If nothing else, you should buy a dash cam for your car on Prime Day

Ben Schoon | Jun 23 2026 - 2:00 pm PT

Amazon’s Prime Day is hyped up as this huge event where you can save money but, often, you’re either buying things you don’t need or disappointed by the deals. But, if nothing else, the one thing you should buy on Prime Day is a dash cam for your car.

I’m a big believer in dash cams. Regardless of where you live or how much you drive, there are far too many crazy drivers on the roads today and, if you happen to be involved in an accident, it’s often their word against yours.

A dash cam is one of the simplest, yet most valuable gadgets you can add to any car, and Prime Day is a great time to pick one up.

There are literally thousands of different dash cam offerings out there, ranging from dead simple forward-facing recorders to advanced, always-connected models like the Nextbase IQ our Andrew Romero reviewed a while back. But one thing that most share in common is that you’ll be able to get them at a discount during Amazon’s big sales holiday.

Advertisement - scroll for more content

There are a few things I look for in a dash cam.

How does it draw power?
How can I pull the footage?
Does it have high enough resolution?
What do I want to record?

Drawing power is something I think that goes overlooked. There are pretty advanced installations that can draw power from your vehicle 24/7 – great if you’re living in a city and parking on the street, less important if you’re parking in a garage or private driveway. So you’ll want to balance your options there. You’ll also want to look at how it physically connects. If that’s over USB, how long is the cable? Can you replace it? All things that are easy to overlook!

When the time comes to pull footage, I’ve come to value having more than one choice. Throwing a microSD card reader into my glovebox is a cheap and easy way to go, but models that connect via apps are also great.

As far as the camera itself goes, do yourself a favor and go beyond the base 1080p models. It’ll get the job done, but detail might turn out important when the time comes to find a license plate of the maniac that just sideswiped you on the highway. Night vision is also important – take a look at the reviews to see if anyone has shared footage samples!

You’ll also want to consider where those cameras are pointing. There are a ton of configurations out there. Forward-facing, front and rear, cabin-view, and more. It all depends on what you want captured, so you’ll want to shop around to find the best option. The same goes for audio – having the ability to record audio is very useful as the other person in the incident might say something at the time of the accident that they later try to walk back.

For me, looking at those variables and others led me to the Vantrue E2 system – usually $199, but currently under $160. It supports front-and-rear recording, 2.7K resolution, and wireless control via a phone app (which, admittedly, isn’t the greatest app out there, but it gets the job done). It also has a little remote to quickly mute/unmute and take still images. I’ve been using one of these for over a year in my vehicle, and just bought another for our secondary car. This isn’t sponsored and it wasn’t a review unit – this is just where I personally landed after doing product research.