The Hype

Good sensitivity and range. A cheap radar detector will have poor sensitivity and range and will not detect the police officer's radar gun when you need it to. A good rule is "capture area x 6". This means that your detector should pick up a police radar gun six times as far as the police officer's radar guns range. A typical radar gun has approximately 1/4 mile range.

However, if you drive in an area that is mountainous or has allot of curves, you will want to increase this capture area to a four mile distance. To view Radar Roy's range tests on radar detectors click here.

Good filtering: The number one complaint Radar Roy hears from radar detector owners is poor filtering. A cheap radar detector will alert you to everything from the closest grocery store door opener, to the vehicle with the closest radar detector.

As an example, in the November 22nd 2004 Autoweek magazine, they reviewed the new 1.8 version of the Valentine 1 radar detector and referred to it as the "Chicken Little" of radar detectors because of all its false alarms and commented that the average user would end up tuning out all alerts.

You can avoid this common headache by getting a higher end detector such as the Escort 8500 X50 or the Bel RX65 which both use their "Smart Filtering" capabilities to filter out most of the false alerts.

Easy to understand and hear alerts: If you do not hear or understand the different tones that your detector will use to alert you to different hazards ahead, you will have to take your eyes off the road to read the display. Some radar detector manufacturers offer voice alerts and some are even bi-lingual, offering both English and Spanish. However, some of the computer generated voices will make it hard for you to understand exactly what the detector is trying to say to you.

Good visual alerts: Mid-range radar detectors normally use LED lights to display the different functions and/or alerts that are activated. Different colored lights make it easy to see at a distance what feature or warning is activated. The higher end detectors use text displays and a visual bar graph to spell out exactly what the detector's alerts mean. As an example, the Escort 8500 X50 and the Beltronics RX65 will notify you with a letter such as X, K or Ka with a corresponding bar graph to indicate the strength of the signal. This method is much easier to read and understand then a row of LED lights indicating signal strength.

Rear Protection: True 360 degree protection advertised by many radar detector companies is bunk!. However, front and rear protection is very important. Most, if not all radar detectors have bi-directional antennas that allow the detector to receive radar to the front and rear.