The secret lies inside the guts of security cameras. The sensors used to capture video under the demanding conditions of bright sunlight to pitch-black darkness in yards and living rooms do a similarly great job at capturing video of glaring headlights and dimly lit country roads. That’s why dash cams tend to use the same sensors as security cameras.Back on March 17, Sony announced the STARVIS 3 sensor for the security camera market, but we all know where this is heading: dash cams.(opens in a new window)VantrueE1 Pro(opens in a new window)Available at AmazonBuy Now(opens in a new window)Available at WalmartBuy Now(opens in a new window)starvin’ for a new starvisAlmost every mid- to high-end dash cam on the market today packs one of Sony’s STARVIS 2 sensors. For all the brands pumping out dash cams—Vantrue, VIOFO, BlackVue, 70mai, Thinkware—Sony dominates when it comes to the brains residing in each one.Compared to the STARVIS 2, the STARVIS 3 is also 27 percent better at capturing video in low light conditions and has a wider dynamic range. That means that it can better handle seeing very bright lights suddenly appearing (and disappearing) into a very dark environment, such as an oncoming car’s headlights at night or driving out of a dark tunnel and back into daylight.The new sensor also gives up the STARVIS 2’s multi-exposure HDR (high dynamic range) for single-exposure HDR. When a sensor sees both very bright light and dark areas, it triggers the camera to take an HDR image so that both bright and dark areas show up on the video. Multi-exposure takes two shots in a very quick succession, one exposed for the bright areas and one exposed for the dark areas, and then it stitches them together into a single video frame. It’s like overlaying two film slides on top of one another to make one photo.The problem is that no matter how fast the dash cam takes these two photos, there’s still a very small delay between them, and when the vehicle is traveling at speed it can make the two photos slightly different enough that the final image looks a little blurred. It’s called ghosting. The STARVIS 3’s move to single-exposure HDR means that the sensor can capture all of this bright-light and low-light detail in a single frame. No delay, no stitching together of frames, no ghostly blur.Sony announced the STARVIS 2 back in June 2021, and it took until late 2022 for it to begin appearing in dash cams on the market. It’s just speculation—and speculation not drawn from a wide variety of past examples, at that—to figure that we’ll see another year-and-a-half gap between this announcement from Sony and dash cams with STARVIS 3 sensors.But on that note, I’d say that if you need a dash cam now, don’t bother waiting for one with a STARVIS 3. You could end up waiting for quite a while. And the STARVIS 2 is still a very capable sensor.(opens in a new window)ViofoA329S(opens in a new window)Available at AmazonBuy Now(opens in a new window)Available at WalmartBuy Now(opens in a new window)The post A Glimpse Into the Next Generation of Dash Cams: Sony STARVIS 3 Announced appeared first on VICE.