Road Angel Halo Pro Review
An affordable mix of a 1440p front dash cam, and a 1080p rear cam
Verdict
Road Angel’s Halo Pro bundle is reasonably priced, reasonably specified, and gives you cover for the front and rear of your car. While it’s not too rich on features – and its mobile app is a bit of a mess – it’s hard to argue with its clear and detailed videos. If you want an affordable, effective dash cam setup, this is a great choice.
Pros
- Great video quality
- Front and back coverage
- Good value
Cons
- No screen
- Clunky app
Availability
- UKRRP: £200
- USAunavailable
- EuropeRRP: €153
- Canadaunavailable
- AustraliaRRP: AU$220
Key Features
- GPSBuilt-in GPS saves your exact location as you drive
- AppRoad Angel’s app gives you a live view, and lets you scroll back and forward through your driving timeline
- Front and rear cameraThis dash cam comes bundled with a rear-facing camera
Introduction
Dash cams can be expensive devices, particularly if you add a rear-view module, but Road Angel’s Halo Pro seems very reasonable.
For £160 – or less if you shop around – you get a front-facing dash cam with 1440p (2K) resolution, paired with a 1080p (Full HD) rear window camera. It’s a reasonably basic device with no screen, but it does have onboard GPS, and a g-sensor to detect knocks while you’re parked.
When shopping for this camera you may find it referred to as the Road Angel Aura Pro or Aura HD3 2K, including on its Amazon UK listing.
Design and features
- A low-profile camera, with no screen or controls
- GPS positioning, parking mode, and Wi-Fi
- 1440p resolution front, 1080p rear cameras
With no screen, the Road Angel Halo Pro is a fairly low-profile, windscreen-hugging camera. It’s not as compact or smart as Road Angel’s range-topping Ultra, and it’s not quite as easy to tuck it away in front of your rear view mirror.
Still, I managed to fit it close to the moulding behind my car’s mirror, and it didn’t bother me during the day. At night, a prominent green power light distracted me until I covered it with a bit of Blu Tack. Once installed you can tweak the lens’ direction by shifting its housing up or down slightly.
Like the Ultra, the Halo Pro comes with a cigarette power lead that uses a strange, custom USB-C connector. This has to be inserted the correct way around, and has a small thumb screw to secure it in place. There’s a splitter with a jack for the rear camera, which comes with a generous lead. Sadly this uses unusual connectors, so it might not be easy to find a shorter one if you don’t need all the extra cable. You can buy an optional hardwiring kit, which you’ll need to activate the sensor-controlled parking mode.
As you might expect, the rear camera has a small mount that fits between the heating elements on a typical rear screen. Once in place, you can rotate it vertically so it points at the road. This 1080p unit has only a 120-degree horizontal field of view, while the Halo Pro itself covers 140 degrees – those aren’t the widest angles you’ll find, but it’s enough to cover everything directly ahead and behind, and much of what’s off to one side as you pass it.
This camera accepts up to a 128GB microSD card – there isn’t one in the box. Insert one for the first time and the Halo Pro will quickly prepare it before it starts to film. Voice announcements let you know when the camera’s filming and when it’s got a GPS lock, but if you want any actual control you’ll have to connect to it using the Road Angel app. I didn’t get on brilliantly with the Android version of this software, although unlike the Halo Ultra, I could at least connect to this camera without needing to use an old phone.
There’s not as much control over this camera’s settings as I’ve seen in other dash cams – for example, there’s no night mode and not much choice over video resolution – but the basics are well covered. It’s not at all obvious where you’ll find recorded footage. In fact it’s integrated within the live view, where you’ll find a timeline you can drag backwards to search for previous drives. Once you find the moment you want, you can download the footage directly to your phone. While this is a good way to visually search your footage, I found it a bit cumbersome.
Alternatively, you can remove the memory card and browse it in a computer, but the footage itself is only stamped with the date, time and your speed. If you want your position, you’ll need to find it via the map available in the live view screen on the app. One issue with this is that, with your phone connected to the camera rather than the internet, you may find the app can’t download further map detail.
Performance and video quality
- Great video by day
- Among the better cameras at night
Despite its comparatively modest resolution, and the fact it only shoots at 30 frames per second, the Road Angel Halo Pro produced some of the most useful footage I’ve seen. Daytime videos from the front and rear of my car were clear, with the road and the vehicles on it exposed perfectly well.
I became more impressed when I started trying to spot details such as number plates in the footage. Particularly from the front camera, I could read a good proportion of plates, even when there was a moderate closing speed between me and the other vehicle.
This camera excelled itself by recording a driver blasting past, more than 50mph quicker than me on a dual carriageway. Individual frames in the video were remarkably unblurred given the speed difference, and both the front and rear cameras captured the car’s number plate.
Unsurprisingly, the Halo Pro couldn’t produce such sharply resolved videos by night, but it was still one of the better cameras I’ve tested. I could read most road signs picked out by my headlights, and make out the number plates of some parked cars, depending how my headlights caught them – a direct hit tends to cause too much reflection for any camera.
The rear camera performed about as well as could be expected. It couldn’t make out the more dimly lit areas on my night-time circuit around a city block, but it could pick up detail, including number plates, under reasonable lighting. It also managed to resolve the plate of somebody tailgating me through nighttime motorway roadworks, thanks to illumination from my brake lights.
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Should you buy it?
You want a a great value dash cam:
The Road Angel Halo Pro is a great bundle for the money, tending to capture more usable detail even than higher resolution dash cams.
You want a touchscreen dash cam:
With control coming via a clunky app, this isn’t as easy to use as a good touchscreen dash cam.
Final Thoughts
The Road Angel Halo Pro doesn’t look like a remarkable dash cam at first glance, but it recorded more usable detail than most other examples I’ve tested – even range-topping 4K cams. I didn’t get on with Road Angel’s app, but it’s only really necessary to tweak the aim and settings, and to get the exact location of an incident. If you don’t need that, you can use a PC to browse and save your footage. If you’re looking for strong protection without spending a fortune, this is a great front and rear bundle. If you’d rather have a cheaper forward-facing option with decent 1080p footage, check out the Nextbase 322GW.
How we test
We test every dash cam we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main dash cam for the review period
We take sample video during the day and night to see how good the footage really is.
We test any smartphone apps to see what additional features are on offer.
We test any additional safety features, such as lange change warning, to see how useful they really are.
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FAQs
This camera supports hardwiring – you’ll need it to enable the sensor-controlled parking mode – but you’ll have to buy an optional kit to get the necessary lead.
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
