The myGEKOgear Scout Pro is the first 3 channel dash cam I’ve ever seen and had the opportunity to review. I can’t tell you how excited I was to get this in the mail, open it, and install it! I’ve been waiting for a 3 channel dash cam for a long time. Three channels means that you get a front camera, a rear camera, and then one inside your vehicle’s cabin as well. This is the option I’ve been hoping to see for rideshare operators for a while now. I take Ubers a few times a month and every single driver I’ve seen own a dash cam has a 2 channel system, and has prioritized the cabin view over rear cameras for their safety. A few have told me they wished they had 3 channels like this, but hadn’t seen anything. I guess that changes now!
In this review, I’ll go over the installation, features, and performance of the myGEKOgear Scout Pro 3 channel dash cam. I will be returning this camera after the review, so there won’t be any focus on hiding wiring in the video review.
Unboxing and Installing the myGEKOgear Scout Pro
The unbox of the myGEKOgear Scout Pro is pretty straight forward. You have your front camera (with the cabin camera attached on the right side), the rear camera (with all wiring attached to it), the mount, extra adhesives, and things like wire clips you’ll need to help feed and hide wires. There are also two different power kits. The first is a standard kit that hooks up to your vehicle’s 12v power/”cigarette lighter” port. The second is a great “hard wiring” kit that simply plugs into your vehicle’s OBD port and can provide selective (while the vehicle is on) or fully continuous power at your choice. There is an on/off switch at the front of this kit that you can toggle at your convenience.
The camera attaches to the mount through a series of interlocking teeth and a snap mount (more on this later) and can swivel easily for you to adjust your view. Where you mount this camera on your windshield is going to be an interesting thought. It’s a bit wide and does take up a bit of your peripheral vision, so the temptation would be to try to mount this as high as possible. However, you’re going to need some clearance for the cabin camera. In the end, I settled on an area that was partially obscured by my rear view mirror but still gave me a full view of the inside of my car.
This next point might only be relevant to me, but all the adhesives on this pull off really easily and have small plastic extension tabs to help remove them more easily. If you’ve seen how much I’ve complained in past review videos about removing the insanity that is dash cam mount adhesives, these were a breath of fresh air in comparison.
While you do get two power sources and there are power plug-ins through the camera and the mount itself, you just need to plug it into one place. It’s better if you plug power into the mounting hardware if you’re going to be hiding wiring, as the plug-in there provides a better input for wire hiding through the roof.
Hitting the road with the myGEKOgear Scout Pro
There’s almost nothing to the setup. Just plug, play, and go. While you get a 32 GB memory card inside the box, I’d recommend considering an upgrade to something bigger. 32GB won’t get you much recording at 2k/1080p/1080p at tri-channel (or 4k/1080p if you go with the two channel setup without the rear camera). In fact, you’ll probably only get about an hour of loop footage off it whether on the road or parking. This camera can support bigger memory cards anyway. In addition to the 32GB card included in the box, I also tested this with a 256 GB card. It didn’t recognize it at first, but the camera’s native formatting capabilities will format it for immediate use on the card and then start recording almost immediately. That’s amazing considering I’ve reviewed so many cameras of the past that required you to take external actions with FAT32 partitioning independently.
The camera is already set to very capable operations out of the box, but you can customize it further through the onboard dash, or through the LuckyCam app. Like the Orbit 951 and the GoPlus Cam app, this is a third party creation, and to be honest, it’s a small personal pet peeve that some of these dash cams don’t go through first party created apps—but I get that it’s not an option for some companies. Thankfully, connectivity is really quick and really simple on this app, and everything works as it should. It’s also been updated within the last couple months (as of July 2023) so it seems like it’s still in active development and refreshed.
Customizing your myGEKOgear Scout Pro
Whether in the LuckyCam app, or through the unit itself, customization is easy. You can do all of the usual things like customize exposure rating, loop frequency, add all relevant timestamps and more. You can format cards directly through the unit and can drop in and out of 2 or 3 channel mode by simply plugging and unplugging the rear camera from the base unit. If you go away for a while and leave your camera unplugged, the camera might unsync from the date and time, but the GPS will automatically pick it up once it syncs up again.
Video quality of the Scout Pro
I’ll start this section off by saying that from an overall video quality and performance standpoint, this camera completely knocks it out of the park. The two myGEKOgear cameras I’ve reviewed over the years have been pretty stock standard units, and I was expecting about the same here.
