What Radar detector is everyone running?

[J_MENIS]

What brand and model?
How useful is it for you?
What kind of area do you live in?
Does it false a lot ?
Should I get a cheap one?

I live in SF and I like the V1 because of the arrows but I read that the Pasport MAX should be better for city life.

What is everyone's thoughts ?

Sponsored

 

[free]

Valentine 1
Great detector but not useful during my day to day driving because I live in a city where the PD thrives off speeding tickets so every officer uses laser. However i use it a lot on cruises and trips and it works great.

Out the box it does false quite a bit but after fine tuning the settings it is nearly dead silent except when a real threat is detected.

DO NOT get a cheap one. A cheap radar detector is worse than not having one. If you want I got a cobra laying around, pay for shipping and its all yours.

Id say go for the Max because out of the box it has more features built in and the V1 is admittedly getting a bit antiquated.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Falcon01]

Escort Passport 9500ix. Very useful for me. It saves my ass all the time. I live in North NJ, near NYC and drive in rush hour traffic a few times a week. I sometimes take longer highway trips into the middle of nowhere. My friend had a cheap ass one and it had false alarms all the time and had shitty range. Mine is much better, it has a nice long range and doesn't give false alarms all the much. You can disable whatever bands you want, but I keep X, K and KA on. X is never police. K is sometimes Police and KA is always police. I really only pay attention to KA as that's all that police in my area use, but the passports have a memorization feature where they memorize false alarms if you drive through them a few times. Most false alarms I get come from Acuras and GM cars. Their blindspot system must set them off. Don't cheap out. It may cost you a few hundred bucks now, but over the course of years, it will save you thousands in tickets and insurance premiums. I figure even 1 save pay for itself when you account for the ticket, higher insurance and lost time/stress of getting the ticket. I would get the passport max 360 if I were in the market now. Great features of the Passport and the V1 in 1 detector.

 

[Five Oh Brian]

I have a BEL Pro500. Best detector I've ever owned. Worth the price. Seldom falses and I'm in a metro area (Seattle-Tacoma). I've heard that there may be better detectors on the market, but my BEL works well with plenty of warning.

 

[RARR_LS2]

I use my eyes.
Had one back in the day and it beeped when I was about 200ft from a cop or at every Walmart I passed by.

 

[Evolvd]

:repost:

 

[OracleHCR]

Passport Max with escort live. I do a lot of city and highway driving and it has saved me countless times. V1 use old technology and will give a lot of false alerts. Passport and Beltronics have gps so they will lockout any false alerts that you may come across and you can update them with new data containing red light cameras and speed traps. Don't buy a cheap one unless you just feel like throwing money away.
Go to radarbusters.com for good comparisons.

 

[GDP]

Going from a V1 to a 9500ix I hated the 9500ix. Once you go V1 its hard to go back. The V1 would false like crazy but detection range was a lot better.

Redlight camera warning was nice but waze is just as good for that.

 

[Soonertim4]

Like others have said DO NOT go the cheap route. I have the Passport. I still get some false alarms but rarely. It does a fantastic job of alerting for the po po. It also has great range. I have escort live for the moment and I am not sure if I am goin to renew yet or not. The only downside to using it is if you play music off your phone it keeps cutting through. I live in Houston and that can get very annoying

 

[jdoug]

I used to use only higher-end Bel detectors, but once I got a Passport 8500 x50, I will never go back to Bel. It's ironic, however, since I think the two companies have merged. Ka band detection is most important these days, and the Ka detection range on the Passport is way better than any Bel I ever had. False alarms on Ka are very rare. Falses on K band happen occasionally but you learn to distinguish them from "real" K band alerts from police radar based on its behavior.

Laser is now my biggest nemesis-- looking to get a laser jammer soon, which surprisingly are not illegal in many states. The Passport 9500ix can accommodate a jammer and I'm currently reading up on that.

 

[evo8904]

Going from a V1 to a 9500ix I hated the 9500ix. Once you go V1 its hard to go back. The V1 would false like crazy but detection range was a lot better.

Redlight camera warning was nice but waze is just as good for that.

I agree! It is all about the range on the highway. I have 3 V1s, one for each car. The only time that I have gotten a ticket was when their plain got me. Then their Highway patrol tried to get. The trooper said, well our plain clocked you at 101 mph but my radar got you at 70 mph. I just pointed to my V1 and told him that I saw him long before he saw me.

 

[dgc333]

I have been using mid priced detectors for the past 40 years and they served me well, I have never been bagged by radar.

But over the past few years the use of radar based lane intrusion systems in new cars the false alarm rate has increased exponentially. I decided to go upscale for a new detector.

I purchased the new version of the Passport. I am thrilled with its anti-falsing capability. With the ability to turn off X band (haven't seen a cop with a X band gun in over 10 years) and the more advanced circuitry I seldom have a false now.

I find the Escort Live to be of little use. Seems like every time it warns me of a trap ahead there is never one there. Also, what ever database they are getting their speed limit info from it is always outright wrong or off by a 1/4 mile or so.

All in all I am very satisfied with the unit.

Dave

 

[STLStangGUY]

Don't believe what people say about the V1 being outdated. They are the only company that actually replace the "guts" of their detectors for a small fee. I sent mine in less than a year ago and got new software and hardware for $75.00. It really cut down the false alarms and errors. Plus, it's about 200 bucks cheaper than the new Passport Max. IMO can't beat it.

 

[k757]

Passport 9500ix
Yes it's great for the reasons stated above. I also use the Waze GPS app on my phone which has saved me even before I see the police (not running active radar)

 

[Billy1]

Escort use to be good when I had my Passport. But the on/off button got wonky and couldn't be repaired. So I got the new Solo. Piece of crap: falses all day long. Even after adjusting all the sensitively settings, it still does it. Stay away from Escort.
It doesn't help that the engineering clowns that work for auto manufacturers now use same radar frequencies for their collision avoidance/backup systems/"smart" cruise control as radar detectors(and supermarket/drug store front doors).
How stupid can they be? There are so many frequencies available and they had to choose this one.

Sponsored