There are many places you can mount a dash camera to your car windshield, but there are a few optimal places we would recommend on where to place your dash cam.
The term “dash cam” comes from the word dashboard, which is where many of the early police car cameras were mounted to record out the front of the windshield. Today, the majority of all consumer dash cams are mounted somewhere on the windshield and rear window in the case of a dual dash cam with a front and rear camera.
4 main things to consider before installing dash cam to windshield
- Sun shade tint – Check to see that the dash cam lens is not pointed through a top sun shade tint or shaded dots that are sometimes at the tops of windshields to protect your eyes from direct sun light. The camera lens should not be pointing through any extra tint on the top of windshield. If there is a sun shade tint on the top of your windshield, you should lower the dash cam until the camera lens is looking underneath it
- Windshield wiper area – Check to see if the dash cam lens is looking through a part of your windshield that the windshield wipers cover. You don’t want to have you dash cam installed in an area outside of the range of your windshield wiper coverage, or on rainy or snowy days the camera lens will not be able to capture video
- Out of your sight – Sit down in your drivers seat and double check to see if the dash camera location will be in your line of sight. You won’t need to be able to see the dash cam when driving, it should give you an audible sound when you start and stop your car, so you know it’s recording. Mount the dash cam up and out of sight as much as possible.
- Easy to remove – Your dash cam can slide off the mounting bracket to remove it once the adhesive mount has been “permanently” stuck to your windshield. Make sure the dash cam has enough room to slide off the sticky pad mount once it’s installed. If you put the adhesive mounting pad too close to the top of the windshield, you may not be able to slide the dash camera off of the mounting bracket, depending on which way the camera sllides off the bracket. Test the way it slides on and off of the bracket before you stick it to the windshield.
For most of the smaller stealthy dash cams that typically have a tube or wedge shaped body, these can often be hidden up behind your rear view mirror and left out of sight. Once a dash cam is installed, you won’t need to interact with it on a regular basis, as it is operating on autopilot and you will only need to access it when there is an accident or event.
For the most part, you will want to mount the dash cam as high up and in the middle of your windshield as possible, so long as it’s not blocking your view or any of the sensors in your car.
Mounting a rear-view mirror mounted dash cam is easy. The mirror dash cam should come with a few rubber straps which you will attach to the dash cam on the top side, then place the mirror dash cam over your existing rear view mirror and connect the rubber straps around and secure it in place.
If you have a Subaru, we have a page on Where to mount a dash cam in a Subaru with EyeSight