Valentine One Radar Detector by Valentine
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Our Price: $499.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $365.00 (click here) Category: Car Audio or Theater See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Valentine One Radar Detector
Digital camera Review: Great product but buy it direct from Mike (Valentine) himself
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the industry standard, hands down best performer - just butt ugly. [...]
Mr. Valentine was apparently one of the wizards at Cincinnati Microwave that created the original Escort radar detector back in the day...
Digital camera Review: Great product!
Summary: 5 Stars
Great Product. Extremely sensitive. Does send many false alarms, however it has already saved me from a few tickets.Digital camera Review: Had One Forever, Buying One for the Mrs.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had a Valentine 1 since the early 90's. Over the years, it has been upgraded and has consistently been a top performer. Since those early days, these new V1s offer laser, a reinforced power cord (fixing a former Con), slightly modified/improved interface (see Pros) and new detection capabilities for instant-on radar.
Pro:
+Incredible detection range that always amazes my passengers... consistently voted #1 in the rankings in laser and radar tests, usually only dinged for price (see Cons) or styling. (Are they serious? Who care's if it's boxy?)
+Able to track multiple targets at one time (9), which at first sounds silly, but it helps you filter threats
+Able to tell that you've passed a target. Signal in front will shift to side lights and then to rear helping you ID where the signal is
+Is he behind me? Front AND rear detectors (and matching light indicators) I think makes this detector one-of-a-kind
+Black color (unit, mounts and cables) blends into your dash and does not reflect as much light and glare as its shiny counterparts. I can't believe the competition has gone with the shiny titanium styling... silly!
+The longer power cord (four feet?) looks like a "phone cord" and is reinforced nicely, a vast improvement over the early V1 cords
+Also has pieces for hardwiring the unit, but I suspect you'll need to buy wire and an installer (not a typical do it yourselfer project)
+The glass mount (with spare suction cups) is just awesome! After 15 years, the design is still unbeaten!
+Variable volume and mute settings, with one-touch mute
+Display will show a "J" when a signal is determined to be "junk", a false-alarm. When you get the "J" your V1 is telling you that it is retracting the warning from this signal.
+LEDs are arranged vertically, laser ("L") is on top, Ka next, then K, and last X, representing threats ranked from lowest (top LED) to highest probability (bottom LED) of a false alarm
+You can buy spare pieces on-line (an extra cost, but reasonably priced)
+Lights are not overly bright at night... still very visible but not distracting either
+3 sensitivity settings: "all bogeys", "logic" and "advanced logic". Advanced logic filters the most for those who hate false alarms.
+Loudest volume setting is very loud, softest is off, with a nearly limitless number of levels in between. Mute can be any volume that you choose and does not necessarily have to be off
Con:
-Display has one LED for each type of radar detected (laser, Ka, X, and K) but they're all the same color
-EZPass (automatic electronic toll payment) sets off the laser warning, and the unit goes nuts (again the laser warning is intense). Also, laser can be triggered by close proximity (15' in my experience) of the tail lights to certain American-made cars when they hit their brakes (confirmed by the manual).
-Price... ouch
-Visor mount is not very good (too tight) on thicker sun visors, however the glass mount (see pros) is the best ever!
-L, Ka, X, and K next to their LEDs is stenciled on... at night it's hard to tell for instance if Ka is being located or X. There's no good reference and the letters are not illuminated, nor are LEDs color-coded
Neutral:
>Optional concealed display that plugs into the cigarette lighter (must be purchased separately)
>Detectors aren't legal in some states/areas
>Some claim that's it's boxy styling is a turn off, but come on, it's all about having the best detection!
>The shorter power cord (two feet?) is a coiled power cord... Not a con since they supply another, longer cord (see pro section)
Bottom line: Highly recommended/don't leave home without it. I liked mine so much that I have just bought another one for my
wife.
Digital camera Review: Hands down best radar detector on the market.
Summary: 5 Stars
The Valentine One (V1) is a radar detector that it seems those who know, don't settle for a lesser model detector. The thing has it's flaws of course, but the positive attributes are second to none.
