Best radar detectors for 2021 – Roadshow [CNET]

Gone are the days of the Electrolert Fuzzbuster (1968) with its simple, single-knob design. We’re in a radar-detecting arms race with innovators on each side outwitting the other camp every few years. This ever-evolving space has led to the development of some amazing technology, beloved by those trying to set the new land speed record and data geeks alike.

After all, whatever your motives, radar detectors and the class of products in their orbit are all about data. “Radar detectors, I’ve found, are just a good way of understanding what’s going on around you and adding some additional situational awareness,” explains Ariel Bravy. With a background in electrical and computer engineering, Bravy runs VortexRadar.com and has been posting in-depth tests of radar detectors and other automotive accessories on YouTube since 2012. He adds, “I love driving. I love feeling secure while I’m driving — just knowing what’s going on around me — and I love tech stuff.”

Before we dive in, we suggest you do a little research about radar detectors and their technology. Even the simplest products in the category require an education in some basic vocabulary. To reach the full potential of your new detector, you’ll have to know your K band from your Ka band and whether you’re driving through a state where you should enable X band. 

Here are some of our top picks for different scenarios based on hands-on testing, user reviews and expert input. Further on, we’ll tell you what to watch out for when choosing a detector, including the sad truth about laser detection.

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Cost vs. benefit

Deciding what you can afford, and what features are worth the cost is key. “You should ask how much information you want, how accurate you want the information to be and how often you want to receive it,” Sherbondy tells us. “This becomes the main driver for deciding between entry-level vs. higher-end detectors.”

Starting at the low end of the radar detector price scale, you immediately come up against a challenge. Is a detector worth buying at all if you don’t have the money to invest in a product with at least mid-level quality and reliable product support? Bravy would argue there’s a point of diminishing returns.

“You’ve got the really inexpensive, cheap ones, and they technically work, but the range is really poor, and they wind up giving a lot of false alerts,” he says. “And so, once you start looking into the mid-tier detectors or upper-tier detectors, that’s when you start getting good range that really offers solid protection.”

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The longer the detection range, the more time you have to safely react to a hidden officer, and if you have good false alert filtering on your side, you can be sure you’re not riding the brakes for nothing.

“Smart cruise control, blind spot monitoring, all that kind of stuff. Those are also emitting radar,” according to Bravy. “Having something with really good false alert filtering… that has a variety of different false alert filters is going to make a really big difference.”

Additionally, to take false filtering to the next level, GPS should definitely be on your wish list. “If you’re looking to receive the most accurate alerts, you should only select detectors that will automatically learn to reject repeated false alerts,” Sherbondy says. “GPS tracking and intelligence can reduce false alerts from collision avoidance systems or blind spot monitoring systems as well as learn to remember false alerts from specific locations.”

“If you do any driving in cities, definitely you’re going to want a detector with GPS,” says Bravy. In addition to auto or manual lockouts, GPS enables low-speed muting, which means less physical toggling between Highway and City modes to silence falsing from automatic store doors and roadside speed signs.

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“For drivers who want to remain discreet, manufacturers have introduced stealth capabilities to go undetected,” Sherbondy explains. “Some companies report having stealth in their detectors, but in many cases, this approach hard codes the technology into the device, limiting its effectiveness for the future.” As technology in the radar arms race evolves, hard coded detectors are left behind.

Also among the Claims of Shame? VG-2 detection, safety warning system alerts and laser detection. “That’s an interesting one,” Bravy says of now-ubiquitous lidar sensors, “…but it’s not really useful at helping you avoid tickets.” More on that later.

Look to the Future

A radar detector can be a big investment, especially if you’re purchasing a top-performing window-mount unit or a custom installed detector, and the longer you plan to keep it, the more futureproof it should be. Here are a couple of features that aren’t a big deal now, but may compromise your detector down the line if it doesn’t have them.

The first of these features is deceptively bland, but perhaps the most important thing to look for. “Software updates,” says Sherbondy. “Specifically, a device that can be easily updated via (over-the-air) Wi-Fi updates or through a hardwire connection to your laptop… This will ensure that you’re getting the best performance out of your detector even as new car technology that may cause false alerts is introduced.”

A good way to check for this is to visit the support page of the manufacturer’s website and look for the radar detector you’re researching. Check for the frequency and recency of available updates in the Downloads section, being mindful that if it’s a brand-new product, there not be many updates yet.

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Radar detector basics

The term “radar detector” is a mostly accurate catch-all name for devices designed to detect the presence of law enforcement speed monitoring. Once upon a time, a radar detector was exactly that: a simple box which alerted the driver to the presence of stray radar signals, likely originating from police elsewhere in the area.

Now radar detectors are a mix of technologies such as GPS, laser detection, filtering algorithms, data from the cloud and, yes, good old-fashioned radar detection, with the goal of accomplishing the same thing.

How speed guns work

Speed detection technologies can be broadly separated into two categories: Radio Detection And Ranging (radar) and Light Detection And Ranging (lidar). Both work by shooting a signal, either radio waves or light pulses, toward a moving vehicle and measuring the change over time in the signals bouncing back.

