Vantrue N2 Pro Uber Dual Review

If you make some or all of your income from driving people places, whether it be in a taxi or as part of a rideshare service, we think the Vantrue N2 Pro Uber Dual is the perfect dash cam to provide you with solid evidence should a lawsuit or complaint be thrown your way. If you're not a taxi or rideshare driver the N2 Pro is still a great camera, but is probably overkill.

Performance Comparison

Video Quality

Earning the top score in this metric, the N2 Pro was able to impress us with its footage at almost every turn. It is also one of the few models around that offers a cab-facing camera to record the driver and passengers, as well as a road-facing camera. We highly doubt anybody is going to find the N2 Pro's video lacking.

The Road-Facing Camera

The front-facing camera sports an incredible 2.5k (1440p) high definition resolution. This results in very clear footage that looks like it came from one of the latest smartphones. The colors are also quite vibrant, making the footage more than worthy of posting on social media if you happen to encounter something incredible on one of your drives.

In daytime conditions, we had almost no issues with being able to clearly read license plates. Even when a car was moving fast in relation to the camera, we were almost always able to grab a still frame that yielded a readable license plate. At nighttime, the image was still crisp and vivid with the camera's ability to display a wide dynamic range even more apparent. However, the camera did tend to blur fast-moving license plates a bit more at night, especially if that plate was in the vicinity of a bright street light. The camera does offer the option of reducing the resolution to 1080p HD and increasing the frame rate from 30 frames per second to 60, essentially doubling the number of screengrabs from which you could potentially find a readable license plate. This definitely helps alleviate the problem, but there were some isolated incidents where we still couldn't read the plate of a car speeding quickly by. This is the only minor weakness of the front-facing camera, and you would have to be very unlucky to end up with no footage where you could read a car's license plate.

Some cameras, namely the AUKEY DR02, actually did a slightly better job of reading license plates at night, but still couldn't match the daytime quality of the N2 Pro. In normal use, we doubt these minor differences in night-time performance will be very noticeable, so we wouldn't count it as a huge strike against the N2 Pro.

The Cab-Facing Camera

The unique cab-facing camera provides both video and audio of the car's driver and passengers. Outside of rideshare and taxi drivers, this feature probably isn't useful, but for those that do often have paying passengers in their car, it can be a lifesaver in the instance that you need to seek compensation for damage done by an unruly passenger.

The rear camera drops the maximum resolution to 1080p but constantly records at 60 frames per second. We found the footage to be perfectly clear and never had any instance where camera quality was what would have limited the footage's usefulness. It also has a 140˚ field of view, which is wide enough to cover the entirety of pretty much any car cabin. To top it off the camera has infrared lights and sensors, so even in complete darkness, you get a usable image. Sure, these nighttime images lose a bit of the detail of their daytime counterparts, but they're still more than adequate for seeing what you and your passengers are doing.

Video Capture

The N2 Pro also led the scoreboard in our video capture testing. Like all of the cameras we tested, we were unable to find a record of any instance when the N2 Pro's G-sensor failed to detect a crash or other incident and protect the resulting footage from being overwritten. Also like all of the other cameras we tested, the N2 Pro automatically starts recording when you turn your car on.

The N2 Pro offers multiple options for its loop recording clip setting, including 1, 3, and 5 minutes. When its G-sensor detects an event, it will protect the current clip from being overwritten. You can choose to either use 1-minute clips that won't take up as much space on the memory card, or longer 5-minute clips that reduce the chance that an accident will occur at the end of a clip and thus have most of the action happening on the next un-protected clip. We feel like these options cover pretty much any preference. Some cameras do offer longer 10-minutes clips, but most lack that shorter 1-minute clip option.

The N2 Pro also can create timelapse videos. When creating a timelapse you can select for a photo to be taken once every 1, 5, or 10 seconds. Those photos are then played back at 30 frames per second to create a timelapse. This is a nice feature if you're looking to record a memento of an entire road trip — just remember that in this mode normal recording is shut off. That means if you get into an accident you'll likely only end up with 1 or 2 photos of the incident, rather than actual video.

The one downside in terms of video capture is the lack of built-in WiFi, so there is no way to wirelessly send video from the camera to a mobile device. However, for the rideshare drivers this camera is aimed at that probably isn't a huge deal. Professional drivers likely aren't uploading lots of video to share on social media, they probably only save footage in the event of a driving mishap. In those rare instances, having to upload video off of a memory card doesn't feel like too much extra effort.

Snapshots

The N2 Pro has an emergency button on its face that has multiple functions. When you're driving and recording video, pressing this button will take a snapshot of what the camera is seeing and protect that photo from being overwritten. This is a unique feature and can be helpful if you know you're right behind a car whose license plate number you need to remember.

Storage

High resolution and two different cameras recording continuously sounds like a recipe for quickly running out of storage space. Luckily the N2 Pro accepts micro SD cards of up to 256GB. Also, if you're riding without passengers you can turn off the cab-facing camera to save some space.

Interface

Despite a thoughtful design, the relatively small screen of the N2 Pro provides a less-than-ideal experience. This combination earned it a fairly average score for this metric.

The N2 Pro has two buttons on its face: an emergency button that is mostly used for taking snapshots, and an "OK" button. There are also four buttons on the bottom of the device, right below the display screen, for navigating menus. We like this layout, as when scrolling through long menus it is a bit more comfortable to pinch the body of the camera and press buttons with your thumb than it is to stab at front-facing buttons with your outstretched finger like you're fencing.

Overall, we like the design of both the controls and menus. Even with a huge bevy of features and settings we never felt anything was hard to navigate to or to adjust. That being said, such big menus do feel a bit cramped on a relatively small 1.5-inch screen. In the grand scheme of things, we're actually glad the screen isn't larger though, as it would make an already big camera even bigger.

Visual Footprint

With two cameras and loads of extra features, the N2 Pro is, by necessity, much larger than most cameras. This pushed it to the bottom of the scoreboard in our visual footprint testing.

On top of being large (the camera itself is 3.5" x 1.5"), the rear-facing camera and mounting design dictate that the N2 Pro should be placed up high on your windshield, near the rearview mirror. This more conspicuous location makes it much more noticeable than cameras that can hide away in the corner of the windshield. To top it all off, the suction cup mount is also on the larger side, though this will likely be partially or completely obscured by your mirror.

All of that aside, we highly doubt anyone is going to find the footprint overly obtrusive. You'll certainly be able to notice it in your peripheral vision, but that active recognition will likely fade away quickly. However, unless you really need a cab-facing camera, we would likely opt for something smaller.

Value

The N2 Pro Uber Dual is a much larger investment than most dash cams. If you're a rideshare or taxi driver that will make use of the cab-facing camera, then that high price is completely worthwhile. However, for most drivers that don't need a cab-facing camera, there are more modestly-priced options.

Conclusion