Product Dimensions | 3.1 x 5.3 x 2.9 cm; 28.35 Grams |
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Item model number | 010-02504-00 |
Connectivity Technologies | Wi-Fi |
Special Features | Bluetooth |
Other display features | CE |
Colour | Black |
What’s in the box? | Garmin Dash Cam Mini 2, low-profile adhesive mount, dual USB power adapter, power cable, USB cable and documentation |
Item Weight | 28.3 g |
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88% positive over lifetime
Garmin Dash Cam Mini 2, Tiny Size, 1080p and 140-degree FOV, Monitor Your Vehicle While Away w/ New Connected Features, Voice Control, Black
Price: | See price in cart |
Purchase options and add-ons
Brand | Garmin |
Model name | Dash Cam Mini 2 |
Orientation | Front |
Vehicle service type | Car |
Connectivity technology | Wi-Fi |
Special feature | Bluetooth |
Video capture resolution | 1080p |
Included components | Garmin Dash Cam Mini 2, low-profile adhesive mount, dual USB power adapter, power cable, USB cable and documentation See more |
Colour | Black |
Field of view | 140 grades |
About this item
- Car key-sized dash camera mounts discreetly behind rearview mirror and goes virtually unnoticed; automatically records and saves video of incidents
- Wide 140-degree lens records 1080p video with Garmin Clarity HDR optics for crisp detail day and night
- Voice control (only available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Swedish) lets you use spoken commands to save video, start/stop audio recording, take still pictures and more
- Saved videos automatically upload via Wi-Fi connection to the secure online Vault to view and share later
- The Parking Guard feature (requires constant power and an active connection with Wi-Fi technology; access via the Garmin Drive app on your compatible smartphone) monitors activity around your parked vehicle and alerts if an incident is detected. Frame Rate up to 30 FPS
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Product information
Technical Details
Additional Information
ASIN | B0931YZ82P |
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Customer Reviews |
4.2 out of 5 stars |
Best Sellers Rank | #2,922 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics) #41 in Car On-Dash Mounted Cameras |
Date First Available | June 1 2021 |
Manufacturer | Garmin |
Place of Business | OLATHE, KS, 66062 US |
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Product description
Tiny camera, huge protection. The car key-sized Garmin Dash Cam™ Mini 2 with voice control (only available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Swedish) automatically records 1080p video and provides discreet eyewitness incident detection. The wide 140-degree lens and Garmin Clarity™ HDR optics enable the camera to capture crisp details day and night. Saved video is automatically uploaded via Wi-Fi connection to the secure online Vault. Easily access the camera remotely for Live View monitoring (requires constant power and an active Wi-Fi connection; access via the Garmin Drive™ app on your compatible smartphone) when you’re away from your parked car. For added peace of mind, the Parking Guard feature (requires constant power and an active Wi-Fi connection; access via the Garmin Drive app on your compatible smartphone) sends video clip notifications of incidents affecting your parked vehicle. Get more awareness around your vehicle using the Garmin Drive™ app on your compatible smartphone to view video from up to 4 Garmin dash cams (sold separately). Notice: Some jurisdictions regulate or prohibit use of this device. It is your responsibility to know and comply with applicable laws and rights to privacy in jurisdictions where you plan to use this device.
Customer reviews
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Top reviews
Top reviews from Canada
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The package includes the dash cam, two cables (one thin 13 ft cable used to hide in the trim, one shorter 5 ft cable to run straight down to your USB port - both are Micro USB to USB-A cables), two adhesive mounts (1 is a spare), and one dual USB car charger that outputs 5VDC at 2.4A total to allow you to plug both your Dash Cam and phone in simultaneously. A MicroSDHC or MicroSDXC is required to record videos but is not included.
Video quality is good (1080p 30fps HDR, 2.1 MP, 140 deg viewing angle) but don't expect to be able to easily read license plates. I had difficulty reading license plates with the camera when stopped 1.5 car lengths back in daylight even though it was clear to the naked eye. My tip is to park behind another car and switch to live view with your phone and adjust your camera angle until you can read the license plate. This unit would be better if it were 4K.
Voice control is excellent and extremely responsive. I was able to say "OK Garmin, save video" or "take a picture" without any problems even when I had music playing and was driving on the highway. It was never confused when I voice controlled my phone ("OK google"). While you can also press a button to manually initiate a video recording, voice control is extremely convenient to capture a picture or event without removing your hands from the wheel.