I have had one of these for about 5 years now, and it LITERALLY saved me a ticket on the first day (other guy who passed me after I decided to slow down got nabbed over the next hill). I too wish it had better false positives detection, but despite all of them the true positives and direction indication is priceless. I'm envious of the GPS tagging option on the Passport 9500XT but the fact that it's just a beep with no idea where it's coming from is a show-stopper to me.
The only major flaw in my opinion are the false positives it has. I live in a neighborhood that has a radar monitored proximity gate outside, so every time I drive past, it lights up the V1. Annoying, yes, but at this point I'm practically robotically trained to either ignore it or mute it. With the false positives I will say I have a distaste for higher end vehicles that use laser tracking for speed etc. (Lexus, Infiniti), because it does trip a laser reading. It only happens when they're right behind or right in front, but still annoying.
The V1 has two volume knobs, one for alert volume and another for the volume it goes to when you mute it. I operate where I don't mute something until I can identify where the source is coming from, something that's impossible with other detectors. Once I spot it (cop, supermarket, gate) I mute it. The beauty is that in the event (and it does happen) where you're driving in a town with many ignorable signals from various bands, it'll STILL tell you when it finds Ka (which is 95% of the time a cop) by blinking Ka and blinking the arrow in the direction it's coming. The Ka band has a "di-dit" sound that stands out to me cuing me to know to have a look. It tracks up to 9 signals of all any combination of bands. You also have the option to push-hold the mute button to switch between sensitivity modes where it toggles between all signals at any strength and other modes where it ignores the lower bands until it hits a higher signal strength. I drive in town with it on the "L" mode and on road trips at full sensitivity or "A" mode.
As far as installation goes, hard-wiring is the only way to go. The V1 uses a normal RJ-45 telephone cord for power, so relocating it to a rental or friend's vehicle is a snap. In fact I forgot to grab my power cord on a road trip in a friend's car, so we stopped at a Radio Shack in Whoknowswhere Texas, bought a phone cord and we were in business. On the other hand, hard-wiring will take you (or an installer) maybe an hour to accomplish. I have mine mounted right between my rear-view mirror and headliner so the power cord uses the the little plastic tunnel my rear mirror uses for power. Quite smooth and you can't see it from outside the car without knowing it's there. The visor clip should be considered a temporary fix...especially if you hate having a coiled power cord draped over your dash.
I also own the hidden display adapter, but have never used it because I have no elegant place to put it. My cigarette lighter is just as far down as my rear-view mirror is up, so it's self-defeating. I have seen some really impressive solutions where people have stripped out one of these adapters and integrated it into their gauge clusters, but that was a bit much for me.
Aside from the false positives, the V1 has stunning range. It manages to read through wind shields and over hills (provided there's something for the signal to bounce off of). I have picked up cops from what seemed like miles away simply because there was light traffic on the road I was on.
Finally, I've read people's complaints about it having only red for LED colors. However, the need for multi colored LED's is really unnecessary and would (in my opinion) make this thing look like a cheap kids toy. The solution is simple really, I don't hardly have to look at it (unless for direction) because each band (X, K, Ka, laser) has it's own distinct sound.
In a nutshell, the V1 rocks and has more than paid for itself in avoided tickets. If mine broke today, I'd replace it again with a V1.
Digital camera Review: I know why price is higher on amazon and ebay
Summary: 5 Stars
Love this unit. Old school but beats escort hand down in my state where they still use X band and quick trigger instant on. My 8500 X50 escort warned me say 10% of the time. Police in my state don't keep their radar open and if they do, its X band which can be detected by my escort, but instant on or laser, no way. Valentine was amazing in catching laser deflected from cars way ahead of me when police use laser guns.
Oh yeah, the price of amazon and ebay is way higher than valentine website, because its directed towards European customers (because V1 has the euro mode). most of European countries ban the sale (but not the use) of detectors. And with the euro exchange rate, buying from the US is a bargain even at 700 dollars!! GOD BLESS AMERICA
so, people buy from valentine website at 399 with free shipping and sell it for double on amazon or ebay. valentine website DO NOT SHIP international.