It’s not a secret that most radar detectors available suffer from substandard performance, regardless of their price or brand. More often than not, they prove ineffective countering the latest police detection radars and so the need arises to find out which is the best radar detector available.

The Need for a Good Radar Detector

In addition, there are three characteristics of the radar detectors that are a source of constant headache to designers, especially those designing what they consider to be the best radar detector. Radar guns use DSP or digital signal processing, which makes them so fast that it makes it easy to catch speeding motorists, and, even when on hold, they can be fired at the touch of a button and still clock speeding cars in as little as one fourth of a second. This makes purchasing the best radar detector of utmost importance and the money spent on buying one is money well spent.

Ka Bandwidth

Police spot speedsters without much difficulty by using the Ka band, which is a low signal that is not easily tracked by radar detectors due to its wide bandwidth of 2.6 gigahertz, which is as much as 52 times more than the X band most radar detectors used to use. This means that the only feasible solution is to actually spot the radar before it has spotted you — so this has become a major requirement of the best radar detector, which should have Ka bandwidth sensitivity.

The Four Industry Standards

There are four radar detectors that could qualify to be the best radar detector and these are the $300 Escort Passport 8500, the $290 BEL 980, the $390 Valentine One and, most expensive of all, the $1,400 K40 SS3000.

Simply the Best

The BEL 980 is one of the best that uses digital-voice technology and with its standard features, also boasts a sophisticated design. The Escort Passport 8500 is a very refined and pioneering technology-driven radar detector that is a level above the others and thus could also qualify for being named best radar detector.

The Downfalls of the Ladder Two

The Valentine One performs well across the X band and Ka band frequencies but cannot be called the top of the line, and is certainly one of the oldest models available. And, what can one say about the K40 SS3000 except that it fails miserably, and in spite of its lofty price tag, has no user-friendly interface nor does it perform consistently and is a ‘70s era designed product to boot? It certainly is not in any position to be called the best radar detector on the market.