Looking to buy a new dash cam? Or maybe you’ve never had one, and decided to finally get your first? Then you’re probably wondering how much you should expect to pay for it.
Turns out that as of today, the formula is actually quite simple. Let’s not beat around the bush:
For a decent dash cam with good video quality, the price to expect is:
The number of channels is 1 for a dash cam that records only forward, 2 for a front and rear dash cam, and 3 or 4 for dash cams that record front, rear, and inside the car.
So basically, you decide whether you want to record forward only (1 channel / 1CH), front and rear (2CH), or whether you also want additional channels to record inside the car (3CH and 4CH). Then multiply the total number of channels by 100, and you have a good price estimate in dollars.
Budget tip: If that sounds too expensive and you’d prefer a more affordable cam, you can go as low as about $40 per channel. However, dash cams at that price level will usually be less reliable than the more expensive ones, and record inferior video quality.
Top Good Video Quality Dash Cams Of 2026
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Viofo A119v3Channels: 1 Approximate Price: $100 Video Quality Score: 3.5/5 Vendors: Amazon US / CA / UK – more countries & vendors (ad) Compact, minimalist, no frills. Full review here. |
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Viofo A229 Plus 2CHChannels: 2 Approximate Price: $200 Video Quality Score: 3.5/5 Vendors: Amazon US / CA / UK – more countries & vendors (ad) Best value for money front and rear cam. Full review here. |
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70mai T800Channels: 3 Approximate Price: $300 Video Quality Score: 4.0/5 Vendors: Amazon US / CA / UK – more countries & vendors (ad) Front, rear, and inside recording with top video quality. Full review here. |
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Vantrue N5SChannels: 4 Approximate Price: $400 Video quality Score: 3.0/5 Vendors: Amazon US / CA / UK – more countries & vendors (ad) Records front and rear, plus the passenger cabin from both sides. Full review here. |
In case you’re wondering how our scoring systems works: We evaluate sample videos from users around the world. Each video channel gets two scores from 0 to 5, one for day and one for night recording. The total Video Quality Score is the arithmetic average of those scores.
A score of 0 means you can hardly see anything in the video. 1 means you can more or less see what’s going on, but not read most license plates. 2 means license plate readability is hit and miss. 3 means you can read most plates okay when you pause the video. 4 means you can read license plates even without stopping the feed. The top score, 5, signifies that all details are clearly visible – we give that score only rarely.
Currently the dash cam with the best score is the 70mai T800, with an overall score of 4.0.
To see how each of these models compare to other dash cams in their category, check out our comprehensive dash cam comparison tables. For a detailed description of each camera, go to the full reviews linked above.