Dash cams are improving all the time, but for a while now, they’ve mostly been the same, just with better resolution and more cameras recording footage to a memory card or cloud storage, or both. However, there have been a few recent innovations, and one that has impressed me is the Vantrue E360. Taking inspiration from popular “spherical” video cameras like the Insta360 X5, the Vantrue E360 captures 360-degree video and stills… just not in quite the same way as the Insta360 and other 360 cameras. But it still offers advantages over most typical dash cams, and I’ve been testing it out lately both inside - and outside - of my own vehicle.

Like the Insta360 cameras, the Vantrue E360 features dual fisheye camera lenses that capture video and still in 180-degree images and then stiches them together into a seamless video or image. The difference is that the Insta360, GoPro and other 360-degree cameras create a “sphere” of imagery you can then browse around in during recording or playback.

The Vantrue E360 does not work quite in the same way. Instead, it’s more similar to the panorama feature on your smartphone: It creates a single image that is knitted together to form a photo or video that spans 360 degrees, but not in a sphere format, it’s flat, like a panorama photo (below).