sandwedge

It's a 2-year old test but as best I can tell the same models are still each respective manufacturers top performer. Anyone here have experience with the winner in the test.........the BEL Pro RX65?

The Valentine One is a highly sensitive radar detector--good enough that I declared it the winner of my 2000 Automobile Magazine shootout--but it's no longer top dog by default. The world has changed since it was designed in 1991. The Apple IIsi also was hot stuff that year but Apple knew better than to continue selling the same box. They replaced it with smaller, faster, better models packed with advanced features.

Valentine and their V1 seem locked in a time warp. Even the owner manual reflects 1980s thinking, replete with wildly outdated statements such as "X-band [is] most common for moving and stationary [radar]." Huh? 47 of the 50 state highway patrols abandoned it years ago.

With an increasingly wide gap in the V1's level of sophistication compared to modern designs--not to mention a minimalist feature set, quirky ergonomics, an exceptionally chatty nature and stiff price tag--the competition has clearly passed it by. Time for a new model, guys.

http://radartest.com/article.asp?articleid=9090

PogueMoHone

With the proliferation of Lidar use, and its accurate focus, one has to question the practical use (other than perceived protection) of all the more popular Radar Detectors today. It will be interesting to see the various manufacturer claims to thwart Lidar, and subsequent independant tests. I can see continuing to use one if you have it, but any new purchase has to "beat" Lidar, otherwise you might just as well go naked.

SrfCity

Radar helps in some cases where Ka is still used. For laser all it can really do is confirm that he zapped you. In a recent incident I was able to confirm that I got nailed however the cop didn't use radar for the ticket and he actually tried to nail a guy behind me a second time. When I asked to see the reading it was well within the 10 mph excessive speed. It gives me some ammo

2ndof2

I'm not sure if LIDAR can bounce off intended targets and sound the alarm on the V1 if you happen to be following behind whatever happens to be the cop's menu. It probably comes down to how wide a beam the LIDAR is emitting and whether any of the radar/lazer beam gets detected. I may have to brush up on my LIDAR education.

jrgordonsenior

Radar detection is helpful here in Calif. where most CHP cars keep their units on while cruising the highways. Not so much in the cities, but out on I-5 they almost always leave them on giving you plenty of warning. My V1 has saved me on numerous occasions....

Obviously with Lidar you're screwed....

JFScheck

I noticed the same when driving cross-country - in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona the cops had the radar running while they were driving on I-40.

Have yet to experience it here in Cali - but good to hear!

sandwedge

Maybe not. Sounds like some issues here that could be contested.


One situation where LIDAR has notable non-scientific application is in traffic speed law enforcement, for vehicle speed measurement, as a technology alternative to radar guns. The technology for this application is small enough to be mounted in a hand held camera "gun" and permits a particular vehicle's speed to be determined from a stream of traffic. Unlike RADAR which relies on doppler shifts to directly measure speed, police lidar relies on the principle of time-of-flight to calculate speed. The equivalent radar based systems are often not able to isolate particular vehicles from the traffic stream and are generally too large to be hand held. While there are distinct advantages to being able to pick out one vehicle in a pack, LIDAR has very serious problems associated with "sweep" error. Sweep error is almost always present because automobiles are typically targeted at distances ranging from several hundred feet to over one thousand feet. If the targets were flat surfaces moving forward, such as a large semi-tractor trailer truck, LIDAR can be more accurate. But, when the target is a jelly-bean-shaped automobile or SUV, sweep error is inevitable. Most traffic LIDAR systems send out a stream of approximately 100 pulses over the span of three-tenths of a second. A "black box," proprietary statistical algorithm picks and chooses which progressively shorter reflections to retain from the pulses over the short fraction of a second.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIDAR

Alan Smithee

Craig Peterson has been considered a fraud for years. Here is the latest of his stunts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tlh6LKI1fk

Before announcing that the V1 has been "trashed", consider the loyal following it has and the invaluable information it provides. Yes, the ergonomics and design are decades old...but the point is to avoid tickets.

HD911

Someone should post this in the Carrera GT forum and wait for a proper response.

Streamlined

Ah yes, I remember that article coming up on other boards.. I wondered about the objectivity of it at the time. Nonetheless the V1 has continued to save my bacon and tell me where the threats are on freeways and back roads; as long as some POs use radar for speed traps I'll hang onto it.

