Vantrue N4S Dash Cam Review – 3 Channel Dashcam with STARVIS 2 IMX675 CMOS Sensor

I have previously reviewed the Vantrue Element 2 Dual Dash Cam and thought it was excellent, leaving it installed in my old Corsa for a couple of years. It was reliable, the footage was consistently usable, and it never gave me a reason to think about it, which is about the highest praise a dash cam can earn.

Vantrue has now sent me the Vantrue N4S, which is a 3-channel dash cam that has a cabin camera as well as the front and rear cameras. It has replaced the 70mai Dash Cam 4K A810 Lite, which I reviewed recently, in my Renault Megane E-Tech.

The N4S launched in July 2025 and sits in the middle of a confusingly large Vantrue range, below the four-channel N5S and the 4K-fronted N4 Pro models. Its main selling point is that all three channels use the same Sony STARVIS 2 IMX675 sensor, so you get 2K-class recording and HDR from the front, rear and interior cameras rather than the usual arrangement where the rear and cabin cameras are an afterthought. Vantrue also makes a lot of noise about its PlatePix number plate enhancement mode and the night vision performance of the STARVIS 2 sensors, claims I have been able to test over the past few weeks of commuting and general driving.

Vantrue N4S 3 Channel Dash Cam, 2.7K+2.5K+2.5K STARVIS 2 Night Vision,HDR/IR

• [3 Channel Dash Cam] The N4S dashcam simultaneously records your vehicle's front, inside, and rear in 2.7K+1440P+1440P resolution using ultra-wide-angle lenses (160°+160°+160°) for 360° coverage to stop hit-and-runs, theft, and vandalism from every angle.
• [Optional Front+Inside/Rear Dual Recording Mode] The triple lens dash camera offers on-demand recording modes to save storage and target key scenes. The adjustable cabin camera angles and optional audio deliver flexible, private, and worry-free 360° safeguarding, perfected for rideshare and Uber drivers, taxis, and family vehicles.
• [Exclusive PlatePix + STARVIS 2 + HDR/IR Night Vision] The 3 way car camera captures every detail inside and outside—even in dim conditions and harsh weather—delivering crystal-clear evidence to preventing hit-and-runs, vandalism, and insurance fraud while enhancing driving safety after dark.
• [24/7 Parking Mode] – Four protection modes: Collision Detection (auto-locks crash evidence), Motion Detection (captures suspicious activity), Low Bitrate Recording (saves storage), and Low Frame Rate Recording (extends battery life). Plus 10s pre-buffer + 30s post-trigger recording – capturing everything before, during, and after an incident. 24/7 protection against vandalism and hit-and-runs without draining power. Hardwiring required (sold separately).
• [2.5K IP67 Waterproof Rear Cam Ideal for Vans & Trucks] The rear camera records 2.5K HD video, capturing 50% more detail than standard 1080P cameras. The IP67 waterproof and dustproof design, with two installation options, makes it perfect for cargo vans, delivery vehicles, trucks, SUVs and fleets. Stable performance in rain, dust and urban working conditions.

£265.99

Buy on Amazon

Buy from VantrueBuy from Amazon

Specification

One point worth clarifying on the resolution figures, because Vantrue’s marketing quotes both 1944p and 1440p depending on where you look. The IMX675 sensor has a native resolution of 2592 x 1944, which is a 4:3 aspect ratio. The front camera can record at this full 1944p resolution in some modes, while 2560 x 1440 at 16:9 is the default. When all three channels are recording, the maximum available is 1944p on the front with 1440p on the cabin and rear cameras. I will come back to which of these settings actually makes sense in the performance section, because the answer is not the biggest number.

Design

The N4S uses the cylindrical form factor that Vantrue has stuck with for years, and it is a noticeably large unit at 117 x 56 x 45mm. The width is partly down to the cabin camera, which sits on the driver-facing side of the body along with its infrared LEDs, and partly down to the 2-inch screen on the back. The screen is not a touchscreen, so everything on the device itself is controlled through the physical buttons along the bottom edge. The buttons have a positive click and the menu system is easy enough to navigate, although realistically you will do most of the configuration through the phone app.

Build quality is good. The body feels solid, there is no flex or creaking, and the lens barrel for the front camera rotates smoothly to adjust the vertical angle. A circular polarising filter is included in the box, which screws over the front lens to cut down reflections from the dashboard. This is a genuinely useful inclusion rather than a token accessory, and something many manufacturers charge extra for, although as I will cover later it did not completely solve the reflection problem in my car.

Power comes from a supercapacitor rather than a lithium battery, which is the right choice for a device that sits behind a windscreen. Capacitors tolerate heat far better and do not degrade in the same way, and the quoted operating range is -20°C to 60°C. That upper limit is slightly lower than some rivals, with the Viofo A229 Pro rated to 65°C, but in the UK climate it is unlikely to matter.

Storage is via microSD with support for cards up to 1TB, which is generous. With three channels recording at 14.8Mbps each you will chew through storage quickly, so the headroom is welcome. A 256GB card gives you roughly a day and a half of continuous three-channel driving footage before the loop recording starts overwriting, and a 512GB or 1TB card makes more sense if you plan to use parking mode heavily.

The rear camera deserves a mention because it is IP67 rated, so it can be mounted outside the vehicle. Vantrue includes heat shrink tubing in the box to weatherproof the cable connection if you go down this route. The bracket on the rear camera adjusts in two planes, which makes it easy to line up on steeply raked rear windows. I mounted mine inside, but the external option is genuinely useful for vans, pickups, or cars where the rear glass is heavily tinted or permanently dirty.

Installation

Like most dash cams, the basic installation is easy; it is tidying all the cables that is more challenging.

For mounting, you have the adhesive mounting mechanism, and then the dash cam clips on magnetically. The magnetic attachment is strong, so there is no risk of it falling off, and it is easier to detach than something clipped into place. If anything, the magnet is almost too strong, and pulling the camera off the mount takes a firm tug. Vantrue supplies electrostatic film stickers to place on the glass before the adhesive mount goes on, which makes the whole thing removable later without leaving adhesive residue baked onto your windscreen. It is a small detail, but anyone who has spent twenty minutes scraping old dash cam adhesive off glass will appreciate it.

The camera itself is quite large, and the inclusion of the cabin camera means I had to mount it further to the left, towards the passenger side, as my Megane E-Tech has a digital rear-view mirror camera plus sensors and a camera in this location for the ADAS features. There is not much space around the rear-view mirror, and the cabin camera would likely have been obstructed. This is worth checking before you buy if you have a modern car with a large sensor housing behind the mirror, because the N4S needs a reasonable amount of clear glass, and the cabin camera needs a clear line of sight back into the car.

The rear camera is connected by a long USB cable, with USB-C ports on either end, which is preferable to the pushpin style connection that was used on the 70mai Dash Cam 4K A810 Lite. A standard connector means the cable is replaceable if it ever fails, and routing it is easier because the plug is slim. The supplied cable is long enough for a large estate or SUV, and Vantrue includes a batch of adhesive cable clips plus a plastic trim tool for tucking the cable behind headliner and pillar trim. Running the cable along the headliner, down the A-pillar and back along the door seals took me about twenty minutes, and remember to leave some slack at the tailgate end so the cable is not pulled tight every time the boot opens.

My main gripe is that the power cable is integrated directly into the power adaptor. I personally use the excellent Ugreen 145W Retractable Car charger, so I had to use the cable that was provided with the 70mai to power this. An adaptor with a standard USB-C socket would have been a better design, and it is a strange decision when the rest of the cabling is standard USB-C. If you want the full parking mode functionality, you will need Vantrue’s separate hardwire kit, which connects to the fuse box and provides permanent power with a voltage cutoff to protect the car battery.

Vantrue App and Settings

Connecting the camera to the Vantrue app requires you to stop recording and then connect to the camera’s hotspot. From here you can change all the settings, including the resolution, image quality, the loop recording length and more. It is a slightly clunky arrangement compared with cameras that pair over Bluetooth first, but once connected it works reliably, and there is a voice command to turn the Wi-Fi on so you do not need to prod at the buttons.

The N4S uses 5GHz Wi-Fi for the connection, and the difference this makes to file transfers is significant. Downloading a one-minute 1440p clip to my phone takes seconds rather than the minute or more I have experienced with older 2.4GHz-only cameras. If you regularly pull clips off the camera to share or archive, this alone is a meaningful quality of life improvement, and in day-to-day use it removes most of the temptation to pull the memory card out.

The settings themselves are extensive. The record setup page covers the resolution modes, an image quality toggle between standard and the PlatePix mode that prioritises number plate legibility, loop recording length, the infrared LEDs for the cabin camera (auto, on or off), G-sensor sensitivity, a privacy mode, audio noise reduction, exposure compensation and scheduled HDR, which lets the camera enable HDR only during set hours rather than all the time. The system setup page includes time sync with your phone, a formatting reminder that defaults to every 15 days, auto screen off, and control over the device sounds and voice announcements.

