How to choose a radar detector: tips, life hacks, checklist | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Pho­to: roadandtrack.com

“What Russ­ian does­n’t like to dri­ve fast?” — per­haps the most banal begin­ning for an arti­cle on radar detec­tors. So let’s refor­mu­late a bit: “What Russ­ian likes to get fined?”.

That’s right, none! There­fore, let’s fig­ure it out togeth­er how to choose the right radar detec­tor in order to keep the fam­i­ly bud­get intact.

Radar detec­tor or radar detec­tor
Detec­tion dis­tance
False pos­i­tive fil­ter­ing and sig­na­ture mode
Fre­quen­cy range and types of radars
GPS
Mount­ing meth­ods
Infor­ma­tion dis­play
Pow­er type
Hybrid devices
Addi­tion­al func­tions
Radar detec­tor or smart­phone app
Abroad
Check list
Results

Radar detector or radar detector

The terms “radar detec­tor” and “radar detec­tor” are not syn­ony­mous. Radar detec­tors are pas­sive devices that only pick up sig­nals from traf­fic police radars. Radar detec­tors are active devices that cre­ate inter­fer­ence by block­ing the oper­a­tion of radar instal­la­tions.

The Radar Detec­tor puts your car in stealth mode for radar instal­la­tions, allow­ing you to break the speed lim­it. In Rus­sia, as in most coun­tries of the world, radar detec­tors are pro­hib­it­ed. We will talk exclu­sive­ly about the choice of radar detec­tors in 2021.

Detection distance

The most impor­tant para­me­ter that affects the qual­i­ty of a radar detec­tor is the detec­tion dis­tance of police radars. It depends on the pow­er of the anten­na and the land­scape. On long, flat stretch­es of road, the sig­nal can be trans­mit­ted for many kilo­me­ters. There you can detect a radar at a dis­tance of about ten kilo­me­ters, although the declared detec­tion range in the instruc­tions will not exceed, for exam­ple, two kilo­me­ters.

It would seem, why do you need to “catch” the radar ten kilo­me­ters away? Long dis­tance can be use­ful on long stretch­es of road with min­i­mal traf­fic — you can hear how an employ­ee spot­ted anoth­er dri­ver many kilo­me­ters ahead of you. Even if after that not a sin­gle car pass­es or the inspec­tor with the radar hides, you will be pre­pared in advance for the meet­ing.

When you dri­ve through dif­fi­cult ter­rain, hills, trees, and curves can block and absorb the sig­nal. In such con­di­tions, you can get a response range of two hun­dred to three hun­dred meters, or even less.

It is very dif­fi­cult to find out about the pow­er of the anten­na and the cur­rent oper­at­ing range from the tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics that are indi­cat­ed in the instruc­tions or pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als. The only indi­ca­tor of how pow­er­ful the anten­na is installed in the radar detec­tor is its price — if the man­u­fac­tur­er does not save on com­po­nents, he will not be able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the prices of devices. To ori­ent you a lit­tle, bud­get reg­is­trars cost up to 3 thou­sand rubles, prices for high-end devices start at ten thou­sand rubles. Every­thing in between can be con­di­tion­al­ly attrib­uted to the “aver­age bud­get”.

In nor­mal sit­u­a­tions with a min­i­mum of nat­ur­al obsta­cles, inex­pen­sive mod­els will do an excel­lent job of detect­ing radars, and in more dif­fi­cult recep­tion con­di­tions they can fail. High-end devices per­form equal­ly well in both sim­ple and dif­fi­cult ter­rain. So the gen­er­al rule here is that the more expen­sive the detec­tor, the eas­i­er it is to cope with dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.

For exam­ple, the Neo­line X‑COP 7500s radar detec­tor (costs about 10 thou­sand rubles) has a declared detec­tion range of up to 1.5 km. In the bud­get DIGMA SafeDrive T‑600 (costs about 3 thou­sand rubles), it is not much less — 1 km. But in prac­tice, the device from Neo­line copes bet­ter with a road with a large num­ber of turns, which runs through a wood­ed area.

