How hot does a windshield get where your dash cam lives?
A temperature probe on the glass beside my dash cams, logging about once a minute, read against the outdoor air at the nearest airport. This page grows every time I pull the logger, so the numbers below are where the log stands today.
Logged so far: 10 days (8 of them whole), Sep 25 to Oct 4, 2026, 11,101 readings from one logger download, one car in the Atlanta metro. Last updated Oct 4.
The short version
On an ordinary sunny afternoon, the glass beside my dash cams ran 33 to 38 F hotter than the outdoor air. On the worst day so far, a clear, dry afternoon that only reached 86 F outside, it hit 146.1 F (63.4 C), 64 F over the air. Two of the cameras on my bench right now are rated to 149 F (65 C) and 158 F (70 C), and a camera that is recording adds heat of its own. So a car parked in the sun in early fall in Atlanta already gets close. Summer is the real test, and this log keeps running.
Measured, and still loggingThe log so far
Each row is one day. The orange dot is the hottest the windshield got; the blue dot is the outdoor air at PDK at that same moment. The line between them is how much hotter the glass was than the air. Hover or tap a row for the details.
The same numbers as a table, with the overnight lows. Rows marked in orange reached 120 F. A day with times in brackets is only partly logged.
| Day | Windshield high | At | PDK air then | Windshield over air | PDK sky then | PDK low to high | Windshield low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 25 (from 13:11) | 112.8 F 45 C | 16:31 | 76 F | +37 F | broken | 60 to 76 F | 60.6 F |
| Sep 26 | 118.0 F 48 C | 14:41 | 80 F | +38 F | clear | 55 to 81 F | 53.2 F |
| Sep 27 | 115.3 F 46 C | 14:40 | 81 F | +35 F | clear | 49 to 82 F | 48.0 F |
| Sep 28 | 114.9 F 46 C | 14:42 | 80 F | +35 F | clear | 50 to 80 F | 48.7 F |
| Sep 29 | 127.5 F 53 C | 16:27 | 83 F | +44 F | clear | 54 to 84 F | 51.8 F |
| Sep 30 | 146.1 F 63 C | 13:22 | 82 F | +64 F | clear | 59 to 86 F | 55.9 F |
| Oct 1 | 116.0 F 47 C | 15:44 | 83 F | +33 F | scattered | 63 to 83 F | 60.9 F |
| Oct 2 | 119.8 F 49 C | 14:29 | 82 F | +38 F | overcast | 67 to 85 F | 65.1 F |
| Oct 3 | 120.9 F 49 C | 14:45 | 85 F | +36 F | broken | 68 to 85 F | 67.4 F |
| Oct 4 (to 13:01) | 79.5 F 26 C | 13:01 | 75 F | +4 F | broken | 71 to 75 F | 69.4 F |
A hot day and an ordinary one
The daily highs hide how fast it happens. These are two whole days at 10-minute resolution: the hottest day in the log and an ordinary clear one to read it against. I publish a few whole days rather than the full minute-by-minute record, because the full record also shows every time the car leaves and comes home.
Show this day hour by hour
What the numbers say so far
The sun matters more than the air. The outdoor highs in this stretch only ran from the mid-70s to 86 F, while the glass reached 113 to 146 F. At each day’s peak, the windshield sat a median of 37 F over the air, from 33 F on the mildest whole day to 64 F on the worst.
Where the car sits can matter more than the weather. September 30 topped out at 86 F at PDK and October 2 and 3 at 85 F, yet the glass ran about 25 F hotter on the 30th. That day the morning fog burned off into clear, dry air (the humidity at PDK fell from 93 percent to 38 percent by mid-afternoon), and the windshield peaked an hour earlier than on any other day, which points at the way the car was parked and facing. On the hourly chart you can see the overcast break: the glass climbed about 30 F in fifteen minutes.
An airport’s sky report is not your sky. Two days that still reached about 120 F had broken cloud or overcast reported at PDK at the time of the peak. A report describes the whole sky over an airport; your windshield only cares whether the sun is reaching it through a gap.
At night the glass falls to the air, and a little below it. The windshield’s overnight lows ran 1 to 3 F under PDK’s, every night so far: glass gives up heat to a clear night sky. Cold is a different question for a dash cam, and this log will cover it as the season turns.
What this means for a dash cam
Operating ratings. Dash cam makers publish an operating range, and the top of it is usually somewhere around 149 to 158 F (65 to 70 C): the VIOFO A119M Pro lists 65 C, the COXPAL A17D 70 C. The probe on this page reads the glass beside the camera, not the camera itself, but 63 C on a mild fall afternoon is already within a few degrees of those numbers.
A recording camera runs hotter than its surroundings. A parked camera that is switched off soaks toward the temperature of the glass around it. One that is recording, or sitting in parking mode, is also making its own heat, so it ends up above that. How far above is a camera-by-camera finding, and the cameras I have measured are listed in the next section.
Supercapacitors, not batteries. This is why most dash cams use a supercapacitor instead of a lithium battery to finish writing the last file when the power cuts. Supercapacitor cells are commonly rated to 185 F (85 C), while a lithium cell is usually limited to about 140 F (60 C) and ages fast above it. A camera with a battery inside is the one to keep out of a sun-baked windshield.
