I've been using an F770 for 4 years without any issues, but recently won a U1000 through the Thinkware video competition thing, so I've had the U1000 in my car for a day and a half so far. Not much time to thoroughly test it, but these are my first impressions - some of which perhaps others can help me figure out. I updated to the latest V.13 firmware, by the way. (Speaking of which, I absolutely HATE when companies don't push out changelogs. Does anyone know where I can find one?)
First, the good. The video quality is a HUGE step up from my F770. The unit looks a lot better. I prefer the "vertical" form factor over the horizontal one. The buttons are not nearly as loose, and so don't rattle around when driving, so hopefully no more of that noise on clips. The app is SO much faster to use, video playback is MUCH faster, and downloading clips is WAY faster. Makes the F770 setup feel like a beta version. This app experience feels much more polished. I like that the rear camera lost the chrome ring, and switched to black mounting tape, and that you can disable the LED. Makes it much less visible from the outside. Wish they'd do the same for the front camera, rather than all the flashy labeling and stuff. May take a sharpie to all of that.
Now, some of the finicky things I'm still working to address. Lot's of these are relatively minor, but I think for a device that, when you don't win one for free, costs this much, they are valid criticisms. There is always room for improvement after all
1. The right 1/4 of the front camera footage is blurry, and seems to have a faint double-image effect. That might be a result of the CPL filter, so I'll have to try cleaning it, or removing it entirely and see if it persists. It's definitely not normal edge-of-lens distortion as the footage on the left side is crisp and clear (surprisingly so.) You can see my test footage below. If it's a lens defect, then I'll have to see about getting a replacement.
2. Why in the hell you cannot disable the WiFi entirely is beyond me. I get that this is a cloud camera, but clearly many of us won't be using the cloud features. I did the whole, "connect to a hotspot once to shut the camera up" thing, but the blue WiFi light blinking endlessly annoys me. Not to mention this unit gets hot while in use, so disabling the WiFi radio might help with that. The WiFi button on the camera should be able to be held to disable WiFi entirely. Long press to disable. Short press to enable (in Phone App mode by default.) That way I can press it to connect from my phone to download clips, and then long press it to shut it off permanently again. That's a simple change that I think a lot of people would appreciate, from what I've seen. My F770 worked like this, and I wish the U1000 did the same.
3. The sensitivity of the shock sensor is WAY more sensitive than my F770. On that camera, the low setting worked well in my BRZ (lowered, on coilovers, on low profile tires, on crappy Chicago roads.) On this camera, the low setting constantly sets it off. I took to disabling it entirely, as with a large SD card, it isn't really necessary anyway.
4. The speaking voice is loud and clear, but my god is it loud. I'm in a small coupe, so the camera is only 2 feet from me, and even on "Low" it's still at what I would have thought "High" should sound like. They need a much quieter option for smaller vehicles. Also, they DESPERATELY need per-announcement controls. I like the camera telling me it's starting to record, and that it has acquired GPS, etc... but that lengthy speech telling me how to connect my phone EVERY TIME I SWITCH WIFI MODES is incredibly irritating - especially since it's so loud.
5. [RESOLVED!] I don't know why the heck I can't seem to figure out how to get the timestamps working properly. I set my proper GMT offset, and the proper DST mode, but it still seems to always end up an hour off. Then it acquires GPS and gets the proper time, and that results in the first set of video clips being out of order. I've tried different combinations but it always seems wrong. Hopefully I was just being dumb when I originally set it up. I changed it to what it SHOULD be (-6, DST ON) for Chicago after getting to work today and parking in an underground parking garage. We shall see if the time starts off correctly when I leave work today. I work in IT, so stuff like this doesn't usually give me trouble - and I don't remember having this much trouble setting up the F770, but... maybe I was just being dumb.
6. I swear the camera reset itself to default settings last night, as all of the stuff I had changed didn't match when I went to play with the time settings today. Maybe just a fluke...