One setting worth checking in the UK is the light source frequency, which defaults to 60Hz. UK mains runs at 50Hz, so leaving it on the default can cause visible flicker or banding from LED street lights, traffic signals and illuminated signs in your footage. Switching it to 50Hz takes a few seconds and is easy to overlook, and it would be sensible for Vantrue to set this based on the GPS location or the region selected during setup.

The app also handles firmware updates, live preview from any of the three cameras, and file management with separate folders for normal loop recordings, locked event files and parking mode clips. It has been stable throughout my testing, which is not something I can say for every dash cam app I have used.

Voice Commands

The N4S supports voice control with adjustable sensitivity, and the recognised commands are fixed phrases rather than natural language. The full list is:

• Take Photo
• Video Start
• Turn On Audio / Turn Off Audio
• Turn On Screen / Turn Off Screen
• Turn On Wi-Fi / Turn Off Wi-Fi
• Lock The Video
• Show Front Camera / Show Rear Camera
• Inside Video On
• Back To Homepage

In practice, the two commands that matter are Lock The Video and Take Photo. If you witness an incident, saying “lock the video” protects the current clip from being overwritten by the loop recording without you taking a hand off the wheel, which is exactly when you need it. Recognition accuracy has been good in my testing, even with the radio on at a moderate volume, and I have not had any false triggers from normal conversation. The commands only work in English with a fairly deliberate delivery, but for the handful of functions you actually want while driving, it does the job. It is a more sensible implementation than a touchscreen, which would be a distraction hazard at speed.

Performance

Resolution modes and which to use

Before getting into image quality, it is worth explaining the resolution options because the obvious choice is not the right one. With all three cameras connected, the top setting records the front camera at 2592 x 1944, which is the sensor’s full native resolution but a 4:3 aspect ratio. On a normal 16:9 screen this footage looks vertically stretched, and in practice the extra vertical resolution captures more dashboard and sky rather than more useful detail. Vantrue’s own explanation is that the mode exists to use the sensor’s full imaging area, with the extra height helping with overhead signs and traffic lights. Having compared both, I have settled on the 1440p settings across all channels. The 16:9 footage looks natural, plates are no less legible, and the files are slightly smaller. Unless you have a particular need to record traffic light gantries, I would leave it at the 1440p default.

Daytime footage

Performance is generally excellent. My Megane is not the best car for a dash cam; the rear window has poor visibility, and you can see from the footage that the woven material on the dashboard reflects off the windscreen to create a grainy looking texture at the bottom of the frame. The supplied CPL filter reduces this considerably once rotated to the correct position, but it does not eliminate it entirely with a fabric dashboard like mine, and the effect is most visible on overcast days with a bright sky.

Even with the reflection from the dashboard, the front camera can still pick up number plates with a decent level of clarity, both from parked cars to the left and oncoming cars on the right. At 30mph in decent light, plates on oncoming traffic are readable when paused at the moment the vehicles pass, and plates on parked or slow-moving vehicles are consistently clear. Zooming in to 300 or 400 percent, the footage holds together better than I expected for 1440p, with street names and shop signage remaining legible. It is not 4K, and if you pixel peep against a 4K front camera like the one on the 70mai A810 you will see the difference on distant detail, but for the evidential purpose a dash cam serves, the front camera does what it needs to do.

Colours lean slightly saturated compared with some rivals, which makes the footage look punchy but remains accurate enough that paint colours are identifiable, which is what matters for evidence. The scheduled HDR does a good job of holding detail in bright skies without crushing the shadows under trees and bridges. Footage includes the time, date, speed and GPS coordinates as an overlay, which is helpful if a clip ever needs to be used as evidence, and the GPS lock has been quick and reliable, typically within a few seconds of starting the car.

The PlatePix image quality mode is the setting Vantrue promotes hardest, and it does make a modest but real difference. It appears to adjust sharpening and exposure with number plates as the priority, and comparing clips of the same road, plates at the edge of legibility in standard mode are slightly cleaner with PlatePix enabled. It is not magic, and it will not recover a plate the sensor never resolved, but since I cannot see a downside in the rest of the image, I have left it switched on.

