Auto-Vox Solar 3A Plus Review: Drill-Free Reversing Camera

A reversing camera acts as a digital over-the-shoulder glance, helping you spot obstacles lurking in the blind spot before they become a problem. The Auto-Vox Solar 3A Plus is a retrofit set that promises to add exactly that to an older car — and to do it without a single hole drilled into the bodywork. On the evidence of the published test it fits easily, produces good video and throws in some genuinely useful extras. This review is based on that test, not on a hands-on trial of our own.

Parking can be a real test of patience, especially in tight spaces. Where once you had to crane awkwardly over your shoulder, reversing cameras now take the strain. Newer vehicles tend to have one built in; on older cars it is well worth retrofitting, and the Solar 3A Plus is one such solution.

The headline feature is the fitting itself. Because the camera communicates wirelessly and draws its power from a solar-charged battery, it can be put into service without taking a drill to the car at all — about as convenient as retrofitting gets. The camera and its battery are held by a single screw to a sturdy metal plate, so the whole unit can be unscrewed again if, say, there is no way to charge it where the car is kept. That plate is fixed behind the number plate with the supplied double-sided tape, and you can mount it above or below the plate as you prefer — either works, because the image on the monitor can be mirrored to suit.

Auto-Vox fits a 5,000 mAh battery, which should be fully charged over micro-USB before first use — allow five to six hours for that. How long the camera then runs unaided is impossible to state in the abstract: it depends on how often it is switched on and how much sunlight the panel actually sees. The maker quotes a maximum working life of around 110 days between charges, though through dark winter months you will probably need the 1.5-metre USB cable every few weeks. Run without any solar top-up at all, the camera keeps going for up to twelve hours before the battery is flat. Because it carries both a battery and a solar panel, the camera unit is inevitably rather bulky — that hardware has to live somewhere.

The 5-inch monitor shows the picture at 1920 x 1080, and it makes a high-quality impression: the display is glossy rather than matte, a foot hooks into the back, and a ball joint lets it swivel and tilt. Rather than a suction cup, the mount uses an adhesive pad, so the monitor sticks straight to the dashboard and can be angled cleanly towards the driver. Power comes from the cigarette-lighter socket by way of a generously long 3.5-metre cable, and the charging adapter carries a spare USB port so a second device can still be powered when the monitor's plug is occupying the socket. The camera itself has a 140-degree field of view, is waterproof, and can be tilted up to 35 degrees up or down.

There is essentially no setup to speak of. You switch the camera on by hand using a button on its side, and the monitor wakes by itself once the ignition is on. In the test the view behind the car appeared immediately, the wireless link having established itself almost instantly and entirely on its own. There were no interference problems: the video feed came through cleanly and stayed rock-steady, and the manufacturer quotes a range of up to 16 metres.

Three buttons on the side of the monitor housing handle everything. Brightness and contrast are adjustable, the image can be mirrored, and parking guide lines can be switched on and even adjusted for width. The neatest trick is that the monitor will pair with two cameras at once and show both feeds side by side in a split-screen view — handy for seeing what is happening in front of and behind the car at the same time.

The picture quality is a real strength. By day the image is strikingly clear and sharp, with strong contrast, faithful colours and plenty of depth and detail, and artefacts are all but absent — which does a great deal to cut the risk of a knock while parking. After dark a single streetlamp is enough for a perfectly usable picture; the edges of the frame darken a little and some artefacts do creep in, but the camera still serves as a dependable guide.

As a parking aid it convinces. With the lens correctly aligned you can see precisely what is going on behind the car, right in the blind spot — whether that is another vehicle pulling in, children at play or a bollard you would otherwise have missed. Reversing becomes noticeably easier, too. It takes a little practice to learn what the guide lines are actually telling you, but anyone who feels unsure backing into a space gains a much better sense of the surroundings and of how to place the car.

All told, the Auto-Vox Solar 3A Plus is an attractive, worry-free package at a fair price. Monitor and camera together deliver a good picture and make parking a great deal easier, the signal is extremely reliable and the wireless setup is child's play. Best of all, because the camera runs on solar power there is no cable to route into the cabin — the single biggest chore of a traditional retrofit simply disappears.