Well-known brands do not save on the radar part, so buy­ing prod­ucts from one of the com­pa­nies that have been on the mar­ket for a long time will be the right deci­sion. Vet­er­ans include Neo­line, Sho-Me, Play-me, Cobra, Inspec­tor, iBOX.

By choos­ing mod­els of well-known brands, you sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the risk of get­ting a device with a weak anten­na. In the pho­to — Neo­line X‑COP 7500s. Pho­to: neoline.ru

As the radar detec­tion dis­tance increas­es, the amount of detect­ed inter­fer­ence also increas­es. This is espe­cial­ly true for trips in the city. This is where anoth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic comes into play — the abil­i­ty to fil­ter out false sig­nals and inter­fer­ence.

False positive filtering and signature mode

False alarms have always been one of the seri­ous prob­lems of radar detec­tors. Detec­tors can pick up on cruise con­trol sys­tems of pass­ing cars, auto­mat­ic doors in super­mar­kets and oth­er impuls­es, mis­tak­ing them for police radar sig­nals.

To reduce the num­ber of false pos­i­tives, there are two main ways: reduce the over­all sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the detec­tor and / or use spe­cial fil­ters that will fil­ter out extra­ne­ous sig­nals.

Today, most mod­els are equipped with spe­cial modes with dif­fer­ent lev­els of sen­si­tiv­i­ty and acti­va­tion / deac­ti­va­tion of fil­ters. Check that your device sup­ports two main ones — “City” and “Route”.

In the “City” mode, the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the detec­tor is reduced and the fil­ters are turned on. In the “Track” mode, the detec­tor works at full capac­i­ty, because the num­ber of inter­fer­ences on the track is min­i­mal, and due to the high­er speed of the car, the detec­tion dis­tance should be max­i­mum. The more expen­sive the radar detec­tor, the more options to adjust the fil­ter­ing and sen­si­tiv­i­ty of your device.

The abil­i­ty to select the oper­at­ing mode of the detec­tor is a manda­to­ry require­ment. Pic­tured: Whistler 438 ST. Pho­to: free-navigator.ru

The “City” and “Route” modes are pro­vid­ed in many mod­els — from bud­get ones like the Sho-Me 520 STR to high-end options, for exam­ple, the Neo­line X‑COP 8700s. As in the case of the detec­tion dis­tance, the rule works — the more expen­sive the radar detec­tor, the more effec­tive its fil­ter­ing and the few­er false pos­i­tives. Large man­u­fac­tur­ers use their own pro­pri­etary fil­ter­ing sys­tems, for exam­ple, Playme’s anti-CAS sys­tem effec­tive­ly cuts off inter­fer­ence from the secu­ri­ty sys­tems of oth­er cars.

A few years ago, radar detec­tors began to use addi­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy that helps reduce the num­ber of false pos­i­tives. The sig­nal of each type of radar has a cer­tain set of para­me­ters (dura­tion, sequence, and oth­ers) — the so-called “sig­na­ture” or “sig­na­ture” of the radar. Sig­na­ture radar detec­tors store such “sig­na­tures” for sta­tion­ary and mobile sys­tems com­mon in Rus­sia. Stored and “sig­na­tures” of the most com­mon types of inter­fer­ence. Hav­ing detect­ed a sig­nal, the sys­tem checks the data­base and deter­mines whether it is a real radar or inter­fer­ence. Due to this, the num­ber of false pos­i­tives is dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.

How­ev­er, sig­na­ture radars have their draw­backs. Some­times they can miss sin­gle “shots” of hand-held radars. In addi­tion, not all exist­ing radars may be in the data­base. Sig­na­ture mode is more suit­able for city dri­ving, where there is a lot of inter­fer­ence. And for the route it is bet­ter to set a low­er fil­ter­ing lev­el.

