirror, and the Vantrue has to mount somewhere on the windshield.

You can see from these images that the images on the Vantrue camera are much wider, they’re much nicer, it’s a better resolution. Just about everything about the Vantrue camera is better from an image perspective, and this is true both during the day and during the night.

Venture offers better image resolution but uses more storage

Take a look at these images that were taken at night with the two different cameras. You can see the significant difference in the way things look, especially inside the passenger cabin at night. Again, take a look at the differences between the Vantrue camera and the Falcon camera inside the cabin at night.

Unfortunately, this video quality comes at a cost, and that is the amount of storage that the video requires. I think it’s a combination of the actual quality of the video and the compression that they use.  Also, it has to do with the fact that it stores two complete images whereas the Falcon camera puts both images together, and I think that’s actually where we lose some of the vantage point, but it saves significant amount of size. But, you can buy a 128 gigabyte SD card and, I guess, solve that storage problem.

One other interesting thing that I noticed about the Vantrue camera is that it uses the micro SD card natively whereas the Falcon camera uses the more common SD format. It’s because the camera is so small, right? It has to fit the micro card, not the SD card. But, honestly, the SD format is actually a lot easier to move around and handle. The micro SD card is very easy to lose.  Now, if you’re not transferring the data back and forth very much, then that’s not a big deal. I just thought it was something worth mentioning.

With Vantrue you may need adapters

I really like the Vantrue camera, but it comes with a singular cigarette lighter adapter that then you can plug another thing into. It’s hard wired like this. Basically, if you want to do anything else with your cigarette lighter, you end up having to buy one of these. You also then need to buy a mini USB cable to actually power the camera instead of using what comes with the camera.

There’s another cost element with the Vantrue camera, which is technically optional, but it’s one of the things that makes the Vantrue camera really cool. It’s this $20 mount. This is actually a GPS unit so you can power the device through the GPS unit and then it has actually an electrical connection here. But, this GPS unit then feeds GPS data directly to the camera and that ends up on your video image, which is pretty cool.

What’s really interesting is to take a look at the way video images of license plates of other cars look, both during the day and at night. Here’s a shot from the Vantrue camera of a license plate during the day, and here’s a shot of the Falcon camera of a license plate during the day. Again, here’s a shot from the Vantrue camera of a license plate at night, and here’s a shot of a license plate at night from the Falcon camera.

Vantrue is superior, but it also costs more than the Falcon

In summary, I think the Vantrue camera is actually a much better camera than the Falcon camera. It’s also a much more expensive camera. The Falcon camera is $150. All in, with a 32 gigabyte SD card, you’ve got enough for basic operation right out of the box with $150.

The Vantrue camera Pro is $200 out of the box, and that doesn’t come with a SD card or, in my opinion, the proper powering equipment to power it in your car with anything more than just a single cable. So, you end up spending another $20 to $30, maybe even $40, for a USB card, and you end up spending another $20 or so to get a USB charger splitter and a long USB cable to power the camera. By the time you’re done, you’re looking at another $75, so you’re looking at like $275 versus $150.  Much better camera, but a much more expensive camera.

In the end I think I would pick the Vantrue camera because of the much better image quality. That image quality matters a lot when you’re trying to prove something, especially if you need to get license plate information. So, it’s $100 more at least, but I think that’s $100 well spent.

You can use our referral links to buy the VanTrue or the Falcon. Thanks for reading.