Nextbase Rear Window Camera

Verdict

The Nextbase Rear Window Camera is a worthy upgrade to selected Nextbase dash cams. While it doesn’t produce the clearest video, and its night performance could be better, it provides valuable extra footage to help document incidents taking place behind your car. The only real downside is the fact you’ll need to find somewhere to hide another long cable.

Introduction

The Nextbase Rear Window Camera is designed to work with the company’s 322GW, 422GW, 522GW and 622GW dash cams.

It’s a simple, small camera, with a slimline mount for your rear window. Plug it in, do something to tidy up the six metres of cable it’s supplied with, and you’ll be recording up to 1080p rear-view video whenever your dash cam is operating.

Design, features and video quality

• A more involved rear-view upgrade
• Good window mount
• Acceptable video quality

Nextbase sells a range of three cabin and rear-view cameras. While two of them fit directly into the mini HDMI slot on compatible models, this one mounts on your rear window and connects to the camera with a cable.

There are good and bad sides to the way this works. The Rear Window Camera comes with an excellent mount, slimline enough to fit between the demisting wires on your rear screen. The camera fixes on magnetically, is easily aimed, and can be unplugged from its lead – so you can remove it from the car temporarily if needed.

This camera comes with an unusual mini HDMI to four-pole jack cable. As with many rear-view cameras, this cable is six metres long. That’s great if you need to get it to the back of a van or limousine, but you’ll have a few metres spare after it’s made the two-metre journey across a typical car’s headlining.

Nextbase doesn’t sell a shorter version, and I couldn’t find a generic equivalent online. Using your dash cam’s HDMI slot also undoes the USP of Nextbase’s Click&Go PRO mount – you’ll now have a cable to disconnect and reconnect if you remove the dash cam from your car.

Once connected you’ll see the rear camera’s view, picture-in-picture on your dash cam’s screen. You can use this to fine-tune the aim, although this is less critical on the Rear Window Camera than with Nextbase’s Rear View and Cabin View cameras, both of which fix directly to the dash cam body.

This is a fairly good camera. Its 1080p native resolution is plenty enough to record the events going on behind you, particularly during the day.

It’s worth mentioning that the resolution you get depends which Nextbase dash cam you have. The 622GW supports the full 1080p. So do the 522GW or 422GW, but only if you drop their front resolution to 1080p. If you stick with 1440p at the front, you’ll have to settle for 720p to the rear. With the 322GW you don’t get a choice – fit this camera and you’ll get 1080p front and 720p rear.

At night, the Rear Window Camera is dependent, like other rear-view cameras, on streetlights and other cars’ headlights. It still captured a decent amount of detail, including the number plates of cars following directly behind, provided there were a few moments of favourable light. It also clearly picked up the reflection of my brake lights on some surfaces, particularly on other cars’ front number plates.

As with other rear-facing cameras, you’re unlikely to record much at all in the dark away from cities or lit sections of road. But while this isn’t the best rear camera I’ve tested at night, it’s still able to pick up important details that could help document an incident and protect you from false claims. Perhaps more pertinently, if you’ve got a Nextbase dash cam, it’s the best option you’ll get.

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