Not an answer, just more input/confusion...
I've been pouring through the Amazon reviews. By the time you're done nothing sounds good. Some are better in the dark, some the light, some have a nice field of view, some are clearer, etc.
One
little blurb:
I wired up all three cameras on my work bench, hooked them up to a 20" monitor and compared them.
Here's the long and short of it;
Esky 170--09
Pros -
Frame is heavy duty aluminum and has a great finish.
Night time image is unparalleled thanks to the numerous IR LEDs.
Guide lines are good (and useful)
Cons-
Daytime image is the weakest of the three. Picture is fairly low resolution and the colors are all wrong since it is an infrared sensitive camera.
This camera is the bulkiest of the three and when in the standard orientation it blocked easy access to the latch on the MDX hatch. It is possible to remove the camera, flip it around and then install the plate upside down but I was hesitant to do this because I thought it looked a little bit weird. Others might not be bothered by needing to potentially do this.
Esky EC180-19
Pros-
The EC180-09 has a very good daytime image and the widest field of view of any of the cameras I tried. It is also the highest resolution.
It has a couple of LEDs to assist with night time lighting, which does help, but at night you will get reflections from the LEDs (coming off of the highly reflective license plate) in the sides of the image, which is annoying.
Despite a prominent review of this camera overheating I left it on my workbench for 3 straight hours in a 75F basement and it never shut down or overheated at all... so that issue appears to be fixed.
The camera itself is fairly discrete and unobtrusive. Will not block any crucial license plate info. It is also pretty low profile so it didn't interfere with the handle/latch of my car.
Good guide lines, clear and easy to use.
Cons-
EC180-09 had finish issues ... there was some kind of residue or adhesive (black colored) around the camera lens. It was very flaky and colored black and initially thought it was paint, but it appears to be something else.
As previously mentioned night performance is adequate... barely... but the reflections from the IR lights is an annoyance.
Cosmic Optix
Pros-
This camera had the best daytime image quality hands down. Image was bright and clear and resolution was good. It looked a little less pixelated than the Esky cameras.
Cons-
This camera had a more limited field of view than the other two cameras. I'd estimate it to be around 160 degrees or so. The Esky plate frame camera was about 170 and the Esky bar camera was around 180 degrees.
This camera has a bright chrome finish... which, based on my 20 years of experience with Colorado winters will get very quickly pitted with rust after it gets hit with wintertime magnesium chloride. They should offer it in a more durable neutral finish as the chrome finish also adds undesired "flash" and "bling" to something that I don't want to attract attention to.
Night time image of this camera was noticeably worse than the other two... to the point it might be unusable in really dark areas... especially directly behind the car bumper (where the car reverse lights don't reach).
The overlay guide image has an annoying flashing "STOP" that is distracting. My wife in particular didn't like it.
So which camera did we go with? We grudgingly went with the Esky EC180-19. I wish that there was a camera that included the daytime image quality of the Cosmic Optix Camera with the nighttime performance of the Esky 170-09 plate camera and the ergonomics of the EC180 camera.
Any of these cameras will do the job and hopefully you find yourself a little more informed now.
