BlackSys CH-200 Review

Over the last 2 years, BlackSys has become a leader in the 2 Channel market. They did this by making well built devices with good video at a very reasonable price point. An advanced parking mode, high temperature ratings, and user friendly WiFi app were what set the CH-100B apart from the competition. Two years after we first launched the CH-100B, BlackSys released their brand new flagship dash cam, the CH-200

Don’t be fooled by the look of this new CH-200; although it shares the same design and dimensions of the CH-100B the internals have been heavily revised. Unlike other companies that simply reuse hardware from older models and just make minor design and firmware

changes to be packaged as a new model, the CH-200 offers impressive hardware upgrades. It now features the top of the line Ambarella A12 chipset and Sony EXMOR sensors on both front and rear cameras. These upgrades mean much better video quality than the CH-100B and other 2 Channel dash cams in the same price level.

Video quality on the CH-200 is great and the rear channel can do a much better job than the CH-100B at night. The new cameras record at a bitrate of 9 and 7 Megabits per second. This is almost double of the outgoing CH-100B thanks to the new A12 processor. Overall video quality is among the best of the 2 Channel parking mode dash cams but we think the Thinkware flagship 2 Channel systems still have a bit of an edge over the CH-200 but at a much higher cost.

The BlackSys CH-200 is a flagship device for BlackSys and thus has a number of high end features. Like the CH-100B it has a user friendly WiFi app, now with improved iOS compatibility. GPS is also standard which allows not only for speed display but also a number of driver alert systems such as lane departure warning. Parking mode is standard and can be used in either motion detection or time lapse modes.

BlackSys has always been great with the customization of their devices. This can be something as simple as letting you mute the audio, but there’s bigger things like letting you change the memory card partitions which are very useful. If you don’t like the safety systems or find they’re too touchy you can change that too. We think this gives the CH-200 a very broad appeal and we’d like to see other brands offer the same degree of customization. (We’re looking at you Thinkware) The manual event button carried over from the CH-100B is also very handy and the high heat tolerance is unmatched by other 2 Channel parking mode systems.

The CH-200 really does improve on all the areas we thought the CH-100B needed work on, notably in the video quality areas. In our testing we found that the “night vision” mode tends to overexpose the car in front while driving due to the headlights. Thinkware works around this by making their super night vision feature only turn on in parking mode.

We do like the design but think BlackSys could have made the CH-200 look at least slightly different from the CH-100B. It is still a very discreet dash cam but one complaint our clients always had about the CH-100B was the grey coloured mounting tape. Other brands use clear or black mounting tape that’s a lot less eye catching but BlackSys has stuck with the use of grey tape for the CH-200.

Just like the CH-100B, the CH-200 really can’t be beat in terms of performance and value. It offers better video and features compared even to more expensive 2 Channel systems with minimal drawbacks. We believe the lack of a cloud feature has helped keep costs down with this device. Based on our knowledge of the market most buyers in North America are not all that interested in Cloud anyway due to the high running costs. For a discreet 2 Channel parking mode device that offers Full HD video on both the front and rear, the CH-200 is our top choice.