Night performance

Night performance is where the STARVIS 2 sensors earn their place on the spec sheet. Low light footage retains a usable amount of detail without the heavy noise reduction smearing that cheaper cameras apply, and headlight bloom is controlled well enough that plates on cars in front remain readable at urban speeds when stopped or moving slowly. Reading plates on moving oncoming traffic at night remains beyond it, but that is true of every dash cam I have tested at any price, because the physics of a bright reflective plate moving quickly in the dark does not care about your sensor. Street-lit roads look clean, and on unlit roads the footage relies on your headlights but stays free of the crawling grain that made my older cameras’ night footage borderline useless.

The cabin camera

The interior camera records at 1440p with its own set of infrared LEDs, and it works well. In darkness the IR mode produces a clear black and white image of the cabin, with faces easily identifiable. The 160° lens covers the front seats and most of the rear bench in my car. For private use, I am still not convinced most people need it, and I will return to that in the conclusion, but the implementation itself is hard to fault. There is a privacy mode in the settings if you want the camera present but the cabin channel disabled, and an Inside Video On voice command to re-enable it, which is a sensible compromise for people who only want cabin recording some of the time.

Audio

Audio recording is clear, and the audio noise reduction setting does a reasonable job of suppressing road and wind noise while keeping speech intelligible. If you would rather not record conversations at all, audio can be toggled off with a voice command or in the app, and the microphone state is shown on screen.

Parking Mode

The N4S offers three parking mode types: buffered event recording, timelapse and low bitrate continuous recording. Buffered mode is the one worth using, because the camera holds a rolling buffer in memory and saves footage from before and after any trigger, so you see the car that hit the door rather than just the aftermath. Triggers come from the G-sensor and from motion detection, and there is a separate night vision option for parking mode so the cabin IR LEDs stay available overnight.

The catch, as with every dash cam, is power. Because the N4S uses a capacitor rather than a battery, parking mode requires a constant power supply, which means either Vantrue’s hardwire kit or a USB battery pack. The hardwire kit includes low voltage protection with a configurable cutoff, so it will stop drawing power before it flattens your 12V battery. On an EV like mine this needs a little more thought, since the 12V system behaves differently to a combustion car, and I would recommend the more conservative cutoff settings. The camera also supports an optional LT01 LTE module for cloud connectivity, which adds remote notifications and live view when the car is parked, although this brings a subscription cost and I have not tested it for this review.

In testing, a light tap on the bodywork was enough to trigger an event recording at the default sensitivity, with the buffered clip capturing several seconds before the tap. Entry and exit from parking mode is automatic based on the G-sensor detecting the car has stopped moving, and the transition worked reliably without me thinking about it.

Vantrue Player

Vantrue provides a free desktop application for Windows and macOS called Vantrue Player, and it is worth installing rather than viewing clips in a generic video player. It reads the GPS data embedded in the recordings and displays your route on a map alongside the video, together with a speed readout. You can view multiple channels at once, export still frames, and step through footage frame by frame, which is exactly what you want when trying to pull a plate from a clip. It is basic in appearance but functional, and having speed and position data presented alongside the footage is valuable if a clip ever needs to support an insurance claim. The one omission is that the timeline could be easier to scrub precisely, and there is no way to trim and export a short section of a clip, so you are left sharing whole one or three minute files.

Price and Alternative Options

Vantrue N4S 3 Channel Dash Cam, 2.7K+2.5K+2.5K STARVIS 2 Night Vision,HDR/IR

• [3 Channel Dash Cam] The N4S dashcam simultaneously records your vehicle's front, inside, and rear in 2.7K+1440P+1440P resolution using ultra-wide-angle lenses (160°+160°+160°) for 360° coverage to stop hit-and-runs, theft, and vandalism from every angle.
• [Optional Front+Inside/Rear Dual Recording Mode] The triple lens dash camera offers on-demand recording modes to save storage and target key scenes. The adjustable cabin camera angles and optional audio deliver flexible, private, and worry-free 360° safeguarding, perfected for rideshare and Uber drivers, taxis, and family vehicles.
• [Exclusive PlatePix + STARVIS 2 + HDR/IR Night Vision] The 3 way car camera captures every detail inside and outside—even in dim conditions and harsh weather—delivering crystal-clear evidence to preventing hit-and-runs, vandalism, and insurance fraud while enhancing driving safety after dark.
• [24/7 Parking Mode] – Four protection modes: Collision Detection (auto-locks crash evidence), Motion Detection (captures suspicious activity), Low Bitrate Recording (saves storage), and Low Frame Rate Recording (extends battery life). Plus 10s pre-buffer + 30s post-trigger recording – capturing everything before, during, and after an incident. 24/7 protection against vandalism and hit-and-runs without draining power. Hardwiring required (sold separately).
• [2.5K IP67 Waterproof Rear Cam Ideal for Vans & Trucks] The rear camera records 2.5K HD video, capturing 50% more detail than standard 1080P cameras. The IP67 waterproof and dustproof design, with two installation options, makes it perfect for cargo vans, delivery vehicles, trucks, SUVs and fleets. Stable performance in rain, dust and urban working conditions.

