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Garmin dash cameras have consistently appeared at the top of our buying guides. They’re compact yet powerful, with high video quality, excellent ease of use, and a decent price.

Now the all-conquering Garmin 67W has been usurped by a new flagship. It’s called the X310 – Garmin’s naming convention is just sporadic – and it costs more than the 67W.

In fact, at $350/£350, it costs a lot more than the Garmin 67W by around $200/£200. All that extra money buys you 4K video, a new design with a touchscreen, and a built-in polarizing filter to help reduce glare on the windshield.

Is this enough to justify the price? Read on to find out.

Garmin Dash Cam X310: Specifications

Garmin Dash Cam X310: Price

Available now, the Garmin X310 is priced at $399.99 / £349.99. For that price, you get Garmin’s new flagship dash cam, featuring a simple magnetic windshield mount, a USB-C to USB-A cable, and a 12-volt adapter that has two USB-A sockets. The X310 costs $200/£150 more than Garmin’s previous flagship, the Dash Cam 67W, which is still available.

Garmin Dash Cam X310: design and handling

Despite the high-end specs on offer here, the X310 is a remarkably compact dashcam. With its dimensions of 7 x 4.22 x 1.95 cm, it is only slightly larger than the Garmin 67W (5.62 x 4.05 x 2.19 cm).

It’s not as small as the all-new Garmin Mini 3, but considering the X310 has a 2.4-inch screen on the back, 4K video, and a lens with a built-in polarizing filter , this is an incredibly compact package.

The windshield mount is also tiny. Just like other Garmin dash cam models, this one uses a very short plastic arm that attaches to the dash cam with a ball joint, then sticks to the windshield with a magnetic disc. This one uses an adhesive pad to stay attached to your car, but its magnetic connection to the mount (and spare drive in the box) makes it easy to move the Garmin between vehicles.

There are two buttons on the side of the X310. One is for power and the other can be pressed to manually save a video recording – for example, when you see an incident coming but are not directly involved, the collision-activated save function of the dashboard camera is therefore not triggered.

An included power cable connects to a USB-C port on the opposite side, while the rear houses a 2.4-inch touchscreen. It is a bright, crisp and clear color TFT LCD panel, but turns off during use so the driver is not distracted. Finally, on the front is the X130’s 140-degree lens and built-in polarizing filter. Garmin previously sold these filters as options, but now includes one in an effort to reduce windshield glare that spoils your images.

Overall, the Garmin X310 is a stylish dash cam that’s small but has everything most drivers could need and feels like it’s built to last.

Garmin Dash Cam X310: performance

I’ll cut to the chase here: the Garmin X310 produces fantastic videos. And while it’s true that a glance at the spec sheet would likely tell the same story, dash cams are sometimes guilty of over-promising and under-delivering, especially when it comes to 4K .

The X310 is not one of these dashcams. Images are smooth, sharp and full of detail, with accurate colors and almost no noise that some other high-resolution dash cams suffer from.

Key details such as street signs, road markings and vehicle license plates are readable during daytime recordings, and even though there is less detail at night, the X310 still produces video with remarkably low grain.

Images recorded day or night benefit from the new polarized lens, which reduces reflections from the car’s interior appearing on the windshield and obscuring the dash camera’s view of the road.

The X310 also stands out for its simplicity of configuration and use. Setup takes just a few minutes, thanks to the wonderfully simple windshield mount, and you don’t even need to use the Garmin Drive app if you don’t want to, because settings like video resolution , frame rate and other settings can be adjusted via the touchscreen of the dash camera itself. The app is worth installing if you want to use Vault, Garmin’s cloud storage subscription service which costs $9.99/£9.99 per month and automatically downloads saved recordings, which are then accessible for 30 days.

The same subscription also unlocks Live View, which lets you view a live video feed from the X310 on your phone. This is a great way to remotely record your parked car, but in addition to a Vault subscription, it also requires a hardwired setup for permanent power and Wi-Fi (like a hotspot device left in your car) to get the dash cam online.

Less impressive are the driver safety assist features. A subtle beep to let you know the vehicle in front of you has gone can be useful (if you’re not paying attention, of course), but it’s not smart enough to understand more than the simplest traffic tracking . Pause to let a vehicle fill a gap in front of you and it will beep at you, ignoring your generosity.

I was also disappointed to see the forward collision warning issue two false positives in quick succession. Both events (which are supposed to warn if the dashboard camera thinks you’re about to hit a vehicle in front of you) happened while I was parked, and one of them triggered while no other vehicles were traveling on the road ahead.

As always, these driver assistance features of on-board cameras struggle to match those already installed by law on most modern cars, and a few false positives are enough for me to decide to disable them. This means that the X310 isn’t the perfect driver assistance system, but neither should it be. On-board cameras are mainly used to record the route ahead and then save the images when most necessary. To me, the X310 wouldn’t be any less impressive if it removed its driver assistance features altogether. Fortunately, they are easy to put out.

Finally, the X310 is one of the very few on-board cameras to have a battery. This provides up to 20 minutes of use, so while it’s handy for short cable-free trips (and ensures the camera has enough power to save and download recordings once your car is turned off), it doesn’t change not the deal.

Garmin Dash Cam X310: Verdict

Driving assistance technology aside, this really is a fantastic dash cam. It’s compact, easy to install, and looks well made. It records excellent 4K footage or can shoot at a whopping 120fps if you drop the resolution to Full HD. Garmin’s voice control technology works well, although it’s not something you’ll likely use often, and the smartphone app makes transferring footage from the camera easy. It’s also useful for adjusting settings, but again, the dash cam’s touchscreen and simple user interface are even more convenient.

The addition of a built-in polarizing lens is welcome, reducing windshield glare and improving images compared to other models in the Garmin Dash Cam series.

Add it to the X310’s simple magnetic mount, which attaches securely and offers plenty of adjustments, and you have a high-end dash cam with little room for improvement – ​​but room to grow, if you want. want, with parking monitoring and remote viewing. offered if you use a wiring cable and provide the dash cam with a data connection.

Buy it…

• You want excellent video quality, either with 4K resolution and HDR at 30 frames per second, or Full HD at 120 fps.

• You’d like the option to have parking mode and remote monitoring, but you don’t mind paying for a Vault subscription and setting up a Wifi hotspot.

• You want a dashcam that has a touchscreen, but is still relatively compact and easy to switch between two vehicles.

Don’t buy it…

• You are on a budget. This is an expensive dash cam, and one that costs significantly more than other great options from Garmin itself.

• You want a small dash cam. Although small, the X310 is much larger than the particularly compact (and equally new, but not 4K) Garmin Dash Cam Mini 3.

• You also want a rear-facing camera. Garmin does not sell secondary cameras for its in-car camera systems; instead, its dash cameras can be connected wirelessly, but this can be expensive and each requires its own power outlet.

Alternatives

Garmin 67W: Garmin itself offers a fantastic alternative to the X310, in the form of its own 67W. Smaller and less expensive, this dash cam records in Full HD with HDR, via a 180-degree wide lens, and offers many of the same features as the X310. Read the full review…

Viofo A229 Pro: It lacks the sleek design of the Garmin, but for a similar price, this dash cam packs 4K with HDR, GPS, and a 2K rear camera for full recording. Read the full story…