Do BMW state that this should work at night ? If so then it does not perform as expected and should be subject to a recall. It appears new cameras are being ordered to solve some of the problems... it will be interesting to see if they provide more of the same. Has anyone seen anything from BMW regarding alleged night capability of the rear view camera ?

Yes, page 241 of the manual states:
"you should only use reverse gear during daylight hours, if you need to put the X5 in reverse you should drive forward and circle around to avoid using reverse. Reverse is fully functional during daylight hours."

haha thats funny

I got my E70 back from the dealership after the the Backup Camera was replaced. So far, it is working properly and have not encounter any issue for about 5 days now.

but is it the same low res camera that is useless at night?

My rear camera was replaced last week, and it might be a little clearer, but it's still pretty useless at night. Unless there is some street or car park lighting, I can only see what's lit by the reverse lights.

Chris

It is pretty much the same quality asthe old one but without any faulty error. It is still useless at night though.

Hi,

I have sometimes a delay when switching into R and camara screen should appear. Specially right after cold start it takes around 10second to have a reasonable image on it.

Quality is horrible.

I don´t understand this step back, the E53 camera was fine; very sharp image, fantastic sensibility by night. Even with no light (excepting car´s backlights) there was a very usable picture.

regards
Alex

BMW has taking a step back as far as the rear camera. Last night, I was using it when I was parallel parking on a dark street and it was COMPLETELY useless. All I saw was colorful snow. :(

My camera works fine after 3 months but i think the backup lamp is not enough for camera in the dark night