£265.99

Buy on Amazon

Buy from VantrueBuy from Amazon

The Vantrue N4S is available on Amazon for £237.50 at the time of writing, with an RRP of £250.

The model above this is the Vantrue N5S, which adds a fourth channel pointing into the cabin from the rear. This is available for £322.

Then there is the Vantrue N4 Pro S at £285 or the N4 Pro at £276, which have a 4K front camera plus the cabin camera at 1080p and the rear camera at 2.5K and 1080p respectively. The Pro models are the ones to look at if front camera resolution is your priority, and the trade-off against the N4S is that the cabin and rear channels drop in quality to pay for the 4K front sensor. Since the whole point of a three-channel camera is coverage in every direction, I think the N4S’s balanced approach of the same sensor on all three channels is the more coherent option, but it depends on where you expect an incident to come from.

70mai has the 4K T800 3-channel dash camera, which records at 2160p, 2160p and 1080p and is available for £450. That is a big premium for the extra resolution, and at nearly twice the price of the N4S it is hard to recommend for most private buyers.

Outside these, the Viofo A229 Pro remains the obvious enthusiast alternative, with a 4K front camera in its three-channel configuration. Side-by-side comparisons I have seen suggest the gap between it and the N4S is smaller than the resolution figures imply, particularly at night, and Viofo’s colours are a little more muted where Vantrue’s are more saturated. If you can find either at a good price, you are unlikely to be disappointed with the footage from both.

It is also worth noting what you are not paying for here. The big established names like Nextbase and BlackVue charge considerably more for three-channel or cloud-connected setups, and the N4S undercuts them while matching or beating the core recording specification. Where those brands still hold an advantage is polish in areas like cloud services and, in Nextbase’s case, features like emergency SOS.

Overall

The Vantrue N4S is an excellent dash cam with advanced features, yet more affordable than the big established names like Nextbase and BlackVue.

The fundamentals are all strong. Image quality from all three channels is good in daylight and holds up well at night thanks to the STARVIS 2 sensors, the 5GHz Wi-Fi makes retrieving footage genuinely quick, the buffered parking mode works as advertised, and details like the included CPL filter, the electrostatic mounting film, the IP67 rear camera and support for 1TB cards show that Vantrue has thought about how these things get used over years rather than weeks.

The criticisms are mostly minor. The unit is large, which caused mounting complications in my Megane and will do the same in other cars with sensor clusters behind the mirror. The integrated cable on the power adaptor is an annoyance if you already have a decent car charger. The 1944p headline resolution is best ignored in favour of 1440p, the 60Hz default frequency setting needs changing for the UK, and parking mode requires the extra cost of a hardwire kit to be useful.

I do not feel like the cabin camera is a necessity for most private drivers, though it could be handy to prove you were not distracted in the event of an accident, and it is obviously useful for taxi drivers or other business drivers. If you know you do not need the interior channel, a good two-channel camera will save you money. But if you want the coverage, the N4S delivers it at a sensible price, and it is the dash cam that will be staying in my car.

James Smythe( Owner / Editor )

I am James, a UK-based tech enthusiast and the Editor and Owner of Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Passionate about all things technology, my expertise spans from computers and networking to mobile, wearables, and smart home devices.

As a fitness fanatic who loves running and cycling, I also have a keen interest in fitness-related technology, and I take every opportunity to cover this niche on my blog. My diverse interests allow me to bring a unique perspective to tech blogging, merging lifestyle, fitness, and the latest tech trends.

In my academic pursuits, I earned a BSc in Information Systems Design from UCLAN, before advancing my learning with a Master’s Degree in Computing.

I’m proud to share that Vuelio has consistently ranked Mighty Gadget as one of the top technology blogs in the UK. With my dedication to technology and drive to share my insights, I aim to continue providing my readers with engaging and informative content.

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