Review – Nexar Beam GPS Cam

I’ve been wanting a dashcam for quite some time and if I would have had this a few months ago, the insurance company would have treated my wife’s car accident a LOT differently. Anyway, as you all know, I occasionally get offered free stuff in consideration for a review and while not all of them make it to the pages here, I definitely wanted to share this one.

First off, setup simply couldn’t be easier. It took me all of 10 minutes tops and that’s including everything from signing up in the app to hiding the cam wires. 

Check it out:

• Excellent 1080p with wide 135-degree captures
• Unlimited free cloud uploads from your phone
• Removable MicroSD card storage
• GPS 
• Traffic and accident warnings

While you need your phone and have it paired with the Nexar app for GPS and traffic/accident warning, it will still record without your smartphone and you can retrieve recordings via the microSD card. The Beam is a small square black box that fits perfectly behind the rearview mirror and with the wide capture, you’ll always capture everything in front of you.

Nexar did a nice job on the phone app too. It’s super-easy to connect to the camera and it has a well-organized, intuitive, easy to navigate interface. Really, the only drawback that I found is getting it synched while sitting in my driveway. You have to connect your phone to the Beam via its Wifi and if you’re still connected to your home internet, you have to go into settings and manually switch to the correct option. Otherwise though, it’s ultra-easy to set up and use.

Once your trip is over, you can save a clip and even grab an insurance report in the event of an accident and if you catch something really cool, you can publish it to Nexar’s social media channels. 

To be honest, I received this cam a while back and due to life and other issues, I kept putting installation off. I kind of figured it would be a pain in the butt to install but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Like I said, I was done in a matter of minutes.

It was also really easy to set up my wife’s phone so that she could record when driving without me. I just had to give her the code sent to my phone when she was setting up and show her how to get it rolling.

All-in-all, it’s a great little cam and while I’ve never priced them nor do I have a competitor product to really compare it to, I have to say that for the price of this (just $129 at Amazon), the ease of setup and use, and the video quality make the Nexar Beam a great purchase.

You never know when an accident, theft, or other events will happen, and having the recordings from this great little dash cam could be invaluable.