Radar Detector

[lovesaga]

I'm looking to get one. Any Advice?

[yo wesleyy]

i was wondering the same thing. i want one but have no idea which ones are better than others.

[SpeedyV09]

Well By no means am I an expert on this, I would recommend a this site http://www.radarbusters.com/

But

#1. Valentine 1 radar detector = always ranked top detector

#2 Escort 9500XI

#3 any beltronic

Going down the line

beltronicwhistlercobra = cheap but bad

Like I said no expert use the site I posted, I own a escort works great.

[BioVector]

Valentine 1 is the best. It's $399. If a new model comes out, the company will upgrade yours.

[fjwagner]

Valentine 1. I have a Valentine 1 and still got two tickets last year. More and more police are using Laser which is much harder to pick up and is quick. I now view them as false sense of security and I no longer lead the pack.

[my_new_v]

Valentine is one of the best, but passport and cobra are right behind them. so any of them are good

[Knightro2]

I love the Escort Passports...although a little pricey. I got my Fiance one a few months back and it rocks.I have a Whistler that I bought in 1997 when I was 17 and still works like a charm. It's paid for itself 10 fold probably.

[DejaWiz]

Whistler Pro-78. $130 shipped from buy.com

http://www.buy.com/prod/whistl....html

I have the Pro-64 from a few years ago and it's been a great unit. Much better than the Cobra units I've had in the past, IMO.

[StewieGriffin]

I have used Cobra for years. I got a Valentine 1 two years ago, and I will use nothing else!! They are the best.

Just keep in mind that they will not keep you from tickets. They are a split second early warning. It's a tool that you use. It's not full-proof. If cops use Lidars (laser), you may have a millisecond to react. It's doubtful that you are getting away unless the cop is sitting and trying to tag people. If they are doing this, you'll be able to pick up the signals a tad earlier. Most of the time, they will pace you, turn it on and clock, turn it off, and before you know it, you have lights behind you.

If cops use an X or K/Ka band (It depends on where you are because cops use different frequencies in different places.) to tag you, you generally have a better chance of slowing down in time. They generally leave these bands on while they drive.

Hope this helps.

[feloniousmonk]

The V1 is good, but you are paying a lot of money for the brand and the perceived value. There are others that work just as well without the bells and whistles.

If you look online hard enough, the V1 has been beaten before. I've owned one and I'm not going to tell you what every online forum says; more expensive isn't always better. My honest answer to you is the direction display is a nice thing to have, on paper. In real use, all you really need is the audio warning to tell you to reduce speed immediately. The direction from which the signal came from and its type (Ka, etc.) are just nice extras that aren't essential. If you are hit with a laser gun it doesn't matter how much you've spent on a detector. Within the time you hear the warning and act on it, the officer would have already gotten your speed reading. I found out the hard way.

Get the V1 only if you've got the $ laying around and burning a hole in your pocket. The lower cost Passport 8500 X50 works just fine, as well as some of the higher end (but cheaper than V1) Beltronics.

Quote »Valentine 1 is the best. It's $399. If a new model comes out, the company will upgrade yours.[/quote]Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately Valentine does not operate a charity. Upgrades cost money.

[dagooch]

I got a cobra as an impulse buy one day for about $80. Works great for me. My suggestion for you though is visit the companies website and make sure they sell alternate power cords if they come with the curled phone cord style. Because the cig. outlet is in a weird spot by handbrake and cord with my cobra was stretched tight between windshield and outlet. Making an awkward barrier between me and my passenger seat. Luckily they sold extra long straight cords on their site, both outlet style and the one I got is hardwired into fuse box. Had it installed this way since about a year ago and no adverse affects. Took about twenty minutes to install hardwired cord but its really easy. Go to your local Radio Shack and get a fuse adapter for the right fuse type. Versa uses a mini fuse I hadn't seen before. Just pull up take out right fuse and Sales guy should be able to help you. Then pop out your middle top dash peace and feed wire towards fuse box and bam done. If you get a hardwired cord it should come with much more detailed instructions.

[feloniousmonk]

Most detectors on the market have optional hard wiring kits available. If not, you can make your own with some basic electrical knowledge.

[BaldVersa]

In real use, all you really need is the audio warning to tell you to reduce speed immediately.

AGREED!!! I was driving along the GS Pkwy, listening to my new stereo from crutchfield, with my new Passport 7500 on the windshield, when a saw a Jersey ST on the side of the road. I was like "??? why isn't my Detector going off ????" oh it was, i just couldn't hear it.!!! That sucker was lit too! I looked at my speedo, and was doing aroung 98. He tagged me at 85. So if you have the money to burn, go for the V, but Passports and Beltronics also seem to be consistently mentioned as very good. I've heard more bad things about the Cobra than good.

[feloniousmonk]

Also, I've seen people mount their detectors down low on the dash. That's about as good as driving with eyes nearly open. The detector will better serve you mounted high on the windshield, as high as it can be, to get the best line of sight to the signal source (the guy who's about to tax you so he can have his bonus). That is what's going to get you that early warning and provide you with the reaction time you need. Every fraction of a second counts, especially with laser and POP radar.

The Passports (not the super expensive ones) and the higher-end Beltronics, about $250-$300 range, are in my opinion the best quality values you can get. I think they are pretty much identical and are manufactured by the same company since the accessories, like hard wiring kits, are identical. The only difference is the outer casing of the units themselves and slight variation in layout of the control buttons.

