We’ve been sent the OMBAR DC42 Dash Cam for review. It’s a car dash cam kit with a 4K UHD front camera and a 1080p FHD rear camera, each with a wide F1.8 aperture that allows more light for clear images day and night. The kit ships with a 64GB microSD card and supports cards with up to 256GB capacity.
The distraction-free, screenless camera supports dual-band (2.4 + 5GHz) WiFi connectivity, GPS location recording to show driving routes, voice guidance, and in-car audio recording. The dash cam also includes accident detection with a G-sensor and a 24-hour parking mode, but the latter requires the optional OMBAR 3-lead hard-wire kit, which sadly was not included in our kit. In this review, we will start with the specifications of the OMBAR 42 dash car, go through an unboxing, report our experience installing the cameras in our car (spoiler: it’s much easier than we thought), use it with the Kacam Android app, and finally important the videos into PC software to viewing the footage with GPS location.
OMBAR DC42 dash cam specifications
- Storage – 64GB microSD card
- Cameras
- Aperture – F=1.8
- Front camera resolutions – 3840×2160 (default), 2560×1440, or 1920×1080
- Rear camera resolution – 1920×2080
- Dual-view mode in the Kacam app
- Photo Resolution – 12M/10M/8M/5M/3M
- Video Codec – H.265(4K), H.264
- Photo Format – JPG
- Video Codec – MP4
- Wireless
- Dual-band WiFi (2.4GHz and 5 GHz)
- GPS Track Built-in
- Power Supply – 5V/2.5A via USB port (cigarette lighter port to USB cable provided)
- Temperature Range – Operating: -20°C to +70°C; storage: -30°C to +85°C
Unboxing
We received the DC42 dash cam in its retail package, which also lists key features like 4K front/1080p rear, GPS tracking, 5GHz WiFi, and “24 parking monitor”.
The box contains the following: the dash cam, a rear camera with a 6-meter cable, a 3.5-meter cigarette lighter charging cable, a 64GB microSD card, a pry tool for easy wiring, two double-sided tapes, five cable clips, a user manual, and four electrostatic stickers for cleanly attaching the cameras to the windshields.
Let’s have a close look at the DC42 camera. The front features a 4K camera lens covered by a protective film to be removed before use, and there’s a mechanism with a sticker used to mount the camera to the windscreen and that can be adjusted by up to 60 degrees.
One side of the camera comes with all ports, namely a microSD card slot with a 64GB card, a micro USB port for power, a WiFi button, and a rear camera port (AV-IN), while the other side has a speaker.
Once installed, the driver will be able to see the recording and GPS status LEDs, and that side also has two small holes for the microphone and the reset pin. The model number is CDI0310.
The provided car charger cable supports 12V to 24V input and outputs 5V/2.5A to power both the front and rear cameras.
OMBAR DC42 dash cam installation in Toyota Yaris
We had a dash cam in our previous car, but we had not installed it ourselves since the local seller had done the installation for us. We thought the tricky part would be hiding the cable so that the installation looks neat, but it was much easier than expected. Let’s go through all the steps.
The user manual has some basic installation steps. First, the engine must be turned off for safety.
Then we had to find a suitable place on the rear and front windshields that doesn’t obstruct the driver’s field of vision, clean it, and place the electrostatic stickers after tearing off the protective film. We can then remove the protective film from each camera and firmly stick them inside the white rectangle on the electrostatic stickers.
Adjust the camera angle as needed, and connect the front and rear cameras using the rear camera port (AV-IN) and provided cable.
Insert the car charger cable into the car’s cigarette lighter port and connect it to the front camera’s micro USB port.
Before powering on the camera, ensure the MicroSD card is properly inserted.
You may have to use the WiFi Button at some point:
- Short press during recording – “Locks the video”. It means it triggers an “emergency video” recording that’s kept in the “Event” tag in the Kacam app, and won’t be deleted if the microSD card is full.
- Double short press – Turns the microphone on/off.
- Triple short press – Switches between 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands. (We had to use this since it defaults to 5GHz, and the smartphone used for testing only supports 2.4GHz WiFi)
- Press and hold for 3 seconds – Turns WiFi on/off.
- Single press when connected to USB data cable (not provided) – Switches from charge mode to storage mode
- Press and hold for 10 seconds – Formats the microSD card and resets the camera to factory settings.
At this point, the dash cam is functional, and you’ll see the LEDs turn on when you start the car and also hear voice prompts like “Wi-Fi is On” or “Recording started”. But it’s still a cable mess, so it’s time to use the pry tool to lift the rubber or plastic trim to neatly tuck away the cable. We also used three cable clips for the rear camera’s cable.
Review of the OMBAR DC42 dash cam with Kacam Android app
Kacam is a mobile app designed for dash cameras, allowing users to connect to the camera via Wi-Fi to view live footage, play recorded videos, capture still images, share videos, zoom in on videos, and export videos from the dash camera to their smartphone.
