Audiovox ACA250 Wireless Vehicle Rear Observation System

I bought and installed this system 3 years ago. For the price, it is a good system with a great concept being wirelss. The wireless transmission saves a lot of effort at the installation part. You do not have to route the wire from the back of your car, prying open the moldings and panels to fit the wires to the front. For those who are not very confident with taking apart the interiors of their car, this saves a lot of headache. For the 3 years I had the system, it worked without incident and it still keeps going. However, being wireless comes with a price as well. First of all, in a world filled with wireless devices everywhere, you get interference almost all the time everywhere. In the worst cases, I get flickering screen that pretty much render the camera useless in areas with strong wireless interference to the camera. And sometimes you even get to see what is in other people's wireless camera if they have the same frequency as your camera, whether you like it or not. The other thing that bothers me is the constant noisy screen when you leave it on. For the wired system, you connect the screen power to the reverse light power source, so your screen will only turn on when your car is in reverse. With this system, the screen gets its power from the cigarett light power outlet. I got too lazy to plug and unplug the power cord for the screen everytime I get in and get out of the car. And the screen will get this video noise like what you see from a TV without signal, which is really annoying. So after 3 years, I finally replace it with a wired one! If you can deal with the occasional flickering screen due to interference and the noise when the screen is on, this is a good system.

I bought this system as a means to help align a trailer to the hitch on a pickup truck, as well as the occasional backing up in parking spaces. It's sufficient for the task for the most part, but the screen should be bigger to help gauge depth better. The left-right alignment is nice, but it's hard to know how far to back up sometimes unless you use it enough to know what to look for in the screen.The system itself is of good quality. The camera appears to be solid. The screen is OK, but definitely needs to be bigger, more like a GPS or smart phone sized screen. The wiring is sub-par coming from the camera extension. The wire gauge is much too small for the connectors that came with the kit. Highly recommend stripping the wire insulation off of the vehicle wires and wrapping the camera wires around the vehicle wires or soldering the wires together and then wrapping it up good with electrical tape. I tried the connectors first, but they eventually bit right through the camera wire itself. Signal reception is good except that the image flickers a quarter of the time. Not sure if that is due to interference or signal strength. Right now I'm using the 12V adapter for the screen until I have enough time to run the wires permanently.

Bottom line: I got it installed and it works well to give me visibility behind my Ford F-150 when I'm backing up.The device performs nicely. The fish-eye view is great for seeing if anything is behind the vehicle and, as advertised, should be used only for visibility, not for help in backing up. I mounted the camera to the top of my license plate and used shims to angle it down so that I could see the top of my tow ball. This gives me some perspective for distances between the ball and a trailer hitch, for example.For electrical wiring, I routed the camera wire behind the license plate and alongside the other wires behind the bumper up to the left backup light wires. The tap-in squeeze connector was useless as the camera wire is too thin to make a good electrical connection. I ended up stripping 1 millimeter off the backup light wire sheathing and using electrical tape to secure the end of the camera wires to the backup light wires. This worked, but I expect to have to repair the connection periodically.I mounted the monitor on the top, front, far left side of my dashboard (used the provided double-stick tape but it doesn't look like that will last very long) and routed the wire down behind the dash and along the underside of the panel (above my feet/the pedals). Right now the wire comes out on the right side of the panel where I have the wire running up to plug into the cigarette lighter, but this is temporary because I feel the need to unplug it every time I stop the car; when plugged in, the monitor is always on and gets quite hot. Eventually I will figure out an appropriate wire (one that's powered only when the car is running) to use for monitor power and expect to do the same stripping/taping job as I did with the camera.