Vantrue E1 Pro

Introduction

If you’re after a truly small dash cam, the Vantrue E1 Pro should be on your list. It’s a dinky cuboid with a big lens sticking out the front, although it does have a fairly chunky windscreen mount on top. This is certainly the smallest 4K camera that I have tested: the Nextbase Piqo is similarly titchy, but it’s only available up to 2K resolution.

At this size, and this price, you shouldn’t expect too much in the way of features. The Vantrue E1 Pro does have voice control, but it doesn’t offer any driver aids. More significantly, there’s no rear-view or cabin camera on offer: if you want to cover the road behind, choose a different dash cam.

For a little more than £100 you can upgrade the E1 Pro with an optional LTE mobile module. That unlocks various geofencing and tracking features, similar to the ones that come as standard on the Nextbase Piqo. Vantrue didn’t supply that module, so I can’t say whether it’s a worthy upgrade.

Design and features

• Small and neat
• No driver aids
• Annoying menu

The Vantrue E1 Pro is definitely one of the smallest dash cams I’ve tested, about half the size of typical models.

It’s an appealing design – while it dangles down enough to obstruct your view when mounted under a modern car’s mirror, it’s easy to tuck it off to the side slightly. Vantrue supplies it with a couple of electrostatic stickers, which help you reposition or remove it if you need to, however the mount only allows for pitch (fore/aft) movement: you can’t adjust yaw or roll once it’s fitted to the car, which left footage slightly wonky thanks to my car’s strongly curved windscreen.

This camera comes with a standard cigarette-style car power adaptor with a permanent, moulded connection to the camera lead, and a spare 12W USB-A slot. That’s nice to have, but I prefer the dual USB-C adaptors I’ve seen on a couple of other recent dash cams, which can charge a smart phone much more quickly. Still, the power cable connects to the sturdy mount, and you can slide the camera off it to remove it from the car if needed.

You’ll also find a circular polarising filter in the box, which is a bit like putting on sunglasses. While this dims the video slightly, it filters out cabin reflections from the windscreen, giving the camera a clearer view out.

The Vantrue E1 Pro records up to 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution video via the same Sony STARVIS 2 IMX678 sensor you’ll find at the heart of the Viofo A329 – currently my top dash cam pick for video quality. That might not sound important, but it’s a great sensor to find at this price, and suggests that video performance isn’t likely to be an issue. However, it is worth mentioning that while the A329 films at up to 60 frames per second, here you’re limited to 30fps.

You can’t have everything, and this camera does compromise on features. There are no driver aids, such as lane-departure or forward traffic warnings. Personally I wouldn’t miss them, and most modern cars have better onboard systems, but it’s worth mentioning in case you have an older vehicle and want to add them. As I mentioned, this dash cam’s data-enabled features require the LTE module, but that’s as we’d expect – Nexbase’s Piqo is unique in offering them at this price point.

I didn’t much care for the Vantrue E1 Pro’s menu system. Its screen’s fine, but you navigate it by pressing three buttons underneath, and their functions don’t remain constant between menu levels. Fortunately you can use the app instead, which is unremarkable. While it gives you access to a wide range of settings, it presents videos as a simple thumbnail list, sorted by time and date. It’s easier to navigate a timeline; I wish more dash cam apps offered that instead.

As you might expect, you can view recordings or the live view directly from within the app. That’s helpful if you want to check what happened, or if you want to download and share the video from your phone.

Performance and video quality

• Excellent video quality, especially by day
• Brilliant number plate performance
• Twitchy shock sensor

I wouldn’t normally expect brilliant video quality from a dash cam at this price, but the Vantrue E1 Pro was excellent. By day, its videos were as sharp and almost as impressive as those from the Viofo A329. I could clearly make out cars, number plates, badges and all sorts of details.

Only rarely did this camera’s lower frame rate count against it – for example, giving me less chance than in 60fps footage to resolve the number plate of cars passing quickly across the frame. Still, it was more than up to capturing most details.

Oddly, the quality was a little less impressive by night. Although still very strong for a camera at this price, the Vantrue E1 Pro’s night footage seemed less crisp, and less intelligently exposed than night videos I shot from the Viofo A329. Cars under streetlight were a little more blurry, while video generally seemed fuzzier.

One notable exception came with number plates, however. Few dash cams can capture plates reliably at night, where a direct hit from your headlights results in a bright washout, and no overlap can leave them too dark to be crisply resolved. Vantrue says the E1 Pro has exclusive ‘PlatePix’ technology, which aims to enhance plates and make them readable.

This camera was the best I’ve yet tested at recording number plates at night, managing significantly more than other dash cameras I’ve tested. It wasn’t fail-safe, though, as seen below.

Like most dash cams, the Vantrue E1 Pro comes with a shock sensor that automatically protects recordings when it senses a bump. Nobody seems to test these on UK roads, as they always record multiple false alarms. This was the second dash cam I’ve tested lately where I had to turn the feature off, as even the lowest sensitivity settings weren’t insensitive enough. I should mention the change coincides with a new car, although it doesn’t seem any less smooth than the last one.

I usually like to test dash cams across the widest possible range of conditions, but here the UK’s unusually dry, sunny summer of 2025 conspired against me. While the Vantrue E1 Pro was excellent in daylight and dusk, and good at night, I couldn’t test its performance in a good old fashioned British downpour, or with low, slanting light. Based on what I did see, I’d expect it to perform well.

Should you buy it?

FAQs