In this video, I check out the Spedal NaviCam CL 860. You can buy this car stereo display currently for $159.99 from Amazon US 👉🏻 https://amzn.to/3RlgbsU.
This is a standalone wide 9.3” IPS portable display that allows both wired and wireless CarPlay and Android Auto in any car. It will pass audio out of its 2W built-in speaker, or you can cast audio wirelessly over Bluetooth or via FM radio, and there is also a wired option to an AUX audio input port. This display also can cast video from your mobile over MirrorLink for Android and AirPlay for iOS. On the back of the display, there’s a 4K dash cam that’s integrated into the back of the display and a 1080p rear-view camera comes supplied too.
In the box you get a paper instruction manual, there is the 9.3” display itself with a Lexar 64GB SD card preinstalled, a 2.5m 12v socket to USB-C power cable, a 4.5m to 1080p review camera and 2 mounting brackets, a long 2m 3.5mm AUX cable, a long USB-A to lightning cable, and a long USB-A to USB-C cable.
Features & Design
The whole display has a nice design with a fairly thin casing and fairly thin bezels around the display, although a thicker chin area on the lower front houses the Spedal logo than has any key functionality. Measuring 24cm wide by 11cm high and approximately 6.7cm deep it has a lower profile on your dashboard than some 4:3 portable displays. The 9.3” IPS display has a wide viewing angle, and its soft plastic-mounted base can also tilt and rotate to gain the best angle on your dashboard. With its dash camera mounted on the back of the display, it is best to locate this display directly on the dashboard. This camera can also be raised upwards by around 2 cm to get a better view over a dashboard and onto the road ahead. Loop records are saved onto the inserted SD card and can be viewed back on the display itself or by connecting to the display via its Road Cam companion app.
There’s only one button at the top of the display, to toggle the display on and off, as well as shut the display down with the button held down. There are no volume or brightness buttons, all this is accessed in its software and floating button interface.
The rear camera lens has a small amount of pan and tilt adjustment to position the camera in a suitable direction out of your windscreen whilst still maintaining a good viewing angle on the front display. The lens carries a 140-degree field of view with an F2.2 aperture.
Behind the display, there are four IO ports and slots on the right side of the display. There is a USB-C port to power the display, a port for the rear camera, an SD card slot to save dash cam recordings onto, and there is an optional GPS accessory port to record location data in dash cam recordings. On the rear left side of the display, there is a USB-A port for charging and wired CarPlay or Android Auto, and there’s also an AUX output port for wired audio.
Installation
After connecting the 12v adapter and setting up the display on my car dashboard I turned over the car to power on the display, and in 6.78 seconds, the display lands on its main menu interface which consists of six primary info panels or buttons and a panel displaying the live feed of the recording dashcam. There are quick options to access Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connections, MirrorLink and AirPlay casting, and the last two main buttons are for toggling the audio output and accessing the Settings screen.
In the Settings menu, there are lots of options to configure the display and how it records, how it displays and how it sounds. You can mute all the annoying button beeps, change language, sleep and loop recording times, select the driver side and split or full-screen display modes.
Wireless Apple CarPlay
Firing up wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto is very simple. You first select either option from the main menu and then connect your device to the display’s Bluetooth profile. It took around 15.76 seconds for Bluetooth pairing to the Apple CarPlay menu, and 17.38 seconds for Android Auto. This time can vary depending on how occupied your device is at the time and how quickly the display can detect your Bluetooth device.
Interaction and responsiveness seemed good on CarPlay and the wide display allows for 10 icons per screen in Apple CarPlay, unlike the usual 8 icons on lower-resolution displays. This also means that the touchpoints, icons and buttons in CarPlay apps are a little smaller and more widely spaced apart. So if you’re controlling the display from an arm’s reach you have to pay a little more attention to pressing the smaller UI elements in CarPlay.
I did encounter some poor quality with the microphone in CarPlay, where recordings from the internal microphone recordings contained stuttering and because of this Siri found it difficult to understand commands. This is avoidable when Bluetooth audio output is used as it bypasses the microphone and uses the phone’s microphone instead.
Wireless Android Auto
Over on Android Auto, the NaviCam-860 shares a common issue on a few of these displays, in that when set to widescreen mode, the Android Auto display is stretched out. Using the split-screen viewing modes gets around this issue, but for full-screen use, you have to live with its stretched-out nature, where circular icons are more oval-shaped.
In split-screen mode, you can have the front and rear camera feed displaying alongside CarPlay or Android Auto, which is nice if you want that screen layout, but, I prefer to use the full-screen display mode.
Audio Output Options
The onboard 2W speaker audio isn’t a great solution for music playback and is only suitable for voice-based or navigation audio. So it is recommended to use one of the three other audio output options.
The first is FM transmission. You first find a frequency free from any FM traffic and dial the display into the same frequency. Once synced to the same frequency the audio will play over your car radio. You can save up to three frequencies on the FM audio screen, which can be handy if you travel long distances and encounter interference along the way.