In both technologies, this is a phenomenon known as doppler shift. As a vehicle moves closer to the radar-emitting source, the reflected waves return at a higher and higher frequency. A radar gun calculates this increasing rate and returns a figure in miles per hour. Though they work on the same basic principle, radar is comparatively sloppy next to lidar, which we will explore later on. Meanwhile, it’s the lack of precision in radar guns that gives radar detectors their advantage.

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K Band: This is harder to detect from long distances and requires a lower power output from police equipment, so it’s easy to understand why K band was adopted by law enforcement. Police operate exclusively in the 24.125 to 24.150 GHz range of the K band. Frustratingly, many other radar sources operate in this range including automatic doors and BSM systems on other vehicles. This noise is what makes the K band especially problematic for radar detectors, and it’s the reason good false filtering is a must.

Ka Band: Officially approved for use by the FCC in 1983, the Ka band is the most recent frequency range to be employed by US police departments for speed radar. Ka band guns use even smaller antennas than either X or K band and less power as well. Among the bands, Ka is the most difficult to detect at a long distance as its guns fire a narrower beam and operate at lower power.

If there’s an upside, it’s that few other sources of radar operate in the Ka band. So when you receive a Ka alert from your radar detector, it almost always originates from speed enforcement and should be taken seriously from the jump.

MultaRadar: This is not a separate band as much as it is a new technology. MultaRadar, which is also known as MRCD, MRCT or photo radar, uses the K band, but instead of remaining on one frequency as in the examples above, it sweeps up and down the frequencies within a given range. This is called frequency modulation (as opposed to traditional continuous wave radar), and it’s invisible to radar detectors that aren’t equipped to pick it up. In cases where it can be detected, the window of warning is extraordinarily small.

Photo radar is not yet ubiquitous throughout the United States, but it is widely used in Europe and Canada, and is increasingly coming into use stateside. In Canada, it’s frequently set up in an unmarked truck, which photographs speeding vehicles from behind to capture their license plates so a citation can be issued via mail. Here it can be found in cities like New York and Chicago.

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Laser detection is, perhaps, an interesting data point for the all-informed driver, but it won’t save you from a ticket. For that you need laser jammers, sometimes called laser shifters. Laser jammers work by detecting lidar shot at the front or the rear of the vehicle and firing back a signal that confuses the speed gun. This is accomplished with aftermarket sensors installed in the grille (not the windshield) and optionally the rear.

Laser jamming is a relatively new and expensive endeavor with its own enthusiast etiquette. Jam to Kill is the preferred procedure in which the driver receives a laser alert, slows down as quickly as possible and then disables their jammers to allow the officer to read them at a legal speed. Jam to Gun is the more controversial method in which the driver keeps scrambling the officer’s signal and never stops. This is considered antagonizing and damaging to the community of laser jammer users, which is already on a legal knife blade in some states.

What about POP?

Many manufacturers advertise that they can detect so-called POP radar. Is this something you need? In short, no.

POP is a proprietary type of instant-on radar introduced by MPH industries 20 years ago. Using POP, police can get a speed reading from a vehicle within milliseconds and shut the radar gun back off before a radar detector can pick up the signal. The complication is that POP is not admissible in court because the officer must establish a “tracking history” in order to issue a ticket.

In other words, while instant-on POP can theoretically be used to ascertain your initial speed, police must use traditional radar to further establish that you are indeed traveling in excess of the speed limit. For this reason, it is used rarely.

Further, detectors that do have POP capability usually ship with it turned off. This is because activating POP detection reduces the unit’s capability to detect regular radar, and it also can lead to more false positives. So even if you do have the ballyhooed feature, it’s best to let POP sleep.

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Common set-up mistakes

You’ll need to check your manual’s instructions for setting up your radar detector, but here are some tips that may differ from the manufacturer’s instructions. Follow them at your own discretion.

Placement: Most laser-radar detector combination units will instruct you to mount the detector as low as possible on the windshield without obstructing the sensors behind anything solid like the windshield wipers. This is likely to optimize the chance your detector will pick up laser if shot, since laser guns aim at the grille or headlights.

We recommend optimizing your radar detector for picking up radar because laser detection isn’t useful for the reasons we’ve cited. To get the best possible radar range, you should mount your detector as high on the windshield as you can without obstructing the sensor.

Aiming: The angle at which you mount it matters as well. “Most people just stick it on the windshield and call it a day, or they stick it on the side of the windshield so your radar detector points off at a weird angle,” Bravy says. For proper detection, the mount should be adjusted so that it is parallel to the road surface. “You’re not trying to detect radar from the International Space Station.”

Power: While certainly not wrong, per se, if you’re committed to using your radar detector on a regular basis, consider hardwiring the unit. Some higher-end detectors even ship with the cabling for a permanent install. “Plug it into your fuse box or power it off your rearview mirror,” Bravy recommends. “That way you don’t have a cable hanging down your dash. It makes it a little bit cleaner.”

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