DashOne Pro 4x zoom: does it stay clear?

The 4x zoom on mine is basically unusable, so I just leave it alone. Plates turn into mush and it’s not worth fiddling with settings. If I need a plate I’ll just pull the card and squint at the footage after.

I’ve had mine since last fall and I mostly use the zoom when I’m stopped at a light and want to read a plate or a sign ahead. For me it depends a lot on the time of day and how close the car is. In good daylight and maybe two or three car lengths away, the 4x is actually okay enough that I can make out numbers if I pause the video on the little screen or pull the card and look at it on my laptop. It’s not crisp like a normal photo, but it’s readable more often than not.

Where it falls apart for me is at night or when there’s a lot of motion. Headlights wash everything out and the plate just turns into a bright blob. I also noticed that if I zoom while driving, the whole thing gets shaky and that makes it worse than the zoom itself. So now I only really bother with it when I’m sitting still.

I don’t think there’s a hidden setting that fixes it, at least not that I found. I poked around the menu a bit when I first got it and didn’t see anything that made a big difference. It’s just kind of a limited feature on this camera. I still use it sometimes because it’s handy for getting a rough idea of what’s ahead, but I don’t count on it for anything important. Curious if yours is worse in low light too or if it’s blurry even in the daytime.

Mine doesn’t get blurry at 4x, so I don’t think that’s just normal for this cam. I zoom in on signs and plates pretty often and it holds up fine for me. Maybe yours has a bad unit or the lens is dirty?

I don’t think zoom is that useful for plates at all. Not what I’d base a purchase on anyway. I’m looking at this cam mostly for the parking mode and the wide angle, so 4x being soft doesn’t really move the needle for me.

I was kind of assuming the 4x zoom was mostly a gimmick on these cams, so it’s interesting that some of you actually get usable results. I don’t own one yet, still comparing, but zoom clarity is one of those things I’d probably never trust from the product page alone. Might just be one of those specs that sounds better than it looks in practice.

Mine gets soft once I zoom past 3x, so you’re not imagining it. I mostly just leave it at 2x if I need to read something. Above that it’s a coin flip depending on light.