The video quality during the day is fantastic both at 2k 3-channel and 4k 2-channel output from the front camera. Your footage is crisp, clear, and vibrantly detailed. This is definitely a best in class front camera in its price range. I can’t think of a single setup that performs this well at this price.
The cabin camera is extremely impressive and is the best one I’ve reviewed yet (though in fairness, I’ve reviewed less than a half dozen, and none in the past couple years). No matter the lighting and no matter whether it’s morning or evening, every moment captured inside the vehicle is clear and in great quality. My daughter sat in the back while I was filming, as I wanted to see how the camera focused on people in the front vs. the back. Quality was about identical to me, which again I feel bodes well for rideshare operators that wish to have an eye inside and outside of their vehicles at all times.
During the day, the rear camera is great too and every bit as good as myGEKOgear’s Orbit 951. It’s extremely clear and captures everything around it in crystal clarity. However, you can usually expect pretty good quality footage from all 1080p and above cameras these days. How it performs at night is what will usually set dash cams like this apart, and the stock of the myGekogear Scout Pro only rises in that regard.
The enhanced night vision capabilities on the camera mean that footage is clear 24/7 and is among the best I’ve ever seen across all 3 channels. The myGEKOgear Orbit 951’s rear camera was really good at night, and this one is even better with its output. The cabin camera can seamlessly slip from black and white night vision recording to colour recording depending on the lighting situation without skipping a beat. In the video review, you’ll continue to see a bit of glare from the glass that obscures the camera’s vision slightly at night, but street signs and license plates appear clearer much sooner than most of its competition. I really wasn’t expecting this type of output from this the Scout Pro, but I was pleasantly impressed by what I was seeing.
The one big flaw with the myGEKOgear Scout Pro
Unfortunately, it isn’t all roses with the myGEKOgear Scout Pro. There’s one near fatal flaw with this dash cam and it’s the mount. The mount is in the top 3 worst mounting systems I’ve ever seen. In theory, a multi-tooth snapping lock makes sense. In execution, not so much. It’s really hard to clip this camera into its mount, and it’s even harder to remove it. Since the connecting clip that is supposed to dislodge the two is so small, it’s really hard to get proper purchase to both slide it in and slide it out. Making matters worse is that the tiny arm that holds the connecting teeth together is plastic and is easily susceptible to breaking if something’s done wrong. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I’ve broken or snapped something on the mount now, as it tilts off to the right a bit. I’m certain this happened during setup, though I’m not sure what caused it.
All I’m going to say is to consider running everything and all your settings through the mobile app and literally never find an excuse to remove this camera from its mount for fear of damaging it.
How does the hot summer affect the operation of this camera?
The mid-July weather has been much warmer here the last week or so, and so I decided to stress test the temperature threshold on this thing. I took my daughter out shopping for a few things and left the camera’s parking mode on while I parked outdoors. When we got back to the car a few hours later, the camera was off and would not power back on. It was clear that it had reached its maximum threshold (the camera was really hot to the touch and it was mid-day, so the sun had been clearly beaming down on it for some time.) After about 10 minutes of driving around, the camera came back on and resumed normal operation like nothing had happened.
Is the myGEKOgear Scout Pro worth it otherwise?
Despite the mount being a massive turn-off for me, I recommend this camera 100% to anybody interested. Outside of that, this has to be one of the better bang for your buck cameras on the market period. To see a 3 camera system capable of flexing between that tri-channel and 4k dual channel and such solid features at its price point is phenomenal, especially when you consider that it’s onboarded with a memory card and OBD wiring kit. Video quality over delivers for its price point, and you can easily pay more for cameras that won’t give you output this good.
My only hope is that future generations of this camera have a different mounting system. It probably needs the locking teeth to generate enough power to all the channels, but maybe they can do a 3 channel magnetic power setup like they did with the Orbit 951. That was a beauty of a mount and if they could incorporate that into the swivel of the Scout Pro, it would be a perfect setup.
I think this camera is a must for all of you rideshare operators out there. For the rest of you, the price point is a no brainer, but unless you really want a camera inside your cabin—which I think is a pretty niche need for regular commuters—you can probably get a 4K dual channel dash cam setup for this price, though I’ve not really seen anything that outputs this well at this price at night.
The myGEKOgear Scout Pro 3 channel dash cam is now available at Best Buy and online at BestBuy.ca
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