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SD Cards. Go Big or Go Home!

Data limits… it is what our lives revolve around in today’s modern technology society. With our technology so dependent on data storage, it is amazing how we used to deal with the tiny storage limits of only a few years ago. Imagine all that lost footage we could be laughing or reminiscing at today, wiped away forever.

One question we often get asked and is not well known is the difference in SD card size and why pay more for a larger capacity. With sizes varying dramatically, usually doubling each step up, what is the advantage of going bigger when installing an IROAD Dash Camera.

4 is the magic number

The way to understand how long your SD card will film for is to divide your number by 4. So, if you have a 32gb SD card in your IROAD camera, the maximum recording time you will get is 8 hours. If you have a 64gb SD card – yep you guessed it (after reaching for the calculator), you will have 16 hours and so on.

But then cut that in half!

So, you think your 32gb card giving a whopping 8 hours is long enough for that day ride you had planned on the weekend? Think again. You have two cameras, front and back which share that data. This means your 32gb SD card now only films 4 hours on the front and 4 hours on the back. If you drive or need to park longer than that then your SD footage is lost as it is deleted to make way for new filming.

How long does each card give you?

The minimum SD Card size INNOVV recommend is 32gb for our cameras. INNOVV can support up to 256GB SD Cards and we always recommend going for as large a limit as you can afford at the time. There is nothing more painful losing some amazing footage because the SD card was too small.

Recording Time Limit (Hours) 32gb 64gb 128gb 256gb
Front Camera 4 8 16 32
Rear Camera 4 8 16 32

Events Dedication and Time Lapse

IROAD has a very clever function for parking mode to ensure you always have enough data to protect your vehicle. IROAD Time lapse supports continuous recording at 1fps in parking mode. It allows memory saving in a way to continue up to 30 times more than other dash cameras.

Also, it prevents the recorded files from being lost due to insufficient memory space. It is optimized for efficient memory usage.

Smart Compression

IROAD 4K filming H.265 also provides much greater flexibility for parallel encode / decode processing video. It allows for further reduction of the file size of video stream and to compress image more efficiently. At the same recording time, you can experience 4 times larger and better image quality than H.264

We also get asked if our X10 front camera that films in amazing 4K footage will use any more data than the normal 1080p front camera in our X5 and X9. The answer is no. The X10 cleverly compresses the data while still filming in 4K so you have the same amount of record time.

Bigger lasts longer

The benefit of having of larger memory SD card is not just limited to more recording. Each time an SD card is wiped this puts a small amount of stress on the card. Over a longer period of time a small capacity SD card is ‘stressed’ 8 times more than a larger SD Card. It doesn’t always mean it will break but everything has its limits and we all love a little less stress in our lives to live longer.

Words of the wise

One of the amazing qualities of owning an IROAD Dash Camera is that each and every time you drive you are always filming.

With this in mind, support your camera with as much recording space as possible and go as big as you can afford. After all you don’t want to miss those memories and not have anything for social media, YouTube, bragging rights or for playing back to your grandkids in decades to come.