The dash cam turns on quickly when you turn on your car and beeps when recording starts (there is also a red light at the bottom indicating it is recording). You can choose to have audio on or off. It records consistently and does its job. It also beeps to confirm when a video or photo is saved. It also automatically saves videos in the case of an incident (accident). In the last 2 weeks, I had two false incidents recorded (one I hit a small bump in the road, the other I was actually stationary), but false incident detections appear rare and aren't a big deal anyway. Incidents or manual recordings are saved permanently until you delete them, while all other videos of your normal driving are automatically replaced when you run out of storage space.
It does not have a built in battery so it does not record video when you turn off your car. If you want to use the Parking Guard feature to detect incidents when the car is off, you need to purchase a Constant Power Cable to connect it to your OBD II port (not your USB port).
The Garmin Drive App works to view pictures and videos and to change settings. This only works when the dash cam is powered (which means your car is on). You can connect to the dash cam using bluetooth to see previews of the stored images, but cannot view the actual pictures or videos unless you connect to it through WiFi. Unfortunately connecting to the dash cam through WiFi is a very poor experience. It is extremely slow to connect and does not always connect. It is also a slow process to download the videos to your phone. The main problem is most people check their videos when they get home. At that point, your phone usually connects to your home or work WiFi automatically. It appears this can at times conflict with connecting to your Dash Cam through WiFi. As you can only view videos and pictures when connected through WiFi, this is a problem. Hopefully they fix this in future updates to the app. Fortunately you don't need to connect to your Dash Cam every day, only when you need to see a video. In many ways, it is easier to just pop out your microSD card and manually copy the videos to your computer.
The Garmin Vault feature is a nice concept (storing your videos on the cloud) but from a practical standpoint isn't useful because you need to manually send each video to the cloud which is a slow process (you need to use the Garmin Drive App). It also only stays in the vault for 1 day unless you pay more. This would work better if it had a small battery and allowed for background uploading of videos to the cloud while your car is off.
Conclusion:
This is an excellent dash cam in terms of its primary job of consistently recording high quality videos and functioning as it should. It has excellent voice control, and its small size makes it less visible to potential thieves. Where it loses points is the connectivity issues with the Garmin Drive App to view the videos.
Overall I am happy with my purchase, but would be happier if it were 4K, if the Garmin Drive App connected consistently and were faster, and if a battery were built in.
Downloading using app (Bluetooth) is painful. Takes forever to connect or does not connect at all.
I’ve been using it for 2 weeks+ now, but haven’t been able to upload to the vault (even after incident/save video): but using phone network connection (not wifi); that’s an option available to configure in the settings. It does not work.
I have a tandem and mini2 in my car and it all syncs in well.
I still recommend it, it’s a good piece of technology, it works for the basic need of recording and works well.
The voice commands work ok. The app has been a horrible experience. Garmin drive app. Taking out the card to a computer is much less infuriating then using the Garmin drive app.
Ignorant drivers beware, you will end up on YouTube!
Top reviews from other countries

I tried a Thinkware front and rear cam setup. The experience was horrible. Especially with the app. This is so much better! I bought 2 of these Garmins, one for the front and one for the rear. Used one of the included dual outlet USB plugs (which I have a 12v socket wired at the fuse box under the dash). The app connects them super easily pretty much by itself. The Thinkware was so difficult to connect and you had to repeat the process every time.
These are so small, simp!e, and high quality...and the price is great too! Dual 12v outlet, 13ft power cord, 4ft power/data cord, very simple instructions, and an extra mount(not sure why or how you would use this) all included. Also a very good and easy to use app that's very intuitive. Put in and format your SD card, stick it to the glass, plug it in and you're ready to go. The voice commands are excellent. And work really well. I Highly recommend this cam.
3 things they need to fix:
There is no way to dim or turn off the indicator lights.
There is no way to choose what audio indicators to have active, i.e. disable the power on/off sounds but keep the voice command sounds.
There is no way to rotate the image in case you need to mount a cam upside down (or even sideways). The Thinkware had that for the rear cam.
I hope they fix these issues with software updates. I will definitely come back and change my rating to 5. Even 6 if I could.