The sig­na­ture mode is found in radar detec­tors of the mid­dle price cat­e­go­ry (from about 6,000 rubles) and above: for exam­ple, in the Sho-Me G525 Sig­na­ture mod­el.

The pres­ence of a sig­na­ture mode or its own pro­pri­etary fil­ter­ing sys­tem like Playme’s anti-CAS or Neo­line’s Z‑filter fil­ter is a big plus for a radar detec­tor.

Frequency range and types of radars

The next char­ac­ter­is­tic, which must be indi­cat­ed in the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mod­el, is the fre­quen­cy range that the radar detec­tor can detect.

Traf­fic police offi­cers have two main types of radar — radio fre­quen­cy and laser. RF radars are eas­i­er to assem­ble and design, so they are more com­mon.

There are many dif­fer­ent radio fre­quen­cy bands that radars oper­ate on (K, Ku, X, and so on). Usu­al­ly on the box or in the instruc­tions of the radar detec­tor it is indi­cat­ed which fre­quen­cies it detects.

Advanced devices, like Neo­line X‑COP 9300c, can flex­i­bly con­fig­ure fil­ter­ing modes and turn off cer­tain ranges. Pho­to: ichip.ru

In Rus­sia, they main­ly use only the K‑band. Out­dat­ed radars, such as Sokol and Bar­ri­er, worked in the X‑band, but since 2012 they have offi­cial­ly ceased to be used. There­fore, it is bet­ter to dis­able the X‑band in order to reduce the num­ber of false pos­i­tives.

Oth­er ranges that are often men­tioned in the char­ac­ter­is­tics of radar detec­tors (Ka, Ku, POP, RDR and oth­ers) are not yet used in Rus­sia. Ka-band is used by Amer­i­can radars, and Ku-band is used by Euro­pean ones.

All mod­ern mod­els of radar detec­tors detect all used fre­quen­cies, so it makes no sense to check the list of oper­at­ing fre­quen­cies for each mod­el you like.

There is one excep­tion to this rule. This is the Strel­ka impulse radar, which for a long time remained invis­i­ble to many radar detec­tors. Over time, Strel­ka was added to almost all data­bas­es, but it’s worth check­ing if your device responds to it, just in case.

The leg­endary Strel­ka, which raised a lot of mon­ey to the trea­sury. Pho­to: icover.ru

Sep­a­rate­ly, it is nec­es­sary to men­tion laser radars. Almost all mod­ern radar detec­tors can detect the oper­a­tion of laser radars. How­ev­er, due to the tech­ni­cal fea­tures of laser radars, the sig­nal is often received after the inspec­tor has mea­sured your speed. How­ev­er, it is bet­ter to have at least some pro­tec­tion than not to have any.

For laser radars, the detec­tion angle is impor­tant. Dif­fer­ent mod­els can detect such radars either only in front (180 degrees), or both in front and behind (360 degrees). The sec­ond option is more use­ful, because no one both­ers the police­man to get the radar after you have passed by.

The detec­tion angle does not con­cern radio-fre­quen­cy radars — any detec­tor detects them for all 360 degrees. How­ev­er, there are mod­els such as the Valen­tine One V1, which have two anten­nas at once, in front and behind — such detec­tors sug­gest which side the inspec­tor is “shoot­ing” from.

In Rus­sia, there are speed track­ing sys­tems that work with­out radar at all, for exam­ple, Avtodoriya. The video cam­eras of the com­plex record the car while enter­ing and leav­ing the road sec­tion, and then the sys­tem cal­cu­lates how much this sec­tion was over­come and at what speed the dri­ver was mov­ing. How to choose a radar detec­tor for a car, so as not to fall into such a trap?

GPS

Radar detec­tors with built-in GPS warn of such traps. Their data­bas­es indi­cate the loca­tion of cam­eras, radar and non-radar sys­tems.

It is impor­tant to bear in mind that speed con­trol sys­tems are con­stant­ly chang­ing their posi­tion — old ones dis­ap­pear, new ones appear. In order for the GPS sys­tem to work effec­tive­ly, reg­u­lar data­base updates are nec­es­sary.

