Review of Wolfbox G900TRIPRO (Bumper Version) with OEM kit and OBDII wiring kit
I've got a 2022 Bronco Wildtrak 4dr with Lux, and wanted to post my review of the u/WolfBox G900TRIPRO that I recently got as a rearview mirror replacement as well as to use it as a dashcam for the trails. Just wanna say this is an honest review and I am NOT sponsored by them or affiliated in any way. Not trying to promote the product - I just like the thing and wanna post an honest review, as well as what I think could be improved about it.
Installation:
Installation of the Wolfbox mirror unit was super easy thanks to the OEM kit. You literally just unscrew the OEM mirror from the metal mounting fixture on the windshield, easily remove the OEM mirror, and then slide the Wolfbox OEM mount onto the metal mounting point and tighten the screw, and you're done mounting! No dashcam that I've used has been that easy to install. Then it just articulates the same way as your original mirror, easy peasy. Intentional or not, the screen is shiny/smooth enough that if you want to use it just as a mirror, you can turn off the screen using the screensaver setting and just use it as a dimmed mirror. This is better suited for daytime use, but nighttime it's a bit too dark so you're better off using the rear camera on the screen rather than the natural reflection. More on that in a bit. To install the wiring, the kit comes with a wire that plugs into the OBDII port. All I had to do was run the wire along the edge of the windshield and down to the OBDII port and the unit seems to take care of the rest. It kinda seems to magically know when the bronco's been shut off for a while and turns itself off. I'll be hardwiring it soon using a fuse tap rather than running it off of the OBDII port though, and will update my post when I end up doing that. Aside from that, I mounted the rear camera using the included the license plate bracket, and mounted the front camera to my Steelcraft HD brush guard just above where the OEM front camera is so it's out of the way but still has a good angle of the ground in front of me for avoiding rocks etc. Finally, the GPS unit was just one plug and an adhesive pad, and I put it on top of where the AUX switches are so it's out of the way. I don't even know it's there unless I take the roof panels off and look down at it!
Now for some of the key features of the unit that I'm liking so far:
- Voice control: With the wake word activated, you can just say "hey wolf" followed by any of the voice commands listed in the settings menu. It has worked every time that I've tried using it, so I actually rarely have to touch the device to save a recording and can keep my eyes on the road and focus on whatever incident I'm watching.
- Wifi downloading: Connecting to the unit with my phone via wifi is fast and easy through the app. Download speeds are WAY faster (by a longshot) than my Blackvue DR770X dashcam.
- Swiping through the different views is a breeze. You can cycle between the mirror cam, rear bumper cam, and front bumper cam, all with one swipe. Plus I love that you can pan the view from the camera vertically up and down, so if you're towing a trailer or someone's right on your bumper you can look up at their license plate, and so on. Plus with the front bumper you can pan down to see rocks while rock crawling or large branches or whatever. I found this very useful for getting a different point of view than the Bronco's front camera. Plus it allowed me to stay in Normal mode in 4H and still use Android Auto on the bronco - this is huge because I wasn't familiar with the trails I was exploring, so having the map up AND having a front camera at the same time was fantastic!
- Coming back to the reflection in the screen - they actually sell an anti-glare cover that you can put over the screen to completely eliminate the reflection in the glass. I'm opting not to buy or install that, as I like to be able to see both the reflection in the glass and the camera view on-screen, depending on how I focus my eyes. While not really a feature of the camera system, it sure is useful!!
- The unit comes with a 256GB microSD card!! Huge bonus points for that. So far it's been very reliable and hasn't had any issues.
- I've seen some people complain about the mirror being too wide for the bronco and the sun visors end up hitting it - I haven't had any issues with that myself. The visors just barely brush the edges but they don't bang into the thing. I can still open the visors fully without any issues. So bonus points there for utilizing the most space possible without being a problem!
Here are some improvements I think could be made:
- While the voice commands work pretty flawlessly, I am a guy who listens to music very loud. The red button on the bottom of the dashcam only shut the screen off or shuts the unit off if you hold it, but doesn't lock the video like I'd expect it to. I'd definitely like to see the option to change what that button does.
- An auto brightness feature would be great, but it's really easy to change the brightness anyway since there's a shortcut button on the main video screen. No searching through menus to get to it, at least.
- It'd be nice if the OBDII wiring kit allowed for parking mode activation - there are only positive and negative leads on the plug, though. Or, the device could utilize the GPS, like some other dashcams do, to activate parking mode when it doesn't detect movement for X amount of time.
- I'd love the option to use the device exclusively as a normal mirror as I described earlier. If there were a screen protector that was the opposite of anti-glare, perhaps that would be nice, so I can turn off the screen and see right through it like a normal tinted mirror more easily (primarily at night).
- Sometimes, the rear camera seems to disconnect at random, and that would totally not be a problem if it would just default to the rearview camera view instead of the split screen view. Hopefully, this is an easy enough feature to add to the options menu.
Lastly, the camera quality - on all 3 cameras, mind you - is fantastic. It's sharp, low-light capability is 10/10, there's very little glare on the cameras from headlights at night, and each camera has the perfect field of view for its intended purpose. I love being able to see closer to the ground as I'm backing up to a trailer or backing down a trail that was too narrow to turn around in.
Overall, while there are a few improvements that could be made for quality of life, this is a super polished and really reliable product so far. Definitely worth trying it out, even if you mount it elsewhere just to have extra camera angles for recording/viewing and keep your original mirror. I won't be reinstalling my OEM mirror any time soon with this thing working as well as it does!!
Some pics of it on The WildeBeast:
