ok let me re-phrase. whenever my detector goes off on Ka band, i'm slowing down, regardless. I very rarely see any erroneous signals on Ka band even during city driving, as opposed to X and K band that blips at every supermarket and gas station. police in my area use Ka band and Laser only (from what i've seen in the past 8 months with my x50).

 

Wrah, picking a fight over radar detector? I think you are too bored~

 

I see your point, and I do the same. I'm about to completely remove K band from my V1 as well, because I have not seen a single cop on K band in a long while.

Bottom line: Different strokes for different folks. I like knowing where the threat is coming from, and was willing to pay an extra $100 for arrows to tell me that. I guess thats what it comes down to. Are you willing to pay extra $$ to know where the threat is coming from? If you can honestly answer no, and say that you will just slow down when the thing beeps, regardless of where the radar is coming from, then thats fine, and spend $100 less.

 

"Or non at all" What a dusch bag!!! I've tested the V1 I own the x50.

Well 1st off the x50 isn't set off my low power security. A bank that's closed or a police station might set it off, I'd be given a very low X-band warning.
But you drove by the false warning given by the V1 assuming thats the same false warning behind you.
The X50 does just go beep (dumb @ss) you'd get a high level warning ka. (You slow down for any high level warning V1 or x50)
Meanwhile your v1 has a bogey counter of 2 and arrows blinking in all directions. Sounds like you guys need to ID every threat. Do you pull over and look for the cops?

Wrong again little man, I guess you know nothing about the x50! The 1st threat will increase then decrease as you pass it. If another thread is present then you will get a second warning, that will get stronger. Again all warning of high strength you slow down. Arrows blinking or not.
The V1 did beep about 50-75ft sooner than the x50 for Xband. It false alarmed about 80% of the time too. Whats even better about the V1 is that they are braging about the dual pop rardar detector that didn't even alarm when tested! (Look it up you'll see)
....
Yeah he help develop the gun 20 years ago!!! The out-dated non-used guns that his system is built for! Hasn't done $hit since, except attack a very good (9 times out of 10) a better product.

Speaking of things that look good. The V1 style died when Knight Rider went off the air. The man doesn't need to model at all. If I looked down syndrome, I wouldn't model.

 

Part II

 

I'm not saying the V1 is a piece of $hit. Its a good detector, but its not superior, and not worth the extra money at all!

http://www.007radardetectors.com/ima...matrix_exp.gif

 

I think both radars are just as good. The arrows ARE a good feature, and if you've got $100 to blow... then go with it.

One thing that has NOT been mentioned is the "POP mode" feature that the 8500x50 has. It's not used in every state, but it IS used here in New York. POP is a short burst that gives very inaccurate readings, but the NY State Troopers here use it to gauge your initial speeds, and then lock in with Ka... and that's what they are suppose to use to put on your ticket. Cops here in NY are crooked, and I had the unfortunate experience of experiencing that... and I had to go to court to fight it.

What you'll see on your radar is a POP, and then by then a FULL Ka reading.

Law Enforcements are NOT suppose to use what they read from the POP mode feature due to the inaccuracies of it, but it does give them a general idea of how fast you're going before you slam on your brakes!

Personally, whenever I see Ka... I'm slamming on my brakes regardless. Call it a natural response, and it's saved me on many occasions.

My $0.02.

 

http://www.escortradar.com/reviews.htm
Look at the differences. Current tests, serveral studies all put it on top, and its cheaper!

http://www.valentine1.com/lab/detectortests.asp
v1 compairs itself to an old model(what's up with that?)
I have an old '85 escort passport that I'm sure its better than, hell by 50 marks!

 

The Valentine One is a familiar face, having been introduced in 1992. It was repackaged in its original housing not long ago, making it a bit thinner in profile, but its display is still about a third wider than the others in the test. True, its case is shorter than some in overall length, but for a windshield-mounted piece of mobile electronics, we're naturally more concerned about width since it has a greater impact on the driver's view of the road.

Other than now being housed in the old case and having received occasional subassembly replacements and some software tweaks--improved Ka-band sensitivity and the addition of Ku band were among the most recent-- it has remained largely unchanged since George Bush (not Dubya, we're talking the first George Bush here) spent his last year in the White House. With a detector's lifespan averaging 18 months these days, as the most expensive unit tested, the V1 would have to offer a dazzling array of virtues and world-class performance to make the cut against the far more modern contenders in this test.

The V1 is unique in having a metal case rather than the usual plastic. A trio of large red directional arrows, a feature dubbed the radar locator, dominates the center of its rectangular face. It's flanked on the left by a large alphanumeric LED display that depicts operating mode and the number of radar signals being received. On the far right is a rear radar antenna and opposite that is the single control **** and concentric lever that operate the unit. The lever controls volume when the unit is muted, the multi-function **** controls power, volume and mode selection, a lot of tasks for one switch and the reason why V1 basic mode changes can take up to three times as long as they do on both competing models.

Signal strength is depicted by beep frequency and a row of eight red LEDs. Band ID is handled by four more red LEDs stacked vertically. Identical in color and closely spaced, they can be difficult to identify at night, making the audio doubly important for band ID. Audio tones for X-band and laser are excellent but K- and Ka-band are a mite too similar for easy comprehension. Veteran users won't have any trouble but newcomers will need time to learn them.

Three operating modes are available. All Bogeys mode functions like a Highway mode, delivering maximum sensitivity on all three radar bands. In Logic mode, alerts to weak X-band signals are issued at muted volume. Advanced Logic mode lets the microprocessor decide which X-band signals pose a threat and reports strong signals at full audio volume.

The V1 windshield mount is among the best we've seen, a snap to adjust or remove and it usually holds the unit rock steady. We also liked the telephone-style connector on the power cord, a fail-safe method that has since been adopted by some competitors. And it has an audio jack for an external speaker or earphone, a plus for motorcyclists or drivers of noisy vehicles. If the detector is mounted out of reach, a remote audio module ($49) with two output jacks and a control ****/lever is available.

After spending time with the BEL and Escort models, the lack of features to be found in the V1, the most expensive corded model on the market, belies its age. Although standard today on $69 models, there's no auto mute, for example, requiring the driver to reach over to a hit the mute button to silence an alert. No problem if you're cruising down Santa Monica Boulevard, but definitely an issue if you're moving at warp speed on a two-lane mountain road at night.

And since V1 owners love to hide the V1 and its laser-bright status and alert lights in a bid to keep them away from prying eyes, reaching the unit sometimes isn't an option. For that you'll need to shell out $39 for a remote display and hard-wiring kit and string the wires around the cockpit. Including the optional $29 carrying case, when equipped similarly to the BEL and Escort, the Valentine's all-up price is $467.

Also absent is a text display or voice alerts; there's no tutorial mode to speed up the process of learning the alert systems, no programmable options like alternate audio tones or different visual displays to help tailor the detector to a user's tastes. Nor is there selectable band defeat, the ability to shut off one or more radar bands.

But having been lambasted by V1 zealots in the past for failing to mention that the Valentine can be user-programmed, sort of--although there's no mention of it in the owner manual--we spent some time investigating this phenomenon. But rather than bore you with details of this involved process, we included that in our 12-page expanded report along with other observations about the V1: Shootout! BEL v Escort v Valentine: Part II.

Valentine trades heavily on this detector's rear radar antenna and we found it gave anywhere from two to three times the detection range of the other units. It also enabled the Spectre radar detector detector to get 311 percent more range on a V1 going away than when approaching the RDD, making it a mixed blessing.

In urban areas the directional arrows were often hyperactive, alerting to every door opener in the neighborhood with the bogey counter (able to display up to nine simultaneous signals and indicate which is the strongest) frequently warning of three or more simultaneous threats coming from different quadrants of the compass. Many of these were X- and K-band door openers and local oscillators from passing radar detectors.

We tried mounting the V1 atop the dash, our preferred location since it keeps the detector in our line of sight and within easy reach. So positioned, Ka-band radar range to the rear was less than the BEL PRO RX65 and X50 Escort's, each of them dash-mounted in exactly the same spot. Still, a mile of range is more than enough in light of the negligible threat posed by radar coming from behind.

With the V1 removed from its mid-windshield position we also saw the directional arrows become confused, frequently hunting around in response to weak signals.

Valentine traditionally has dismissed any criticism of its detector's abbreviated list of features, shrugging it off as inconsequential in comparison to the hot performance. And for many years they had a point--the V1 always walked off with best-in-class X-band and laser sensitivity and often K-band as well. But X-band sensitivity doesn't matter today; two of the three biggest radar manufacturers stopped making X-band guns except by special order some years back--they list X-band in the catalog only for competitive bidding purposes--and only one state police department, New Jersey, continues to use it in any quantity. The highway patrols In Ohio and North Carolina are fast disposing of their ancient X-band K-55s in lieu of modern Ka-band hardware and even New Jersey is migrating to K band, that state's only other approved frequency.

After five years of devoting a considerable portion of his corporate Web site to tell the world that POP mode can’t possibly work, won’t be supported by the courts and isn’t worthy of their attention, Valentine has quietly removed his POP ranting and added POP detection to the V1 with no public announcement.

It’s proved to be a mixed blessing. The V1 equaled the BEL in detecting Ka POP mode and slightly edged out the Escort. But it also generated the highest number of false alarms we’ve witnessed in years, so many that on a long highway trip we grew so weary of the constant warnings that we finally ripped it off the windshield and used another model instead. We’ve heard the same complaint from a number of Valentine customers.

The Valentine One is a highly sensitive radar detector--good enough that we declared it the winner of our 2000 Automobile Magazine shootout--but it's no longer top dog. 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 peddling the same box. They replaced it with smaller, faster, user-friendlier 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 and the remaining three are dumping theirs as quickly as they wear out, replacing them in the meantime with the latest in Ka-band moving radar.

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. Small wonder that Valentine’s market share continues to shrink, down to an estimated 0.6 percent and falling. Time for a new model, guys.

Valentine

 

something else to consider is that with the x50, you can integrate the ZR3 laser shifter in the passport display (no need for an additional display)... a laser shifter is almost essential here in atlanta as that seems to be the method cops use the most... don't really have either but it's just something else to consider.

 

check the sig

 

Why are there so many Escort or Valentine users, yet the RX-65 is still the top rated radar detector? If I was to get one, I would probably get the RX-65.

 

That was a good article to read WRAH, thanks for the info.

 

I've had my V1 for a couple yrs. Gotten two tickets with it (one w/ me driving). Both times the radio was wicked loud and I couldn't have heard the V1 if it was all the way up.

My vote goes for the V1. Love the arrows