Well-known com­pa­nies, vet­er­ans of the radar detec­tors and video recorders mar­ket — Sho-me, Playme and Neo­line, reg­u­lar­ly update their data­bas­es. But if you buy a Chi­nese “non­ame”, even if GPS is indi­cat­ed in its char­ac­ter­is­tics, you risk being left with­out reg­u­lar updates or, even worse, the coor­di­nates of cam­eras and radars can sim­ply be “hard­wired” into the device with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of updat­ing.

This does not hap­pen with estab­lished brands. Some mod­els of radar detec­tors remind you to update the base, and the most advanced devices can do this auto­mat­i­cal­ly, for exam­ple, iBOX Sonar Laser­Scan Sig­na­ture Cloud.

But if you want to take a chance and buy an unknown brand, check the update his­to­ry on the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site and pay atten­tion to user reviews — how long and how often they are released, and make deci­sions based on this infor­ma­tion.

Inspec­tor Spir­it with GPS and GLONASS. Pho­to: mnmag.ru

Radar detec­tors with built-in GPS warn of such traps. Their data­bas­es indi­cate the loca­tion of cam­eras, radar and non-radar sys­tems.

It is impor­tant to bear in mind that speed con­trol sys­tems are con­stant­ly chang­ing their posi­tion — old ones dis­ap­pear, new ones appear. In order for the GPS sys­tem to work effec­tive­ly, reg­u­lar data­base updates are nec­es­sary.

Well-known com­pa­nies, vet­er­ans of the radar detec­tors and video recorders mar­ket — Sho-me, Playme and Neo­line, reg­u­lar­ly update their data­bas­es. But if you buy a Chi­nese “non­ame”, even if GPS is indi­cat­ed in its char­ac­ter­is­tics, you risk being left with­out reg­u­lar updates or, even worse, the coor­di­nates of cam­eras and radars can sim­ply be “hard­wired” into the device with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of updat­ing.

This does not hap­pen with estab­lished brands. Some mod­els of radar detec­tors remind you to update the base, and the most advanced devices can do this auto­mat­i­cal­ly, for exam­ple, iBOX Sonar Laser­Scan Sig­na­ture Cloud.

But if you want to take a chance and buy an unknown brand, check the update his­to­ry on the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site and pay atten­tion to user reviews — how long and how often they are released, and make deci­sions based on this infor­ma­tion.

Mounting methods

- Mount­ing on suc­tion cups on the wind­shield. This is the most com­mon instal­la­tion method — this type of mount comes with the vast major­i­ty of gad­gets. The main dis­ad­van­tage is that the detec­tor blocks part of the view, even worse if the DVR is also hang­ing there.

- On the mat on the dash­board. A non-slip mat is glued onto the dash­board using dou­ble-sided heat-resis­tant adhe­sive tape, and the detec­tor is already installed on it. At the same time, the tidy, of course, should be smooth, oth­er­wise, with sud­den brak­ing, your device may fall off. This instal­la­tion method does not impair vis­i­bil­i­ty, but the mat usu­al­ly col­lects all the dust, and traces of adhe­sive tape may remain on the pan­el. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers, such as Sho-me, include a mat in the kit.

- On a mag­net on the dash­board. Instead of a non-slip mat, a mag­net­ic mount is glued to the tidy, and the detec­tor is already attached to it. The mag­net is a reli­able thing, the device will not rat­tle and fid­get. The mag­net­ic hold­er is used in some mod­els of Neo­line radar detec­tors (for exam­ple, Neo­line X‑Cop 5500).

- On the sun visor. A more exot­ic type of attach­ment, but it has advan­tages. The radar does not block the view and does not attract too much atten­tion. But if the sun visor needs to be fold­ed down, the radar will be direct­ed per­pen­dic­u­lar to the road, and this will reduce its sen­si­tiv­i­ty. You will not see infor­ma­tion on the screen in this posi­tion either. For exam­ple, Neo­line has a uni­ver­sal sun visor mount — Neo­line X‑COP Visor.

- Under the hood. In our coun­try, detec­tors with a form fac­tor that involves cus­tom instal­la­tion under the hood are rarely used: they are more expen­sive, require spe­cial instal­la­tion, and, giv­en that the radar detec­tors them­selves are not pro­hib­it­ed in our coun­try, it makes no sense to hide them. The radar part is usu­al­ly installed in the radi­a­tor grill, and infor­ma­tion from it is dis­played on a screen installed in the cab­in. This type of detec­tors may be rel­e­vant for cars with ather­mal win­dows. These are spe­cial glass­es with a char­ac­ter­is­tic green­ish or blue tint — they are used so that the dri­ver is not blind­ed by the rays of the sun. Such glass­es can inter­fere with the cor­rect oper­a­tion of the radar detec­tor and GPS informer. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers leave tech­ni­cal win­dows (they look like trans­par­ent areas, usu­al­ly in the cor­ners or in the area where the mir­ror is attached) for the instal­la­tion of radar detec­tors and nav­i­ga­tors. But if they are not there, the engine com­part­ment detec­tor will be a good solu­tion. An exam­ple of such a mod­el avail­able in Rus­sia is the Radartech Pilot 31RS radar detec­tor.

The Radartech Pilot 31RS has a remote instal­la­tion: the detec­tor itself is placed under the soot, and the infor­ma­tion device with the “brains” is in the cab­in. Pho­to: car-radar.ru

Information display

- Light indi­ca­tors. Old­er or cheap­er mod­els use indi­ca­tor lights that light up when the device detects a sig­nal on a cer­tain range.

- LCD/LED dis­play. More infor­ma­tive option. The dis­play shows addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion — the type of radar, the dis­tance to it, the speed of move­ment.

- Dis­play via smart­phone screen. Recorders that can con­nect to a smart­phone dis­play infor­ma­tion on its screen.

Power type

The type of pow­er does not affect the qual­i­ty of work. If you are con­sid­er­ing which radar detec­tor to choose based on the type of pow­er sup­ply, be guid­ed by your aes­thet­ic pref­er­ences and the com­plex­i­ty of the instal­la­tion.

The eas­i­est option is from the cig­a­rette lighter. The plug of the device is insert­ed into the cig­a­rette lighter sock­et. The wire is easy to pull out and put the device in the glove com­part­ment. Con­ve­nient and prac­ti­cal, but not aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing — not every­one likes pro­trud­ing wires.

A lacon­ic-look­ing, but at the same time more com­plex way — from the vehi­cle’s on-board net­work. All wires will be hid­den at the instal­la­tion stage, but the instal­la­tion itself should be han­dled by an auto elec­tri­cian.

Hybrid devices

If you need not only a car radar detec­tor, but also a DVR (we have a sep­a­rate large mate­r­i­al on how to choose a DVR), you can imme­di­ate­ly pur­chase a 2‑in‑1 device.

Such mod­els are more expen­sive than con­ven­tion­al DVRs — the price of high-qual­i­ty devices starts at about 10 thou­sand rubles. At the same time, even for that kind of mon­ey, many of them will be deprived of use­ful fea­tures that are in DVRs with­out a built-in radar detec­tor — for exam­ple, Wi-Fi. There is an opin­ion that hybrid devices lose to spe­cial­ized radar detec­tors in terms of anten­na pow­er, detec­tion range and fil­ter­ing qual­i­ty.

Despite all the dis­ad­van­tages, this is a very con­ve­nient com­bi­na­tion — the device takes up less space, and all set­tings and con­trols are col­lect­ed in one case.

• It is con­ve­nient when all the set­tings are in one device. Pic­tured: AXPER Com­bo Hybrid. Pho­to: autodela.ru

Among inex­pen­sive but high-qual­i­ty hybrid detec­tors, we can rec­om­mend the AXPER Com­bo Hybrid mod­el, which is tra­di­tion­al­ly includ­ed in the rat­ing of the best com­bo devices. This is a sig­na­ture mod­el that deter­mines the type of radar and cuts off inter­fer­ence. And the GPS-mod­ule allows you to report in advance about radars and cam­eras along the route. The DVR itself records a clear pic­ture with a res­o­lu­tion of 2560 × 1440 pix­els.

Additional functions

Smart (Smart) mode — the device auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch­es the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the detec­tor and the range of the noti­fi­ca­tion via GPS when the vehi­cle speed changes.

Speed ​​cal­i­bra­tion — this func­tion deter­mines the actu­al speed of the car accord­ing to GPS. The read­ings on the speedome­ter of the car do not cor­re­spond to the real speed of move­ment in the direc­tion of increase. GPS data shows the real val­ue. You can adjust the speed on the receiv­er to match the car’s speedome­ter if you’re more com­fort­able with a lit­tle head­room.

Speed ​​thresh­old — while the dri­ver is dri­ving below the set speed, the device does not emit sig­nals, but at the same time con­tin­ues to dis­play the pres­ence of cam­eras. After exceed­ing this val­ue, sound noti­fi­ca­tions are acti­vat­ed again.

Dis­abling the radar part — com­plete­ly dis­abling inform­ing the dri­ver about any threats. Can be used in con­junc­tion with set­ting a speed thresh­old.

Per­mis­si­ble speed lim­it — you can set a cer­tain speed, above which the device will warn you about it.

Blue­tooth con­nec­tion — Blue­tooth radar detec­tors can be con­nect­ed to a smart­phone and work through an appli­ca­tion, which expands their capa­bil­i­ties. For exam­ple, if the detec­tor itself does not have GPS, it can use the smart­phone’s GPS to inform about cam­eras and radars. Through the large screen of a smart­phone, it is much eas­i­er to change set­tings, update firmware and data­bas­es com­pared to the minia­ture dis­play of the detec­tor.

Cloud ser­vices — some mod­els (for exam­ple, Cobra Road Scout) can con­nect to cloud ser­vices and auto­mat­i­cal­ly share data about threats on the road with oth­er dri­vers online: infor­ma­tion is dis­played on the smart­phone screen, in the man­u­fac­tur­er’s pro­pri­etary appli­ca­tion (for exam­ple, iRadar from the same Cobra) or in Google/Apple Maps. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this func­tion is not yet used in Rus­sia. How­ev­er, there are already mod­els with a cloud con­nec­tion, but the cloud is used here either for auto­mat­ic GPS / sig­na­ture-base updates (iBOX Sonar Laser­Scan Sig­na­ture Cloud), or for video sur­veil­lance in hybrid devices (Car­cam Com­bo 5S).

Radar detector or smartphone app

With the spread of Yandex.Maps and spe­cial­ized appli­ca­tions like Strel­ka or Radar­bot that warn about cam­eras, it may seem to some­one that a radar detec­tor is an out­dat­ed and unnec­es­sary thing. A free appli­ca­tion that com­bines the func­tions of a nav­i­ga­tor and a radar detec­tor and does not take up space looks like a nice option.

How­ev­er, the app on the smart­phone is just a data­base for GPS, which is not able to deter­mine the “threats” on the road on its own. Rely­ing on the infor­ma­tion from the appli­ca­tion, you ful­ly rely on the con­sci­en­tious­ness of the devel­op­ers to update the data­bas­es in a time­ly man­ner.

Often appli­ca­tions warn about a non-exis­tent cam­era, and then do not report an exist­ing one. Basi­cal­ly, free pop­u­lar nav­i­ga­tors sin with this, but even spe­cial­ized paid appli­ca­tions may not be able to keep up with chang­ing cam­era arrange­ments.

