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I rented a car and the rear view mirror is not a mirror at all but rather is a tiny LED screen showing the output of a camera. This is actually fucking terrible because I have no idea where the camera is, therefore I have no idea where this notional "mirror" is meant to be in space and therefore I cannot gauge distances, normally one of the main things you look into a rear view mirror to do
It’s incredible that people will buy this kind of crap for a ton of money!
This came as a feature buried in an option package on a car we recently bought - we’d almost not noticed it had it. (It’s off by default)
I decided to try it. For about an hour I didn’t like it. Now it’s the only mode I use. (mostly) My observations:
General:
I feel very, very sure that no one is selling this feature without the ability to turn it off currently. I could be wrong, but I feel very, very sure.
Spend the three minutes to adjust it to your preferences if yours has those options. (zoom, etc) It makes a difference.
Person in OP could probably spend 15 seconds looking at the back of the car to find out where the camera is.
Another comment in the thread makes the point about 3D. They are correct but I find it doesn’t seem to make a real difference in practice, for me. YMMV.
Pros:
Doesn’t matter who or what what is in your back seat or cargo area. You can see behind you.
Vastly superior at night - light gathering, like when you look through binoculars
Makes you immune to “guy right behind me is in a lifted truck with high beams on”
For the most part I don’t find a problem judging distances, after a period of adjustment. It’s not your back up cam - which any car with such a mirror surely has. And you should be turning around when you back anyway, and/or you can flip the mirror to normal mode.
Cons:
For those last couple of feet, where someone is pulling up behind you at a red light, that’s the case where distances are way off. It feels like their front wheels should be inside your car. When someone pulls up to stop behind you in such a circumstance, this is visually alarming until you get used to it.
I wear reading glasses. Through some process of how your eyes work that I can’t explain well, looking through a mirror at a distant object is apparently like focusing on that distant object. So my glasses never came into play. But looking at a small screen 18 inches from your eyes is looking at a small screen 18 inches from your eyes, and sometimes I have to push my glasses up to be able to get a good feel for what I’m seeing there.
Overall I like it more than I don’t, but I could see how some would feel differently.
For the zoom, I set mine to mostly match the physical mirror. The downside is it’s a bit lower quality (digital zoom), but having the wider field of view is a con to me. This way, I get all of the pros you mentioned, without the weird positional con.
This came as a feature buried in an option package on a car we recently bought - we’d almost not noticed it had it. (It’s off by default)
I decided to try it. For about an hour I didn’t like it. Now it’s the only mode I use. (mostly) My observations:
General:
Pros:
Cons:
For those last couple of feet, where someone is pulling up behind you at a red light, that’s the case where distances are way off. It feels like their front wheels should be inside your car. When someone pulls up to stop behind you in such a circumstance, this is visually alarming until you get used to it.
I wear reading glasses. Through some process of how your eyes work that I can’t explain well, looking through a mirror at a distant object is apparently like focusing on that distant object. So my glasses never came into play. But looking at a small screen 18 inches from your eyes is looking at a small screen 18 inches from your eyes, and sometimes I have to push my glasses up to be able to get a good feel for what I’m seeing there.
Overall I like it more than I don’t, but I could see how some would feel differently.
For the zoom, I set mine to mostly match the physical mirror. The downside is it’s a bit lower quality (digital zoom), but having the wider field of view is a con to me. This way, I get all of the pros you mentioned, without the weird positional con.