EDIT: After using these for a while I find that trying to view and download files on your phone is painfully slow and even impossible sometimes. There's some issue when it tries to connect with wi-fi. Even after you disconnect other wi-fi networks first. This might be a 3 star product for some.
EDIT 2: I think this is a great cam, but the app is causing the whole experience to be terrible. I'm dropping my rating further. Maybe if and when you purchase one they will figure things out, but you be warned, the app has long term issues.

UPDATE 2: I took the risk of updating the app to see if they fixed the constant logging-out problem. Now it disconnects from the wifi every 5 seconds, so I can never get any videos off of it. It loads all the thumbnails, and then connects to wifi when selecting one (because it's still too stupid to connect when you open the app), starts loading the video, and then says wifi connection lost. This thing is a useless brick now.
UPDATE: In addition to everything below, the app periodically logs you out of your "session", so if you have an accident and want to manually save a clip, you might open the app and be told you need to log in again, so you have to dig around to find your password. AND you need to receive a verification text message code.
Overall, it doesn't seem like a good deal for the hardware you get. I kept this camera mostly because I had to. The dash cam market is a mess. I don't want the kind where the display and camera are both hanging down in the middle of my view of the road. I don't know why the standard dash cam design isn't a separate camera you mount to the window and the wire runs to a display/setting device you can mount under the dash.
I am going to use the next few paragraphs describing what I think it the worst thing if you plan to use the auto-save features. It seems like an absolute failure from a data-preservation point of view.
Marking video to be saved (done by save button, voice command, or crash detection) saves a separate 30-second video file, centered on the time the save was triggered. So if you have a crash at 1:00:15pm, you get a saved clip covering from 1h:00m:00s-1:00:30.
BUT!...
...there is now a period of 7 seconds missing from the main video recording, right from the point the save was triggered. If 15 seconds on either side of a point in time is not enough and you want to manually select a larger clip to save, there will be 7 seconds of reality missing from that new clip. It's like the camera can't handle copying the previous 15 seconds to the new file and also continuing to record new video to the main string of video, so it just gives up on one of its jobs for 7 seconds. There is a clock displayed on the video, and you will see the video skip ahead and the clock will jump forward.
Everything is still recorded SOMEWHERE, but 7 seconds of critical time will exist ONLY in the auto-saved clip... which the manual trimming feature of the phone app can't splice in. If you try to manually cut a longer clip, in the middle of playback the video will jump ahead 7 seconds. It will not be possible to save a new continuous clip which includes more time before or after the auto saved 30s clip.
Suggestion to Garmin: Why not just have the save function mark the current file as protected (along with either the previous or next file, if the current time is too close to the beginning or end)?
The camera also includes a handy voice command to "take a picture". This saves one frame of the video as a separate picture, which is much easier to transfer to your phone if that's all you need. BUT!... this ALSO interrupts the recording process, though for only about half a second. While this is much less than the 7 second skip from saving a video, you now have a fraction of video fully missing which does not exist anywhere!
OK, now some various comments:
I like having display and controls separate from the camera. It's ridiculous how most dash cameras force you to have the camera and the controls in the same location. I don't know why there aren't loads of dash cams made which have the main good camera on the end of a wire and a display/button unit mounded on your actual dash (or under it, etc).
App instructions are unclear. To connect to the camera, you need to turn on 3 things on your phone:
1. Wifi (NOT your phone's hotspot feature, wifi like you don't have Internet service, but used to transfer videos)
2. Bluetooth (uses for basic commands)
3. Location (I have no idea why, but it won't connect if you don't)
The app is mysteriously slow at establishing the wifi connection to the camera, but it does not bother trying to connect when you open it. It waits until you do something which NEEDS it. Why not start working on that in the background as soon as I open it?
Initial setup was confusing because by default, it was set to only use a wifi connection (not cellular data) to upload to the vault. If I am in a crash, what are the odds I happen to be connected to an existing wifi spot? I was not prompted to choose this when starting it the first time, it was just set to this absurd option in one of the menus.
Video quality is medium. Not great for night, OK for day. Expected for a midrange 1080p sensor.
The included USB cable is for power ONLY. Annoyingly, you can't unplug it from the power block and connect it to a laptop or USB OTG adapter to transfer stuff to your phone without wifi. To do that, you will need to disconnect the cable at the camera end and use another USB cable.
When saving a video clip, it is not always clear what is happening. FYI, the export screen's status bar means loading to phone. Upload to cloud status is not shown and happens in the background.
The clip-cutting setup of the app is great (as long as you haven't lost 7 seconds of time from an auto save). Videos are all grouped with a single icon per day. A day is then displayed as a single timeline, and there are sliders you can use to select start/stop points for a clip to export. Tapping and holding the sliders will zoom in on the timeline so you can be precise.
Something which makes up for the terrible auto save feature (which I disabled) is that this camera supports HUGE 512GB SD cards. Buy as much memory as you don't mind paying for, and you don't have to worry about critical footage being overwritten any time soon. A 64gb card holds about a week worth of driving for me.
Accessory note: Garmin sells a separate polarizing filter which reduces glare. For what Garmin wants for this camera, they should have included it for free.
Cloud storage: If you upload a clip to Garmin's cloud storage, they save it for free for 24 hours. You can generate a shareable link to the file and email it to people. They have a monthly subscription option if you want to store videos on their server longer, otherwise there is no fee for any features.
App warning: You need to be logged into the app to connect to the camera (yikes). Save the password somewhere on your phone.
App warning 2: There is an option in the app to set the camera to delete video after only 3 minutes! Make sure this is not turned on. I have no idea what kind of wannabe secret agent is using a phone/web-connected dash cam but also thinks their driving history is so secret it must vanish after 3 minutes.

The video quality is not great. It's honestly quite poor. You can't even read license plates in the day. But the app allowed me to download the videos easily and get them sent to my insurance provider. THe small profile is probably the best feature, I can hide it behind my mirror.

* The camera makes occasional beeps and bloops as you drive and there's no documentation what the different noises mean. Sometimes I hear a bloop after I hit a pothole on our terrible streets, so that must be crash detection. Other times we're just driving down the street and the camera makes a tone. What is it saying? If I had to guess, the camera has confused a conversation, radio, or road noise for a voice command. But who knows, since Garmin doesn't tell you.
* The camera makes a tone when it begins recording after starting the car and when you turn the ignition off. There can sometimes be a fairly significant delay of 10 or more seconds (sometimes double that) between starting the car and hearing that the recording started. If you start the car and a vehicle hits you a few seconds later, you may not capture the accident. I'm using a highly rated high endurance 256GB Samsung microSDXC card, so I don't think card performance is a factor.
* I'm disappointed Garmin charges extra ($30!) for an optional polarized filter to reduce glare / reflections. This should be included in the box.
All of that said, I'm quite happy in general with the hardware. The iPhone app, on the other hand, sucks. It's clunky and slow to connect to the camera and just exemplifies bad software design. The way the app works is when you want to view live video, or list or view saved videos and photos, it disconnects you from whatever WiFi network you might be on, probably your home network, and connects to a WiFi network on the camera itself. This connection process takes a while, and after connecting, the video and photo list may or may not slowly appear (it's been hit or miss for me). The WiFi connection just seems very very slow. It then has to fetch a thumbnail for each video; frequently some thumbnails just have a spinner. Exporting video from the camera is also extremely slow. It feels like using the Internet ca. 1995. Why not "just" pop the card out and view videos on a computer? The app stitches together the 1 minute videos that make up your drive into a single item. If you view the SD card on a computer, you're left to wade through hundreds of 1 minute video clips. Compared to Ring's new dashcam, which a friend has, Garmin's app offering is outdated and slow. That said, I much prefer the Garmin hardware to the Ring hardware.
If I frequently needed to access, save, and share videos from the camera, the app design and slowness would be a deal breaker for me. Since this cam is more something I just want to forget about until or unless I need it, I can live with it.

Ahora las desventajas, aún sacando el video directo de la micro SD, el video tiene compresión significativa, es considerablemente difícil distinguir las placas de un coche que vaya pasando, una de las principales razones de instalar una DashCam es para esto. Estoy casi seguro de que esto se puede arreglar con una actualización que permita guardar video con menos compresión, pero dudo que lo hagan porque ya lleva mucho tiempo en el mercado y no lo han hecho. Lo segundo es que no incluye el filtro polarizado y cuesta unos $500 pesos extra, si esta diseñado para ir montado en el carro esto debería estar incluido por el precio, ya que el reflejo del tablero se ve demasiado.