Kenwood Cmos-300 Multi-Angle Rear View CAMera

Kenwood Cmos-300 Multi-Angle Rear View Camera

Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
I recently replaced the Pioneer ND-BC4 in my car with this camera because the Pioneer was acting up. As it turned out, it was a pinched camera cable that caused the camera to go blind 50%+ of the time. Immediately, I noticed the Kenwood's picture to be not nearly as clear as the Pioneer. This could be contributed to the fact that it uses considerably WIDER ANGLE lense. Also, the picture is NOT as bright as the Pioneer at night time, which could be due to wider angle lense as well. My installer noticed both cameras to be from same manufacturer, exact same wiring harness and all. He said the only difference is the camera lense. The manual came in English but when you try to set up the camera angle etc. everything shows up on the screen in JAPANESE, which is just rediculous!! Since the pictures on the manual were so small I had to download the manual from Kenwood's website and then enlarge and print the pictures to go through each setup process. The multi-angle remote on the Kenwood enables you to view 5 different positions. Again, however, the picture quality is not nearly as good as the clips I saw on Youtube. It's not possible to adjust focus on the camera. Night time visibility, especially, under poor lighting condition is very blury and horrible. Everytime I try to reverse into my parking space where it's not sufficiently lit I have to look back as well. One advantage it has over the Pioneer though is the guidelines, which helps you in certain situation to park your vehicle straight. However, at night time, it becomes almost useless as you can't really see the parking lines on the ground due to poor night-time camera performance. In order for you to see reasonably clear the are needs to be well-lit. I really liked the Pioneer when it was working although it was a bit harder to park straight without the guidelines. If Pioneer could add guidelines it would be perfect. I am seriously thinking about putting back the Pioneer because I prefer clearer pictures and better night time performance over guidelines and multi-angle views, which I feel are just gimmic.