As for lidar, I had heard that it helps to have a dark car to make it a tougher target, not sure if there is any truth to that but I figured being a stealthy dark Porsche couldn't hurt

sandwedge

It was precisely because of the loyal following the V1 has here that I posted the article. But according to you, nothing that has a loyal following should ever be evaluated. We'd still be playing 8-track tapes in our cars if that principle was adhered to. And further.........the post included a link to the full article where anyone can read and judge for themselves whether the story has merit or not.


I like my V1 too but I'm apparently less emotionally attached to it than you are. If something better comes on the market I'd like to know about it and I won't be upset.

Alan Smithee

Nope...not at all what I said or implied. I'm all about progress and better equipment to defend against tax collecting cops.

The problem I have is with alarmist subject lines and misleading quotes from biased two year old sources that, if you read the "full article", provides no actual data and is in fact just a solicitation to pay for their whole report.

Vancouver83LTD

Assuming they didn't place it there themselves. Doubt he'd be dumb enough to put the box up there too for no reason.

Maybe being darker is just less flashy and harder to see on the horizon for the officer?

ADias

Whatever they say I do not care... I do NOT leave home without my V1.

Ray S

I don't think anyone is saying the V1 shouldn't be evaluated. Rather, it would be nice if the evaluation came from an unbiased source.

Here is some info that Mike Valentine had on his old website about RadarTest. Obviously, Mike Valentine has a "bias" for his own product, but the response below certainly does illuminate a history between these two (Valentine and Peterson).

From V1's Website in Defense of www.radartest.com: (http://www.radartest.com:)
The V1 Hater...same old story one more time.

Craig Peterson's detector test in Automobile (February 2001) is completely predictable; he has made a career of denigrating V1, starting in March, 1993, in Car Audio and Electronics when he knocked it for having "dual antennas." On his website (www.radartest.com) he says he "distrusts" the bogey counter and wants warning on radar only when it's "up ahead." Which makes him the only tester on the planet who thinks the Radar Locator is a bad idea.

V1 operates with a single control **** and concentric lever, just like the volume-and-tone-controls of the traditional American car radio. He hates that too. As another magazine editor told us, V1 "is a box with one ****. What's his problem?"

He ignores V1's features
V1 is the only detector with fully automatic illumination day and night. So it doesn't get credit in his Features chart for having a stone-age manual dimmer. It doesn't get credit for being programmable either, and for having band defeat. For the record, it has both. But these features intentionally have a low profile because--call me crazy--but I think very few customers will have their lives made better by downgrading their detector's performance.

He gets measurements wrong
But instead of debating philosophy, let's look at his record on simple facts. Peterson opens his website review of V1 by saying it is "by far the largest and heaviest unit tested..."

On our scale, Passport is heaviest at 8.9 ounces followed by V1 at 8.6 and the BEL at 8.0. Only V1 has a metal case (magnesium), the others are plastic.

Passport is also the longest by a huge margin at 5.29 inches, followed by the BEL at 4.72 inches. V1 is shortest at 4.46 inches, more than a quarter inch shorter than the BEL and nearly an inch shorter than Passport.

In thickness, all are within 0.1 of an inch (V1 is thickest). Only in width is V1 significantly larger than the others, but the difference between them is less than the difference in length.

Automobile straightaway/hill test, notice how his results mostly fall into four narrow clusters at 23, 27, 31, and 40. In fact, only three bars are not in those clusters. Look closely. Four of five detectors have the same K-band range. Seven different X-band tests have the same distance of 31; two detectors get exactly the same results for both City and Highway modes (why have both modes if they perform the same?).

Similar clusters occur in his curve test.

Such clustering is what you get when the ups and downs of terrain bring all detectors into line of sight with the radar at a few discrete places on the test course. For a discussion of common testing mistakes, check Radar Detector Tests.

The man behind the byline
Rather than trying to explain Peterson's mysterious results, let me just remind you that his credibility has long been in question. In response to his December, 1995, test, Automobile admitted a flood of "angry letters" which "criticized our selection of the BEL 745Sti Plus as our first-place winner over the Valentine One, which tied for third place. Amidst all the allegations of invalid test methodology and unfairness were suggestions that Peterson showed undue favoritism to the BEL unit because he has consulted for the company."

In the March, 1996, issue, Peterson replied, "Having consulted to every major detector manufacturer, suggestions that BEL received preferential treatment are nonsense."

He's wrong on that point too. He's never been a consultant to Valentine Research, although he's approached us more than once. We declined his advances each time.