ALP is hands down best unit for laser protection. Get free updates frequently, which both fixes issues and improves the system. You also owe it to yourself to look at other systems, which may be better than Escort. Both Radenso and Net Radar make remote behind the bumper units that pair with the ALP system to give you excellent and complete radar/laser protection.

Escort has been hit or miss when it comes to radar protection. Some units are very good, others just so so. They seem to push products out quickly, which are not always the best - at least initially. Once they start getting the complaints, they do work to improve on it though. V1 is a good unit, but you really need to upgrade with Junk K and YaV1 in order for you to stay sane in the cockpit.

 

Don't these look like ALP shifters?

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Without the Box in the middle.

 

I could not see where it does enough beyond my Passport Max which I have on the beanbag mount. I just slip it under the passengers side dash when in a parking lot.

Here in South Carolina the country roads may change from 55 to 40 to 25mph real quick. Some small towns us speeding tickets as a revenue source.

 

Net Radar is crap. I have had it since June. I still haven't been able to block out all the false alerts in my area. The lockout feature is rubbish. Plus it requires a phone and only outputs sound over phone speakers when using the phone. The entire solution was thought through by an idiot.

 

They do. But ALP says they look more like Blinder jammers. Escort say they are proprietary.

 

Escort was using Laser Interceptors in their 9500 series - don't know what they are using in the CI 360, but no way they are ALPs.

Stealth, sorry to hear about NetRadar. From what I hear and reviews I have read, it was a good unit. Also, can't you BT it with your car speakers so that alerts come through phone to the car speakers?

 

Blinder makes sense. Totally possible that they would make them for Escort under some private label deal. Escort knows little about laser jamming I assume and would have to rely on one of these other guys most likely.

 

Spoke to an Escort authorized installer, and his distributor doesn't have the MAX Ci 360 yet, and he didn't recommend being the first one on the block -- let someone else do it. In the meantime, he could install the 9500 for $2,585, or the alp for $3,485 (plus tax). Didn't get into the configuration of the proposed alp. Doesn't make sense to do the 9500 since it's an old model. Think my best bet is to wait for the MAX Ci 360.

 

His pricing sounds slightly excessive.

 

Could be. To get the full 3 year warranty, Escort requires an authorized installer -- this shop meets that requirement. I'm in Newport Beach, CA and I'm reluctant to have anyone touch my new Turbo, but this shop looks very professional, it's rated 5 stars on Yelp, and they say they've done many similar installs. Sometimes you get what you pay for. I like the Escort, as it's the latest (possibly the greatest), and it's an integrated solution, but it's risky to be the first install w/o seeing reviews. I'm open to ideas.

 

Agree. You do want a top notch shop. My shop is top notch too, Escort dealer, do a lot of exotic of cars. Whenever you are there you see Lambos and Ferraris on the shop floor.

What I pay is around $100 per sensor for ALP plus $200 for the front radar install. My setup ALP 5 head plus Front and rear Net Radar and mounted dedicated android display was $800 for the install. In addition i get a 10% discount on all ALP hardware (15% on Escort).

Typically their margin on the hardware is 30% so getting a 10% discount on that shouldn't be a big deal.

 

I couldn't wait for the Escort Max Ci 360 to be vetted by the experts out there so I went with Stinger front only + quint ALP. Seems to work well for me, but admittedly Stinger's price point is very very aggressive, and I've read some people not having great experiences with it online. I think a lot of that frustration was caused by their previous software, which is at this point fully rewritten.

FWIW, I don't think it's a great idea to buy lidar protection from Escort. Historically speaking, they do not update their products frequently enough, and with all things laser, updates are really key for your setup to stay bulletproof. ALP is really the benchmark here, and I just don't see the appeal of waiting for Escort to come up with a product which'll be at best as good as ALP, and at a more expensive price point.

When it comes to radar, Escort does/did offer some solid products, but never attempted to deliver the full package, and it seems like only due to profit concerns. The Redline/M3 based detectors have been the long range king for a while, but Redline is too slow to be functional without segmentation (so you're out of luck when that out of tune gun hits you), (and they don't want to keep making it since it was too expensive to produce) but more importantly, all M3 based detectors (redline, magnum, 9500 ci, BelStiR+) do not have much for filtering, so with all that extra sensitivity you essentially get an extremely chatty detector that's almost always falsing on K band, so they're completely useless if your state uses K or X band. Meanwhile, they released the super expensive max 360 windshield mount, which on paper seems to have all the bells and whistles with arrows, gps lockouts, BSM filtering etc but (presumably for cost cutting) uses an antenna that's inferior to the M3 so you don't get that segment leading range from the M3s.

So the premise is that Max Ci 360 will combine these two areas of expertise to get that ultra rangy detector with proper filtering, but again I think at best it'll be as good as the current iteration of the Stinger VIP, and it's not THAT much cheaper than the VIP either and I have a feeling the Stinger hardware is much more capable and the software will likely get updated more often / ie the setup will be more future proof.

I think if you're set on a remote detector and you'd like to go with the product that has better bang per buck ratio, I'd go ALP+Net Radar today. If price is not a concern, I'd go w ALP+Stinger today. It's unclear to me why one would wait for the Max Ci 360.

 

The ALP with Net Radar is fine if you don't care about lockouts. The false lockout feature is a joke. After 10 months I still haven't been able to lockout the false alerts on a 1 mile stretch of PeachTree Road in Buckhead. It just falses constantly. It's a noisy detector.

And it is designed like a high school project with the number of flaws in the design thinking. If you use a phone you can't use the HiFi speaker for alerts. The directional alerts on the display are not contextual (like arrows) because the car doesn't point forward but to the side and down. Basically if you see an alert pointing south east on the display that means it is in front of you.

Also the netRadar has less range than any other installed detector.

Having had it for 10 months I find it to be a rubbish product. I will replace it with something else in the next few months.

ALP hammers are great. Very different product and made by a different company.

 

Also if anyone really wants to buy a NetRadar after my warning I have a second set (front and rear) never installed, brand new, which I will sell for 30% off.

I bought it for my wife's car but never installed it since I decided the weak false suppression and audio features, the lack of automatic lockouts and the inability to use full features without a phone, make it a poor choice for my wife.