The V1's price is ridiculous. And take it from me, someone who's worked in advertising for 13+ years, you'll be paying mostly for marketing voodoo. Valentine's marketing, like Griot's Garage, is really geared towards guys who drive Porsches and Ferraris. The kind of guys who will always buy the best money can fetch, regardless of cost, because they have the means to do so. With the exception of the guy with the GT-R, I doubt most of us here in this thread are living on Rolls Royce budgets.

Before someone gets bent out of shape, I'm not saying the V1 doesn't work. It works and does so very well. It's just overpriced for what it is and has some extras that you don't really need to waste your money on (like their marketing budget) because it really doesn't benefit you other than to provide false validation of your purchase... which furthers their marketing agenda.

Another thing... V1 is the only one with independent front and rear facing sensors along with the directional display not because they are the only one who are smart enough to figure it out. It's because they have the patent on that configuration. It isn't because other brands are inferior and don't know how.
Modified by feloniousmonk at 6:03 AM 1/1/2009

[SpeedyV09]

Umm to reply to the first paragraph of what you just said DON'T MOUNT IT AS HIGH AS YOU CAN.The thing is that you will get better reaction time for some situations, but stationary police using just radar guns and or laser guns don't aim at your roof they aim at your headlights or grill or some where low on your car to make sure that the beam hits the car. Which means that sometimes your radar detector may not even pick it up. Just a word of warning or advice which ever.

[feloniousmonk]

Umm to reply to the first paragraph of what you just said DON'T MOUNT IT AS HIGH AS YOU CAN.The thing is that you will get better reaction time for some situations, but stationary police using just radar guns and or laser guns don't aim at your roof they aim at your headlights or grill or some where low on your car to make sure that the beam hits the car. Which means that sometimes your radar detector may not even pick it up. Just a word of warning or advice which ever.

I know where they point. Energy beams like light bend and refract. Look it up in physics books. For early warning you want to sniff out the "stray" waves as they bounce off of or refract around other cars and objects (over the peak of the hill, for example). If they are aimed squarely at your car, unless you have amazing brakes and reaction time, you are pretty much SOL. IIRC, most manufacturers, including Valentine, instructs owners to mount it as high as possible (obviously not behind tinting or the dotted sun screen).

Also, energy beams spread over distance, just like light from a flash light. Even laser does this only not as dramatic. Mounting the detector high, you're trying to catch the fringe of the "spotlight" to get a warning before you are in the bulls-eye, where they can get a solid reading on your speed.

FYI, they don't normally aim at the grill or headlight, the latter more likely then the former. They usually aim at your front license plate, a nice flat surface to bounce the signal back, which is why they require a front plate!

[Roninmedic82]

I agree with stewie, And I use a cobra and I do alot of driving from state to state on the east coast.Everytime I get a Ka signal, 9/10 times its some ******* cop chilling trying to tag people. K signal are normally automatic doors at the grocery store and speed detecters that tell you your speed at like a construction zone. However with L signals(lasers) I've still picked them up even though the laser wasn't pointed at my car.X signals who knows what the fu*k they are, I've never picked up a cop with an X signal.I know to cause I drive like a total a$$hole and haven't had a speeding ticket yet.I use a cobra and it works very good for me. I have no need to buy an expensive one when the cobra works just fine

But hey....some fagg0t is gonna say I'm wrong on this site and people are gonna go back n forth like a bunch of females!!!!

[dasoupdude]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6INz8OUQas

blinder m20.

pays for itself in the long run if you speed alot.

[Knightro2]

Unless you get hit by radar which is still the majority of guns used by police. Not because of reliability but because of cost. Laser is much more expensive. So they get the most out of the radar guns they have before buying new ones.

[jfanaselle]

Virtually every CHP station in Southern California has now upgraded to the laser-based Lidar systems, which are precise and can not be detected until the laser hits your radar detector. The trouble is, once it's hit your detector, the officer already knows how fast you're going.

When it comes to Lidar, you really don't have any hope. I've heard that some detectors (the $300 and $400 ones) can detect if the car next to you gets hit with Lidar, but I wouldn't trust it.

My $78 cobra does just fine... it alerts me to any RF based radar in the area and tells me when I'm about to get a ticket because someone hit me with laser.

[VersaMG08]

Simple solution, don't speed, drive the speed limit and be fine!

[Shad0wXCalibur]

Simple solution, don't speed, drive the speed limit and be fine!

Yea. No kidding. Why the hell are people obssesed with speeding and radar detectors? It's stupid...

It's especially funny to see people fly by me and cut me off and end up right beside me at a red light. Quit speeding people. And don't b**** if your radar detector didn't save you from getting a ticket. You broke the law. Same thing with some people who tint their windows too dark. They complain because they get a ticket for it even though they knew it was too dark. Or they just ride with the windows down all the time which is stupid because why tint windows if you have them down all the time?

[Athikerguy4life]

For anyone in the future who's checking out this thread, radar detectors are a waste of money, IMO. You wouldn't believe how many people think that they are safe to speed just because they have one in their car! Truth is, the cops are always gonna be ahead of you. In order to pull someone over, officers have to visually estimate the speed of the offender, and the radar units in cruisers have this neat little function called "hold". It basically turns the radar off until they flip a switch. So most of the time you won't get a signal until they've already got you, unless they were already running radar on another driver. Here's an idea, DON'T SPEED!