[paradigm]

I need suggestions on a good radar detector to get sub $600.

Is Valentine One still the best or are there better under $600?
Uniden? Escort?

Thanks

[shoe5163]

I have a V1 and Uniden, V1 hands down with Waze.

[keep_hope_alive]

A few months ago I went with Uniden R3. It's only $300.

https://uniden.com/products/r3?srslt...ff5yyM0fL3okpM

It is tidy, mounts between mirror and visor.





The range is excellent. I do a lot of highway driving and have logged about 5k miles on it so far. I get about 1 to 2 mile heads up on Ka band speed traps.

What I like:
- A lot of customizations, the first thing you do is connect it to the computer and edit all of your desired settings, there are a few hundred options.
- Notifications are user-chosen sounds.
- No app required to function. GPS is built-in. I don't pair my phone with it.
- Detection frequency is displayed, handy once you know what band your local PD uses.
- MRCD and Gatso speed cameras are identified and GPS tagged.
- Quiet Mode! I set it for below 35mph it's silent.
- Price.
- Range. Uniden is consistently rated one of the best with range. My personal experience is a ton of heads-up time.
- No issues with false positives for me.
- 500 GPS tags allow you to tag known K-band sources that aren't speed traps.

Cons
- Does not indicate direction/location (cost saving)
- Does not come with a hard-wire kit. ($35 accessory) https://uniden.com/products/hardwire...-select-radars
- Cannot run on a standard 15' phone cable (due to voltage drop).

I ran power from my center console with 18awg then spliced in a phone cable above the headliner.

[DaveC113]

I have a Uniden R4 in my M235xi and a Redline in the Camaro.

If you don't care about the arrows, Uniden R4 has been excellent, and it's small and not all that expensive. Redline may have more range, but R4 is more than good. All I want is a simple alert, to me levels are more important as any modern detector has a lot of range, you pick up radar that's not all that close to actually reading your speed all the time.

I understand liking the arrows though, but I'm not a determined speeder. I don't speed excessively, and a simple reminder to slow down works for me. Combined with using Waze, it's been nearly 10 years since my last ticket, which I got from instant-on laser. For whatever reason, local LEOs don't seem to use laser anymore.

[Warrior102]

I have a Uniden R3 and an R7, fantastic products, former Escort owner.

[SS_Don]

I have an Escort Maxcam 360C. Detector and dashcam. I've had it for a couple of years. No complaints.

[GreyGhost702]

Uniden R7 for many ticketless years, recently added the Uniden R8 to the collection. For the money, the R7 is still the better bang for the buck. The R3 and R4 are similar packaging but the R4 tests out ranking up there with the R7 in a lot of tests in videos I've watched. It's really impressive, I almost wish I had went that route instead of the R8. Not that the R8 is a disappointment, but so far it's felt a little underwhelming for its price tag, when you could save a couple hundo and get the R7 to do the same job, and a R4 very competitively. If I could only have just 1, it'd be the R7. I may put the R8 up for sale and go with the R4, I just wanted a second detector I could move around my other vehicles so I didn't forget to put it back in the Camaro. While I'm not a habitual speeder, I do like to know when The Man is around, so I can close the valves at least.

As far as false alerts, they all require a little bit of custom settings to be better tuned for your part of the country and types of radar being used. Once I customized my settings based on various youtube videos and reddit, I really dialed down false alerts for the mountain west region. On top of that, if I get a false alert in the same area repeatedly, I believe all of the R series from R3+ have mute memory, so I can mute those alerts without completely blocking out that frequency. I see the alert, but it doesn't report. Very nice must-have in a detector. My R7 is so dialed in for my area I rarely hear any false alerts now.

On a small note if you're new to radar detecting devices. While you can mostly avoid radar with a good detector, no device is going to give you advanced warning from Laser. Laser doesn't spill signal like radar does, and typically Laser is hand operated. If you detect laser, it's just letting you know you might as well pull over because you've already been got. Where most radar situations, you're detector will sniff out active radar early before corners/hills/turns/bridges/tunnels and such because radar signal tends to "flood" like a flood light. Just like you would see headlights coming over the top of a hill, that's what your radar is detecting early.

[Zapote21]

Uniden R3. Best one I have had

[DamonZ28]

This is a good site for radar detector comparisons.

www.vortexradar.com

[Matt1LE]

Uniden R7 with the BlendMount mirror mount and DIY gen5 power cable adapter.


https://blendmount.com/br7-series-uniden/


https://www.gen5diy.com/collections/...tector-harness




*** I just looked and Uniden now has the R8. The buttons look more accessible, but it's $200 more than the R7.

[Caerus]

The Uniden R7 for the Camaro. The Valentine in my around town beater car. If I go on a longer trip with the beater, I dump the V1 and put in the R7.

With the V1 for maximum functionality you must mate it with your phone and an app. The V1 does not have built in GPS. That is a shame.

[olrocker]

Originally Posted by SS_Don

I have an Escort Maxcam 360C. Detector and dashcam. I've had it for a couple of years. No complaints.

X2 for that exact combo.

I’ve been using nothing but Escort since I bought the 7500 in 1998 after getting my first speeding ticket at 20 years old

[Val Walkinshaw]

+1 on Vortex
He is the gold standard for RD reviews.

Valentine has clear weak points when it comes to range.
Fantastic K band but without a lot of tweaking it falses really bad.

I've had the r7 with the international firmware
V1G2
R8

Sold the valentine and stuck with the R8.

Or course both of those are heavily complimented by their apps. Neither is as effective without. Learn to use the lockouts for BSMs.

Valentine uses JBV1
Uniden uses Highway Radar.

Both of those apps use the same plug in for crowd sourced alerts (wzsabre) as Waze so you get all the same alerts. No need to use Waze.

[SS_Don]

Originally Posted by olrocker

X2 for that exact combo.

I’ve been using nothing but Escort since I bought the 7500 in 1998 after getting my first speeding ticket at 20 years old

Forgot to add that I also use the blendmount with power from gen5diy.


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