The memory card lives inside the camera’s own heat. It sits in the same small case as the processor, and a card that gets too hot can throw errors or wear out early. Endurance cards are usually rated to 185 F (85 C) for exactly this reason. If you are choosing one, the dash cam SD card picker sorts cards by how they held up on my bench.
What about a sunshade? It is the obvious fix, and it is on my list to measure before I recommend it. A shade keeps sun off the dash, but a camera mounted behind it sits in the pocket of air between the shade and the glass, and that pocket can run hotter than the rest of the car. I would rather show you the numbers than guess.
Temperatures measured on dash cams
The probe tells you what the camera is sitting in. These are the camera bodies themselves, read with a thermal camera while they recorded. Each one belongs to that camera’s review, so it shows up here the day the review publishes.
COXPAL A17D
- Case 137.7 F (58.7 C) after about an hour of 4K recording on a mild overcast morning, with the cabin at 86 to 88 F: about 50 F over its surroundings (thermal camera, 2026-08-29).
- Hottest spot on the case 164.4 F (73.6 C) while driving on a 93 F afternoon, after a four-hour park, 57 F over the coolest thing in the frame (2026-09-01). The maker rates it for 158 F (70 C) air, and it kept recording.
- Its supercapacitor cells are printed for -40 to 185 F (-40 to 85 C).
Measured and waiting on a review: Mangoal 4K OEM. Their temperatures appear here the day each review publishes.
How I measure it
The logger. An Elitech LogEt 8 PTE with a PT100 probe on a 1.5 m lead. The probe is cable-tied to the inside of the windshield beside the dash cams, where the sun reaches it, and the logger body is clipped to the sun visor out of the sun. It takes a reading about once a minute around the clock (every 70 seconds on the first run, every 60 since) and holds 11 to 13 days before it has to be downloaded. The unit’s certificate puts it within 0.5 F up to 104 F and within 0.9 F up to 185 F.
The clock. Every download compares the logger’s clock with my computer’s, which I check against internet time first. The first run came back an hour behind (a time-zone setting when the logger was set up) and 20 seconds fast; every reading on this page has been corrected for both. The daily lows landing at sunrise after the correction is a second check that the times are right.
The outdoor air. The hourly weather reports from DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK), downloaded from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet’s archive. The outdoor temperature at each reading is interpolated between the reports either side of it. PDK is miles from wherever the car happens to be, so it stands for the metro’s air in general, not the exact parking spot.
What the probe is not. It is not the cabin air, which runs cooler than the glass on a sunny day, and it is not any camera’s temperature. It is the temperature of the spot a windshield-mounted dash cam lives in, which is the number no spec sheet gives you.
Reusing the numbers. The measurements on this page are free to reuse under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: quote them, chart them, build on them, and credit CK Tech Check with a link back to this page.
What this log cannot tell you yet
Your car. One car, one windshield, one probe position, and wherever I happened to park. Glass angle, tint, the color of the dash and which way you face all move the number, and the September 30 result says parking may move it more than the weather does.
Summer. The log started in late September, with outdoor highs in the 70s and 80s. Atlanta’s July afternoons regularly reach the 90s, so treat these as the mild end of the range.
Other climates. Dry desert heat with a high sun angle and a humid Southeast afternoon do not heat a car the same way. The rise over the air is the most portable number on this page, and even that depends on the sky.
Common questions about dash cams and heat
How hot does a car windshield get in the sun?
In the first nine days of my log, in Atlanta in late September and early October 2026, the glass beside my dash cams peaked between 113 and 146 F on days with outdoor highs of 76 to 86 F. That is typically 33 to 38 F over the air, and 64 F over it on the worst clear day. Summer afternoons will run hotter.
Can heat damage a dash cam?
It can shorten its life, and it can stop it recording properly. Makers rate most dash cams to an operating ceiling of about 149 to 158 F (65 to 70 C), and in my log a parked car's windshield reached 146 F on a mild fall day, before the camera adds any heat of its own. Heat is hardest on anything that stores energy and on the memory card.
Is a supercapacitor dash cam better in hot weather?
Yes, for that part of the camera. Supercapacitor cells are commonly rated to 185 F (85 C), while lithium cells are usually limited to about 140 F (60 C) and age quickly above it. A windshield that reaches 146 F is already past what a lithium cell is meant to sit in.
Does a sunshade keep a dash cam cooler?
I have not measured it yet, so I will not say. A shade keeps sun off the dash, but a camera behind it sits in the trapped air between the shade and the glass, which can be the hottest spot in the car. It is next on my list for this log.
Does it matter where I park?
In my log, more than the weather did. On September 30 the windshield ran 64 F over the outdoor air, while on two later days with nearly the same outdoor high it ran only 36 to 38 F over it. If you can choose, shade and facing away from the afternoon sun are worth more than a few degrees of air temperature.
More from the dash cam bench
Heat is one of the things that decides how long a dash cam lasts in a parked car. The others: how long your battery runs it in parking mode, which is the parking mode battery calculator; how much card a parked camera fills, in the dash cam storage calculator; and which card survives it, in the SD card picker. If you are comparing cameras, why IMX678 dash cams differ explains why the same sensor gives different results, and the reviews so far include the VIOFO A229 Plus, the Mangoal OEM for the Corolla, the FitcamX and the Botslab G980H.