hinch951

Valentine One all the way...once you drive with it many times in a familiar area, you can almost point to it and it will go off...meaning that you can easily memorize where it will go off....familiar shopping centers and such...driven with it for four years have not gotten the POP radar upgrade....but small town..this does no affect me....my friend as one...I have a ford tauras station wagon and an 87 951 and got a ticket in the station wagon a week ago...guess why....yea i left my V1 in the 951 to run to the supermarket....36 in a 25....bottom line like someone said before, you get what you pay for...and the more you know about how it works before you buy it...the easier it is to use...become familiar with it before you drive with it...this will be a big help....it pays for itself back, in no time at all!

nize

here's a pretty thorough review by a consumer;
http://www.mz3.net/articles/107.html

also, mike valentine is active in the car clubs (mainly bmw), so you'd be buying from a fellow german motoring enthusiast.
http://www.audifans.com/archives/1996/09/msg01354.html

ApexCars

You do realize that the 1st article you quote is 7 year old. I question how relavant it is now. I mean if you read an old enough article, you will hear that Bose is great quality at fair prices. I'm not knocking V1 as I think they are great detectors, I just haven't seen anything that makes me feel they are above and beyond the other detectors on the market. The upgrade feature does sound good though. Do you know whether they upgrade the actual internals or is it just a software upgrade. The reason I ask is because it seems that after several years of sitting in my car, especially in the Texas heat, the electronics may become degraded enough that I wouldn't trust them anymore.

nize

not a whole lot has changed with radar/laser over the past 7 years. i think the only two things that became a new threat in that time (and valentine has added) are;
1) rear laser detection and
2) pop detection

they swap out all of the internals when you send yours in for the upgrade. that's one of the reasons the case design itself hasn't changed over the years. plus, it's the only detector on the market with a metal case.

i actually used to own an escort and still do. i originally shelled out $350 for my escort and when it broke, i loved it so much i tried to pay escort to repair it for me outside of warranty. they wouldn't, and offerred to send me a $20 rebate towards buying a new one. that's when i realized the true value of a v1, it's the after-sale service and continued future support, even more than five years down the line. you can't really put a price on that.

considering all things being equal and the escort and v1 perform the same, why is it that escort wants to force you to keep buying a new product while valentine is willing to stand by what he sold you in the first place and make it even better? it's a no-brainer.

washington951

actually thats not quite true...they do NOT swap out the internals - they pull a new one off the line and get it back to you asap (complete with new accessories, etc). i don't know what they do with the older ones you send in for upgrade.

and yes...the case has changed (if only ever so slightly) over the years. i have 2 V1's and have sent each one of them in twice over the years for upgrading and the case has actually gotten a bit smaller.

nize

brian; do you actually get a new serial number as well ?

BlueRiver86

Anyone know anything about the new Ku band? I had a Whistler wireless, but it was too quiet, I was using it on my Camaro and on the highest setting i couldn't hear the alert over the sidepies.

RKD in OKC

I've had a V1 for ages. Love the arrows.

Got pulled over while going speed limit. Officer said he saw my detector and wanted to know how far away I knew he was there. I said about 3 miles. He said, "Well, I'm not going to catch xxxholes like you then am I." Without giving me a chance to answer he walked back to his car and drove off.

At a DE Mark from 928 Specialists ran over my pile of stuff with a 1 ton dually parking a 928 laden trailer. It crushed my V1. Mark offered to replace it, however there was no need as Mike replaced it with an upgraded one free after hearing my story!

I asked Mike about he radartest.com reviews. He said to check the dimensions of the detectors, they are not right, and if they can't even measure the size of the detector, how accurate is the rest of their testing measurements.

AL951

I would say Escort X50.

Great radar detector. I think Motortrend did a comparo a few years ago , and the X50 come on top. Oh and they have ads for both escort and V1s. I love my X50 it has great range and as always it is dead accurate. I like to drive on the mountains alot. With this radar detector, I can detect signals around corners as well, witch to me is nothing short of amazing. After so many less effective devices, I had before, I would not trade it for any other.

As a result of my experiences with my X50, I loan it to my brothers, and now they (all 6 of them), have their own X50s for over a year know with 0 tickets.

Regards,
AL

EdC

If this is the MotorTrend article you read ?(http://www.motortrend.com/features/m...ors/index.html)

The difference between the Vi and Escort Passport 8500 was 0.1 on a 100 scale. Because of the customer service of V1, I'd give the nod back to the V1. For years now it is still what thre others try to equal.

washington951

yep.

VWaddict

That's the 2004 review. The 2005 review is here, and the Valentine is back ahead again, due to improvements that they made that year. The 2006 review is not out yet, but Valentines just get better, as do the others. The others however, are the ones who are always playing catch-up.

As they mention at the beginning, the rate of change and improvement is quite fast, and the Valentine wins.

Rather than sound like an evangelist for Valentine, let me declare that I would probably be very happy with the top of the line Bel or Escort. -But they seperate their review into cheap units in the $100 range and those in the over-$200 range. There's a reason for this. Nothing cheap is ever any good, and nothing any good is ever cheap.

If you're spending the dough, my thinking is just get a Valentine and have done with it. Any money you save may just end up going on tickets, and the arrows alone mean you know whether to look in the mirror or out of the windshield to figure out where the bear is hiding... When you have a split-second to react, that's the sort of valuable information I can't live without. -Now, -Anybody want to buy a $40 radar detector? -It's in perfect working order.

Keith

nize

by the way, the arrows on v1 are patented, so you won't see them on any other detector.

Tms951

I have a V-1 now it is nice I like the arrows, butthere are so many false alarms. I had an escort 8500 x50 befor the v1 and I am thinking of switching back. The escort never let me down, every infinity suv does not set off the laser detecter and every piece of **** radio shack detecters for miles around do not set it off. This is the thing that bothers me most. Your on the high way and there is so dink following you in an accord, you can see his POS radar detecter in your rear view and geuss what your v1 knows it is there to and constantly goes off pointing behind you. This also means that every car coming the other way with a OOS detecter will set off you Ka with one quick beep. Yes my V1 is set on the lowest setting.

To sum it up arrows on the V1 are nice but overall it is a pian in the ***.

nize

i'd rather have a detector with a hairline trigger that detects everything, than have one that's so weak it detects nothing until it's too late.