tc339 said:
I'm looking into getting my first radar detector. Never had one before. What are the pros and cons of the Escort 8500 vs. the V1? Both seem like pretty solid units.
This is one of those questions that will usually elicit a big debate, with strong proponents on both sides... Both with very valid and logical points. Here's my take, and please remember, this is only my own personal opnion...
Years ago I bought one of the very first Valentine V1's ever made, and at the time it was well and truly "state of the art". The arrows were a revelation at the time, but then once you begin to truly understand how radar works, and particularly how constabularies use them and the legal constraints they operate under, IMHO you quickly realize that the arrows really don't do you any good. LEO's can't really use radar effectively to issue citations when running behind you, nor from the side, so the most important thing is how the detector works looking out in front. From this standpoint the V! is still an outstanding detector, but it does have a huge weakness IMHO - the enormous number of "falses" you have to deal with. Unless you want to be almost totally involved with the operation of the V1 literally all the time then it can often drive you crazy. Yes, it has wonderful range, and yes, it can sniff signals as well as better than just about any detector out there... But it comes at a price. You are constantly fiddling, tuning, and jacking with it, as well as having to spend a ton of time looking at its display and determining if threats are real or not. That's not the way I want to travel on either two- or four-wheels. That said, I still have a V1, but it pretty much stays at home all the time, there only as a back-up for car use if one of my Escort/BEL detectors fails for some reason.
OTOH, I find that the Escort/BEL products are extremely easy to operate, very intuitive to understand their alerts, and much more adaptable to motorcycle use. I use an Escort Redline in my CTS-V, a BEL RX-65 in my Suburban, and an Escort 8500 X50 Black on the motorcycle. I also have another, older 8500 (first one I ever bought, decades ago) as well as a BEL STi. I guess you can see which brand I like better! But there are reasons, like it is much easier to shut off radar bands that you don't want the unit looking for - for instance, I have X-band totally turned off on all my units because no constabulary in Texas still uses it, and you only encounter it with door openers - and you can also tailor so much more of what the display does... For instance, on all my Escort/BEL units I have them set where they show battery and charging system voltage when they are not alerting to radar or laser. Saves me having to buy a separate unit for that, and the detectors show a wonderfully accurate and always updated condition of the charging voltage. I also have the display set up to show the radar band I'm getting hit with when alerted, so I quickly know how serious the threat is. Down here Ka-band is the one you really have to watch for, with a scattering of K-band guns still around in local police and sheriff's departments. But the main point is that there is so much less "falsing" with the Escort/BEL products, yet they detect all current brands and bands of radar equally well with the Valentine, and often better on some bands. Add to this the much cheaper price of the 8500 X50 compared to the V1 and you have a no-brainer to me, especially since the 8500 X50 Black is so much lighter and a bit smaller overall than the V1.
But like I said, that's just my opinion, and both units are great detectors. You really can't go wrong with either.
Karson said:
My question is regarding the x50 in town for all y'all running one of 'em. How's it with K-band door openers? My 9500ix auto learns after 3 hits on the same frequency in the same approx GPS coordinates - which is nice. After a little bit of running it, if the thing goes off in a normal area I drive in, it's a po-po.
I'm going to call up Escort and see if the refurbed grays they have on fleabay have the newer internals of the x50 black, or not. It'd take a lot of convincing for me to shell out another $100 for the black on a bike where the performance is probably more than satisfactory on the gray.
You get a fair amount of "falsing" with K-band door openers, but it's livable if you leave the unit in "AutoScan" mode. If you have an 8500 on "Highway" and drive around in town then the unit can become overwhelmed with K-band door openers, but since a motorcycle is such a small target I just leave my 8500 X50 Black in "AutoScan" and it's not really a problem. what has always worried me about a 9500ix is that once it has a door opener "learned" that it fails to alert when an LEO is sitting right there next to that door opener it's saving you "falses" from! ::025::
That said, my son has a 9500ix he runs in his truck and loves it. The ol', updated V1 I gave him is his back-up, and it stays on the shelf in his garage.
As for the Escort refurbs... Last time I checked (about a year ago) Escort was *NOT* selling any refurbished X50 "Black" units, just the older ones. I actually bought one of the refurbs just to get one with the old S7 antenna (terrific performance on Ka-band!!!), but that's the one I tried my experiment of truly waterproofing an 8500 for motorcycle duty. Only problem was my experiment failed miserably, and eventually was causing me so many problems I used it as the trade-in to get the $80 off of a brand-new 8500 X50 Black with an extended warranty! ::025::
What is so stunning about the X50 Black is how much *LIGHTER* it is than the old 8500's and earlier 8500 X50's! Though when weighed it's actually only about 20 to 25% lighter it feels like it weighs less than half as much, and much of this came due to a newer board layout and the use of a lot smaller componentry on that board - i.e. SMD's, etc. When you have the covers off the two units you can readily see the difference. On top of that, I have to say I can tell little if any difference between the performance of this new 8500 X50 Black against my Escort Redline. The Redline may be a second or two earlier to alert, but the difference is minimal, and at the ranges I'm talking about both are equally good at avoiding a citation.
In fact, the performance of the X50 Black I got surprised me it was so good, and it's better at rejecting false alerts, too, compared to my other various 8500's and the BEL RX-65.
Hope this helps!
Dallara
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