You’ll find the Kcam app on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. Once the app is installed, you can start it and connect your smartphone to the DC42_Dashcam_xxxxxx SSID from the dash camera. Note that the DC42 dash cam supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, but the default setting is 5GHz, and we could not find it at the beginning since the phone used for testing only supports 2.4GHz WiFi. To switch from 5GHz to 2.4GHz, we had to press the Wi-Fi button on the camera three times. After that, we were able to connect to the SSID and find it in the app, connecting to it with the default password: 12345678. The password should be changed in the settings, or anything close to your car, provided it’s turned on, could access your recordings.
You can now tap on the DC42_Dashcam_xxxx icon in the Kacam app to access the Live Video Preview screen with real-time footage captured from the OMBAR DC42 dash camera, which is also being recorded. A red dot blinking in the top left corner of the camera indicates that recording is in progress. By default, the app shows a large window for the front camera and a smaller window in the top left corner for the rear camera. Information includes:
- Date and Time – 15/07/205 07:05:06
- GPS Coordinates – Latitude/Longitude (N18.295 / E99.519)
- Vehicle Speed – 32 MPH (We can switch to KPH in the settings)
- Memory Card Icon – Indicates the microSD card is properly inserted
- Camera Icon – Located in the center for taking screenshots
- Video Resolution – Front Camera: 3840×2160 (4K, default)
- Rear Camera – 1920×1080 (Full HD, default)
- Full screen mode – At the bottom right of the screen, you can switch to full screen mode.
Note that the other options in the Live Video Preview window are not accessible while recording, and you need to press the Stop button to access them.
Here’s a short description of the five other icons:
- Dashcam Albums – To visualize photos (Photo), video recording (Normal), or “emergency videos” (Event). Emergency videos are triggered by the G-sensor (for example, driving on rumble strips or getting into an actual accident, the latter was not tested for this review…) or by the WiFi button (single press). They won’t automatically be deleted once the microSD card is full. You can also download the video to your smartphone.
- Audio Recording – Enable or disable audio recording
- Switch Mode – Switch between video and still picture mode
- Switch Camera (F/R) – Switch front/rear camera mode: single camera or two camera with big/small window, or a total of four modes (see second screenshot below).
- Video Resolution – Front camera resolution (the rear camera is set to 1920×1080).
The gear icon on the top right gives access to the Settings with a long list of options
Some of the most important ones include:
- Picture size: 3M to 12M
- Video Resolution
- Loop Recording – Select between 1, 2, or 3 minutes for each video file on the microSD card (default is 1 minute)
- WDR – Enable or disable wide dynamic range
- Audio Recording – Enable or disable audio recording
- Date & Time
- Speed
- GPS Stamp – Whether to show GPS coordinates on the video
- G-sensor – Used to detect accidents and record emergency videos automatically
- PIP – Picture-in-Picture
- Date/Time Format – Selecting between YY/MM/DD, MM/DD/YY, or DD/MM/YY
- Speed Unit – MPH or KPH
- Time zone
- Volume – Audio volume
- Boot Ringtone
- Frequency – 50Hz or 60Hz)
- Rear Mirror – Mirror the rear camera. Note: We had to enable that one, or the license plates are shown incorrectly (mirrored). It does not seem to impact recording, only visualization in the app.
- Rear Rotate
- GPS Information – Number of satellites, longitude, latitude, and speed
- Car Plate Number – If you want to add your license plate number to the video overlay. Note: Thai characters do not work
- Remaining Time of Recording
- Synchronize Time
- SD Card Information – Free space (e.g., 36.34GB out of 64GB); estimated record times: 32GB: 2 hours, 64GB: 4 hours, 128GB: 8 hours, 256GB: 16 hours
- Format SD Card
- WiFi – Settings for WiFi
- Default Setting – Reset to factory settings
- Firmware Version – DASH-CAM-DC42-230724 V1.0
When the OMBAR 3-lead hard-wire kit is installed, the user can also use the Parking Monitor function, which enables the automatic recording of video when a collision is detected, even when the car is shut off. Since it does not ship with the DC42 dash camera by default, no video will be recorded when the car is turned off, even if there’s an accident or a car break-in while your car is parked. To be honest, we’re not quite sure why they decided to make this an optional accessory…
Exported videos and GPS routes in PC software
Let’s use mediainfo to get information about the recorded video files.
