Iilac

Love my v1 as well. However I have windshield mounts for all my cars and move my v1 to the car I will be driving. A bit of a pain but doable to save money from buying multiple v1 units!

windhund116

This is really annoying. I get their false avoidance collision device hits on K-band, it seems. None on Ka, yet. For some reason nearly all newer SUV have this feature. So, when driving around one --- the unit goes crazy. Wonder if the newer radar detectors can differentiate between these collision avoidance signals and police radar?

Chuck S

The latest firmware in the V1 filters this stuff out quite well in my experience. Former versions also sounded off constantly from the traffic detector on top of every other light pole along the expressways here.

GPS discarding of signals is a poor solution. Back in the olde days the police in Louisville used to hang out by one of the airports where the aviation radar activated everyone's Fuzz Buster. Yep, just the airport radar. Not always.

-- Chuck

AngryTurtle

Yeah but the chance of the blocked radar signal being the same as the police signal is pretty low. It doesn't just flat out ignore all radar at a certain location.

windhund116

Actually, it must have built in date of STORED signals. As if I don't past a known false signal site for a month or so... the device will retrigger again. Then, the second time past the site --- it restores the info.

jeffbrig

Exactly! It has to be the exact same frequency multiple times in the same location. It doesn't block all radar, only the constant frequency of the fixed radar.

liquid_helix136

I used a V1 for a few years, and had it configured accordingly and my firmware was up to date, but it was still very noisy where I live, DFW area. The metroplex I live in is just full of false K and even KA, and I finally got to the point where I found myself ignoring nearly every alarm, even when they were true threats. There were multiple times that it would go off, I would hit silent, and then pass a bogey. That's when I realized it was time for a change.

As of about two years ago, I now use the Escort Passport Max and I love it. I was a BIG fan of the V1 and it's capabilities, but for my personal situation and environment, top of the line and accurate filtering is more important than sheer range and sensitivity. The passport series have the GPS lockout feature, which works incredibly well. If you pass a false alarm 3x in a row, it recognizes this and locks it out, silencing it for good, unless you unlock it manually. You can also manually lock out false alarms. This has SIGNIFICANTLY reduced the amount of false alarms I get. Now 95% of the time, if my radar is going off, its a true threat, especially if it is KA. The only thing I miss is the arrows, but I've kinda gotten over it.

Speaking of the arrows however, Valentine's patent on the arrow technology has expired, and Escort has come out with the Passport Max 360, which combines the two best features of the two leading companies, the arrows and dual band technology of the V1 and the GPS lockout of the Escort series. You can finally have both! ....At the price of ~$550. Tests show that the Passport 360's arrow system isn't up to par with the V1, but that's to be expected. Valentine has been making the same model for the past 25 years or so, and this is Passport's first model with dual band and directional technology.

Of note, I haven't looked in the last 6 months or so, but I believe Valentine has been making efforts in attempting to keep up with Escort as far as filtering out false alarms, and they may be better now than what I had experienced about 2 years ago.

As far as efficacy of both, I received 3 tickets in my 3-4 years of owning a V1, however they were all via Laser / instant-on radar. I have not received any tickets with my Passport Max. So I would say for me, they were equally effective. The passport is just a lot quieter

EDIT:
I just looked up prices, and you can get the Passport Max 360 for $550, the Passport Max for $350 and the Valentine 1 for about $500.

TommyDeVito

Last V1 update I did, put an end to it. It killed off the car radar systems. Grocery store door, etc, all nullified. I'm in DFW too, and the V1 is now better than it has ever been. I was so thrilled I just acquired a second one and will add a third sometime this year. I have mounts for each of my sportbikes, both cars, I even take it with me to use in a rental car on trips.

windhund116

I went ahead and got the Escort Max 360. Will tell you all, how it works... after a few weeks of use.

Short

I personally have the V1 paired with YaV. YaV1 is an android app that pairs to the V1 via Bluetooth (you must buy the BT adapter). This gives you some amazing features (GPS muting, custom sweeps, use your android phone or tablet as a display) and makes for a very powerful and quiet setup. If you don't have an Android phone you can go to walmart or craigslist and buy the cheapest pay as you go one (GPS is free to use). If you're a nerd like me and like to tinker with settings, you should get this setup.