Dome GS98C Dash Cam Review

The Dome GS98C is a close cousin of the GS90C (aka G90-7S)

Each new model from Dome brings hopes for improvement over the previous ones...so let's see.

Product Highlights:

Ambarella A7LA70 (2304*1296@30fps, 2560 x 1080P@30fps/1920 x 1080P@60fps/1920 x 1080P@30fps/ HDR 1920 x 1080P@30fps/1280 x 720P@60fps/1280 x 720P@30fps)
178 degree view angle, f1.8, 6G glass lens
2.7in LCD screen
Video Format: MPEG-4, H.264 compression
Audio: AAC (mp4a)
HDR
ADAS system

AV-OUT, HDMI
Battery: 190mAh.
The box contains 1 x Camcorder, 1 x USB Cable, 1 x Car Charger, 1 x Suction Cup Mount, 1 x User Manual

Except for the FullHD stamp on the front, the look is very similar to the G90. It is in fact a G90 inside as the firmware, G90-ZX-A770-1424-S7H confirms, and that's ok.

It is therefore on par with the GS90C features (reviewed with G90-ZX-A770-785-S-H). In both cases, the S in the model means it has GPS.

Navigating the setup options is easy thanks to the functions printed on the back side of the camera. This seems obvious, but this is far more convenient than having functions engraved on the buttons as seen in other Dome products.

So, expectedly, there are many similarities, and the persistent km/h recorded on video is unfortunately one of them. This is a long lasting and widespread bug in the Dome firmware (G90-7S, G5WA,...).

There are a few noticeable changes though:
- A working version of the Blackview player 1.109 is now included in the internal camera storage.

The GS90C player that came on a mini-cd was not working. This one now is decent, while not as good as the Registrator Viewer.

Mounting bracket: It turns out to be different from the initial design, where the GPS module was part of the mounting bracket. A hardware problem forced Dome to replace it with a less cool but at least working solution: a classic standalone GPS mouse.

The actual solution

The intended design

I found it the mounting bracket itself quite flimsy and being a step back from to the G90 series. An ideal mount would have gathered the connections for the GPS and power.

The GPS mouse provided needs over a minute to pick the position but works fine most of the time.
I had an isolated incident where the GPS got hung with a 780km/h speed until I power-cycled it.

Whenever I drive at 780 km/h, I don't want to see it recorded in the video.

Sound quality: The background noise that was polluting the video recording in G90, G90-7S, GS95A and G5WA is gone now, as shown in the short video sample below.

Battery: The battery gives about 15min from full charge, not great but at least the camera can be used unplugged for a short time. I gave it a full charge on an USB charger before using and maybe that's why I didn't get any loss of the time and date unlike reported by some users?
If there's a slight improvement from the G90, which hardly ever recharged the battery under normal use, this one seems to achieve that, so a short parking mode session could even be thinkable.

Conclusion:
For 66€/74$ from Gearbest.com. (Coupon: GBGS98C), the GS98C is a worthy successor for the G90 series, retaining all its qualities in a nice and discrete design, while fixing some but not all of its flaws. It is an improvement over the G90, even if everything is not perfect.

Good:
- Nice design with convenient buttons layout
- No more interference from power adapter

- GPS

- Renowned A7LA70

Not so good:
- Speed is recorded on screen and not removable (bug common to all the Dome GPS models)
- Flimsy suction cup mount
- GPS not included on the mount as initially designed