- Front camera:
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mediainfo 20250715070535_0000517A.MP4 General Complete name : 20250715070535_0000517A.MP4 Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 (isom/avc1/mp42) File size : 142 MiB Duration : 1 min 0 s Overall bit rate : 19.8 Mb/s Frame rate : 25.000 FPS Encoded date : 2025-07-15 07:06:36 UTC Tagged date : 2025-07-15 07:06:36 UTC Video ID : 1 Format : HEVC Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding Format profile : Main@L5@High Codec ID : hvc1 Codec ID/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding Duration : 1 min 0 s Bit rate : 19.3 Mb/s Width : 3 840 pixels Height : 2 160 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 25.000 FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.093 Stream size : 138 MiB (97%) Language : English Encoded date : 2025-07-15 07:06:36 UTC Tagged date : 2025-07-15 07:06:36 UTC Color range : Full Color primaries : BT.709 Transfer characteristics : BT.709 Matrix coefficients : BT.709 Codec configuration box : hvcC Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC LC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity Codec ID : mp4a-40-2 Duration : 59 s 968 ms Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 64.0 kb/s Channel(s) : 1 channel Channel layout : M Sampling rate : 16.0 kHz Frame rate : 15.625 FPS (1024 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 468 KiB (0%) Language : English Encoded date : 2025-07-15 07:06:36 UTC Tagged date : 2025-07-15 07:06:36 UTC mdhd_Duration : 59968 |
That’s an MP4 video using H.265 video codec with 3840 x 2180 resolution and 25 FPS framerate. Audio has a single-channel (mono) and is encoded with AAC LC audio codec with 64 Kbps bitrate.
- Rear camera:
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mediainfo 20250715070535_0000518B.MP4 General Complete name : 20250715070535_0000518B.MP4 Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 (isom/avc1/mp42) File size : 73.5 MiB Duration : 1 min 0 s Overall bit rate : 10.3 Mb/s Frame rate : 25.000 FPS Encoded date : 2025-07-15 07:06:37 UTC Tagged date : 2025-07-15 07:06:37 UTC Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L5.1 Format settings : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, Reference frames : 1 frame Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=5 Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 1 min 0 s Bit rate : 9 830 kb/s Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 25.000 FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.190 Stream size : 70.3 MiB (96%) Writing library : h264 Language : English Encoded date : 2025-07-15 07:06:37 UTC Tagged date : 2025-07-15 07:06:37 UTC Color range : Full Color primaries : BT.709 Transfer characteristics : BT.709 Matrix coefficients : BT.709 Codec configuration box : avcC Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC LC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity Codec ID : mp4a-40-2 Duration : 59 s 968 ms Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 64.0 kb/s Channel(s) : 1 channel Channel layout : M Sampling rate : 16.0 kHz Frame rate : 15.625 FPS (1024 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 468 KiB (1%) Language : English Encoded date : 2025-07-15 07:06:37 UTC Tagged date : 2025-07-15 07:06:37 UTC mdhd_Duration : 59968 |
That’s also an MP4 video, but it relies on H.264/AVC video encoding with 1920 x 1080 resolution and 25 FPS framerate. Audio is the same: mono/AAC LC/64 Kbps.
The OMBAR DC42 dash cam will record GPS coordinates in the video, and we can import the videos into a PC software to visualize the route. We tested it with the Dashcam Viewer program available for Windows or Mac OS. We loaded one of the one-minute front videos into the program, and we could see the video itself, a MapQuest map with the route we took, and driving speed. Somehow, the rear camera video was also loaded and shown on the top left corner of the interface.
We attempted to find a similar Linux program that would work on Ubuntu, but we failed to find any.
Night and day video recordings
Here are some examples of recording from the front and rear cameras during the day and at night.
Conclusion
The OMBAR DC42 does what it’s supposed to do as a dual-band WiFi dash cam with both a 4K front camera and a 1080p rear camera with real-time visualization and recording to a provided 64GB microSD card slot, while a G-sensor detects accident or emergency breaking situations for emergency/locked video recordings. It also features a voice guidance system telling the user when recording is on, potential issues with WiFi, and when an emergency recording is detected. In-vehicle audio recording is also supported and can be deactivated in the Kacam Android app if needed. It has a design without a display so that it does not disturb the driver.
However, we were disappointed that it can not record events when the car is parked with the engine off. It can be enabled, but requires an additional kit that costs about $30, and we feel it should be included with the dash car by default. Also, we have been reviewing home security cameras for several years, and the first Smart security cameras with AI features became available in 2020, so we were expecting some AI features in dash cams, but there are none unless you consider monitoring a G-sensor to be AI…
We also wish there were an option to upload videos automatically over WiFi to the cloud or a local server once we are back home, as now we have to either download the videos to the smartphone or remove the microSD card to get the files. It would be good to have a search function to locate specific cars (e.g. license plate), locations, unusual events not detected by the G-sensors, and so on, but we suppose this would have to be done on a computer instead. We did use the Dashcam Viewer program (not made by OMCAR) on Windows to load a video and check the route on a map, along with car speed. Note that the program has a free trial for 30 days, and if you need to use it longer or access special features, it costs $35 and up. Other dash cam programs should work too. Let us know if you have others to recommend.
We’d like to thank OMBAR for sending the DC42 dash cam for review. It can be purchased for $107.99 on the company’s store, but we’d recommend also getting the $29.99 3-lead hard-wire kit (not tested in this review) if you need the camera to work while the car is parked. The company also owns a store on Amazon, but the DC42 is not listed there yet.
CNXSoft: This article is a translation – with some additional insights – of the original review on CNX Software Thailand by Suthinee Kerdkaew.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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