Connecting the AUX cable between the car stereo and the display is the next best audio output quality. If you listen hard there is a little interference from this audio output, but nothing too significant to affect listening to the display using this audio method. Being wired there are more cables to connect to your stereo, so it isn’t visually appealing if you are looking for a clean installation.
Finally, there is Bluetooth audio, the best wireless audio output solution if your car stereo also has Bluetooth audio. After pairing your phone with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, the display will reconnect your phone to your car stereo to share its audio. This will also mean wheel controls will work, because at this point you are just connecting your phone to your car stereo, meaning interactions from your wheel controls will work also.
Reconnections when returning in the car work just fine, although I found the Bluetooth audio connection did take a little longer than I expected to reconnect. You can choose to connect either your iPhone or Android device to the display using the side USB-A port on the display. Wired connections only occur if connected first before the display powers up, otherwise, it will default to wireless.
4K Front Dash Camera
As a dash camera, the NaviCam-860 performance was okay. You can quickly access the camera feed from either the front or rear camera from the main menu. And once viewing you can swipe the screen to toggle front, rear and split-screen modes and access saved recordings. You also get quick options to start and stop recording, toggle audio recording, save an event, take a photo, view images, switch between cameras and horizontally flip the camera image.
Accessing records can be done on the display itself via its basic playback interface. From here you can select individual recordings and view them on a wider player to the side of them. Alternatively, you can connect over Wi-Fi to the display and the Road Cam app on your phone where you can also browse and playback video and save them to your phone’s camera roll.
As for its quality, its 4K resolution is limited by its sensor, which I found to be a little lacking in areas in both day and night recordings. Its f1.8 and 140-degree field of view does a decent job in capturing the road ahead, with natural-looking daytime footage that isn’t over-saturated as some other dash cams out there. However, I found it did lack detail and sharpness in areas, and its high exposure or lack of wide dynamic range added to this lack of detail in bright areas of the image.
At night the sensor also struggled to maintain detail in areas, and although there was some shadow detail in dimly lit areas, anywhere near a light source, such as street lamps and shop signs was too bright or carried excessive bloom around them to make them legible, which also lead to nearby number plates being unreadable.
As an included dash camera, it performs well, but the main flaw was due to its soft plastic mount. Any road bump or vibration would easily transfer through to the camera and result in heavy shaky footage. There’s no software or hardware stabilisation to save this from happening, so using the soft mount makes this dash cam not fit for purpose. Luckily they do have a hard mount option, that should improve things, but I didn’t have this available to me for this review.
1080p Rear / Internal Camera
Its rear-facing camera records at 1080p, and it also has IR support for recording in the dark. I found this latter option a little hit and miss as the recordings would constantly go from colour to black and white where passing street lamps or cars would light up the car’s interior. With no option available to lock IR for nighttime recordings, this also led to my frustration with the camera’s recordings.
I did find its available mounting options good though, in that you can choose to mount the camera to a rear window, or on a headrest to record passengers or babies in the back seat. It also makes for a good wide-angle shot of the front interior.
MirrorLink & AirPlay
Its mirror cast options performed okay, with audio in sync with the video. Getting casting to work via AirPlay on iPhone was easier than on Android, which still managed to elude me. Once connected though the formatting of the video being cast wasn’t right, and appeared a little squashed to fit the 9.3 display. The video stream wouldn’t go fully wide-screen, even when zoomed, so this left thick black borders on the sides. So the video size on the display isn’t that far off the size of the video streaming from your phone.
My Impressions
The Spedal NaviCam 860 currently retails for $159.99 with a coupon on Amazon, which considering you get a capable dash camera and a CarPlay and Android Auto display all in one unit, is a pretty good deal.
Android Auto fans will have to be aware of its full-screen limitations, and all buyers will have to carefully locate the rear camera so it plays nicely with the IR sensor, and opt for the firmer hard mount option to get the best out of both cameras.
If you are a Mac user, I found you had to format the SD card to Fat32 on your Mac first before using it, otherwise formatting the SD card from the display will make it unreadable on your Apple device.
Accessing the recorded videos from a connected phone was very smooth when you are already connected to its Wi-Fi for wireless CarPlay. The app picked up the camera without any disconnection from CarPlay and I was able to browse watch back content reasonably quickly.
CarPlay and Android Auto use was decent and quick to launch, however, microphone performance was lacking heavily in all audio connections other than Bluetooth, where audio stuttering or poor Siri was found when audio output used the internal microphone.
I found its built-in 18W QC3.0 USB port on the 12v adapter a welcome addition. Charging from the display USB port will only give 5W, so being able to charge from this socket where USB ports might be limited in the car is very handy.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one CarPlay or Android and dash camera portable car stereo display, as long as you use its Bluetooth audio output, the NaviCam 860 from Spedal doesn’t carry as many negatives to truly put me off from recommending this display for your consideration.