But, most impor­tant­ly, appli­ca­tions are not able to detect non-sta­tion­ary radar-cam­eras (“ambush­es”). Portable mobile com­plex­es (“tripods”) and mobile points in traf­fic police cars can be in the most unex­pect­ed place. The Strel­ka app rec­om­mends turn­ing off noti­fi­ca­tions about pos­si­ble ambush­es — there will be too many of them, and it will become impos­si­ble to dri­ve. So if you want a rel­a­tive­ly high guar­an­tee of pro­tec­tion from fines, the radar detec­tor remains the only reli­able device for now.

Cobra Road Scout not only con­nects to the cloud, but also fea­tures a cre­ative design. Pho­to: blog.dupontregistry.com

Abroad

And now a few tips for those trav­el­ing abroad. Radar detec­tors are banned in many Euro­pean coun­tries and two US states (Vir­ginia and Wash­ing­ton). So, in the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries, the Baltic states, as well as France and Aus­tria, all radar detec­tors and sim­i­lar devices are banned in gen­er­al. You can get a seri­ous fine, and in Swe­den you can go to jail. Check your local laws before you trav­el. Local police use spe­cial direc­tion find­ers that deter­mine if you have a detec­tor installed in your car.

Some devices, for exam­ple, the Neo­line X‑COP 9100s hybrid detec­tor-video recorder, can turn off the radar part, after which the device can work in the GPS infor­mant mode.

If you are a very risky guy (and we strong­ly advise you not to risk it!), there are a num­ber of mod­els equipped with pro­tec­tion sys­tems from detec­tion by police direc­tion find­ers — Specter sys­tems, as well as the more out­dat­ed VG‑2. The Neo­line X‑COP 9100s top detec­tor has all sys­tems built in.

Check list

A small check­list by which you can check your favorite mod­el:

• In the radar part, it is bet­ter to focus on prod­ucts of well-known brands that have been on the mar­ket for a long time.
• Detec­tion dis­tance from 1 km.
• The pres­ence of modes “City” and “Route”.
• Well, if there is a patent­ed fil­ter­ing sys­tem (anti-CAS, Z‑filter) or sig­na­ture mode.
• Detec­tion of K‑band radars and Strel­ka radars.
• Laser detec­tor, bet­ter with 360 degree detec­tion angle.
• GPS with reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed data­bas­es.
• If you have ather­mal glaz­ing, you may need a radar detec­tor installed under the hood.

Results

Don’t break the speed lim­it! Pho­to: itnan.ru

So, the two main dif­fer­ences between bud­get and high-end radar detec­tors are their sen­si­tiv­i­ty and fil­ter­ing. On the track, cheap­er mod­els eas­i­ly cope with sim­ple ter­rain, but do not cope with more com­plex ones (moun­tains, hilly ter­rain, many turns) — the detec­tor sim­ply does not have time to warn of the threat in advance. Also, cheap­er detec­tors are equipped with a less advanced fil­ter­ing sys­tem, so the num­ber of false pos­i­tives will be high­er, which is espe­cial­ly true for trips in the city.

More expen­sive detec­tors are equipped with a more pow­er­ful receiv­er and more advanced noise fil­ter­ing, mak­ing them more effec­tive both in the city and on the high­way.

Usu­al­ly, com­pa­nies do not dis­close exact­ly which com­po­nents are used in their devices, so the most cor­rect deci­sion would be to pur­chase prod­ucts from trust­ed man­u­fac­tur­ers who will not save on the key ele­ment of the radar detec­tor — the anten­na, as well as the fil­ter­ing sys­tem. Among the brands that have been on the mar­ket for a long time are: Cobra, iBOX, Inspec­tor, Neo­line, Play-me, Sho-Me, etc.

Since radar­less sys­tems are becom­ing more wide­spread, we rec­om­mend pur­chas­ing devices with a GPS informer and a reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed data­base. So you will sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the like­li­hood of get­ting a fine both in the city and on the high­way.

But the most impor­tant and true rule that will save you from unnec­es­sary expens­es and wor­ries is to fol­low the speed lim­it and traf­fic rules!