The perfect compact dash cam for those on a midrange budget, with high-end video and a wide lens

- 

Around the size of a matchbox, the Garmin dash cam 66W is beautifully compact and can be hidden neatly behind the central rear view mirror of most vehicles. it’s nearly identical to the excellent dash cam 55 in size and appearance, down to four buttons on side for controlling the menus, plus a two-inch display on the back. And there’s the connection for Garmin’s windscreen mount, which is one of the simplest but best-engineered systems we’ve seen.

It comes with 1.4m and 4m USB cables to power it, plus an adapter for your car’s 12V socket, which has two USB ports, handily.

Video is constantly recording and is split into files each 60 seconds long. Once your micro-SD card gets full, the oldest videos will be recorded over with new footage. Each video includes date, time, GPS and speed in the lower-left corner, and any of these can be switched off from within the settings menu, along with audio recording. When a collision is detected by the camera’s G-sensor, that portion of video is saved and will not be overwritten.

You can record up to 1440p with HDR, for getting better detail in mixed lighting conditions, though you can only get the clarity of 60fps video if you drop to 1080p. The detail is excellent, especially for the price, though just a tad on the grainy side. Unlike the Dash Cam 55 it replaces, there’s now a 180-degree field of view, so you wo