How we evaluate products
Every ranking on Dashlore comes from the same place: a published scoring rubric applied to verified specifications. No product can pay its way up our lists, and every score on the site can be traced back to the numbers below.
Where our data comes from
We build a specification record for every product we cover from the manufacturer's own spec sheets, manuals and product pages, cross-checked against major retailers' spec tables. Each record keeps the source it came from, and we re-check specs when manufacturers update firmware or revise a model.
How a score is calculated
Each category has a rubric: a list of measurable factors, a weight for each, and a range that maps the raw spec onto a 0–1 scale. A product's Dashlore Score is the weighted average of those factors, shown out of 10.
If a manufacturer doesn't publish a figure, we don't guess. It shows as "Not published" in the score breakdown and counts as average (half credit) for that factor, so a missing spec neither lifts nor sinks a product. A few factors where absence means the feature is missing (for example a rear camera's resolution on a front-only dash cam) count as zero instead; the tables below note them. A product needs published data covering at least60% of a rubric's weight before it can appear as a pick.
What a score doesn't capture
Scores measure what a product is built to do on paper. They don't capture things like build quality over years, software polish or customer service. Where those issues are widely reported, our guides call them out separately, with a link to the source, and they never change a product's score.
How we make money
We earn affiliate commissions when readers buy through our links. Commission rates never enter the scoring, and products without any affiliate program are scored and ranked exactly the same way. Read the full disclosure.
Dash Camsrubric v2 · 34 products scored
We score every dash cam on the published specifications that decide whether its footage holds up after an incident: how much detail it records, how it copes with night and heat, what it covers, and whether it keeps watching while you're parked.
| Factor | Weight | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Front resolution | 19% | Plate legibility at distance scales with vertical resolution, so 4K (2160p) resolves plates further away than 1080p. |
| STARVIS 2 sensor | 13% | Sony's STARVIS 2 sensors add dynamic range and low-light sensitivity, which is where budget cams fall apart. |
| HDR | 6% | HDR keeps headlights and plates from blowing out at night. |
| Coverage (channels) | 13% | Rear and cabin channels capture rear-end collisions and passenger incidents a front camera never sees. |
| Rear resolution | 6% | A sharp rear channel reads the plate of the car that hits you from behind; front-only cams score zero here. Counts as zero when absent. |
| Buffered parking mode | 13% | Buffered recording saves the seconds before a parking-lot impact, not just after it. |
| Heat tolerance (power cell) | 13% | Supercapacitors survive sun-baked dashboards that swell and kill lithium batteries. |
| GPS | 6% | GPS stamps speed and location onto footage, which insurers and police ask for. |
| Wi-Fi transfer | 6% | 5 GHz Wi-Fi moves a 4K clip to your phone in seconds instead of minutes. |
| Max storage | 3% | More storage means a longer loop history before old footage is overwritten. |
| LTE / cloud | 3% | Built-in LTE uploads impact clips and sends alerts even if the card is taken. |
Radar Detectorsrubric v2 · 26 products scored
We score radar detectors on the published hardware and software features that separate early warning from noise: antenna coverage, direction finding, photo-radar detection, and how well the unit suppresses false alerts. We don't publish range claims we can't verify.
| Factor | Weight | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Front + rear antennas | 14% | A rear antenna catches radar from behind, which a front-only unit picks up late or not at all. |
| Directional arrows | 14% | Knowing where a threat is coming from tells you instantly whether it's the cruiser ahead or a store door behind. |
| MultaRadar (MRCD) detection | 14% | Low-power MultaRadar photo enforcement is spreading in the US, and many detectors can't see it. |
| GPS | 14% | GPS enables speed-based muting, lockouts and camera alerts. |
| Auto false-alert lockouts | 14% | Automatically learning stationary false sources is what makes a detector livable on a daily commute. |
| Ka segmentation | 7% | Watching only the Ka frequencies police use cuts false alerts and speeds up detection. |
| Camera database | 7% | Red-light and speed-camera alerts cover enforcement radar can't detect. |
| RDD stealth | 7% | Stealth against radar-detector detectors matters where detectors are banned. |
| Phone app / connectivity | 7% | An app adds crowd-sourced alerts, easy firmware and database updates, and settings you can actually find. |
Corrections
Spotted a spec we got wrong? Email hello@dashlore.com with a link to the manufacturer's source, and we'll fix the record and re-score the product.