Woopnik's video: Radar Detectors Matter More Than Ever Everything you need to know

If you find this video useful, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel for upcoming DIY tutorials concerning technology. Thank you! In the 4 years I used my radar detector how many tickets did I get? Zero. Watch my video and learn why radar detectors still matter today. There is a learning curve when using a radar detector. You have to set it up right. All those little chirping sounds and flashing lights can be confusing. They mean different things. You have to know what to listen for. Police radar operates in bands defined as X, K and Ka, and modern detectors can differentiate between them. Stationary radars used by door openers and burglar alarms generally operate in the X band. Older detectors — and cheaper detectors still sold today — are easily set off by X-band. That’s why detector manufacturers began offering “City” mode, which (hopefully) filters out most X-band signals. Modern detectors use Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to warn of X-band signals which may still pose a threat, but since most police have migrated to K and Ka, X-band is less of a concern than it used to be. More importantly, the V1 was also the first detector that was hardware upgradeable. As police radar (and sources of false alarms) evolved, so did the V1. I’ve used a V1 on every single cross-country record to date. The results speak for themselves. The very best detectors may have GPS and a lockout feature, allowing users to tag false alarms by location. This works best for those who use detectors on commutes, but does nothing for those on a road they’ve never driven unless the device is networked. The latest solution? Connected detectors like Escort’s Max 360, which, when used in conjunction with the Escort Live subscription service, crowdsource data — whether police or false alarms — across the network. From the early 90’s until recently, the state-of-the-art radar detector was the Valentine One. It was the only radar detector with a directional display with arrows. In its heyday, it made every other detector look like junk. A user with a bit of intelligence and experience could easily discern from the arrows whether an alert was an actual threat. The ability to interpret feedback from tools is called judgment, much like how serious drivers interpret steering feel and tire noise to determine grip. Front or rear alert? More likely to be a cop. Side alerts? Less likely. If you’re driving fast enough to need a detector, you shouldn’t be listening to music. Visual warnings are seldom sufficiently clear to identify and interpret the type of incoming signal, especially if you’ve wisely mounted your detector slightly off-axis. You don’t want it in front of your head, in case you have an accident, which means you need the loudest possible warnings.