I purchased this detector about 6 months ago. It worked wonderful for about half the time I owned it. It saved me well more than what I paid for it. I have always been faithful to Solo, and I believe they make one of the best detectors the market has to offer. Trouble is, the unit tends to "spaz" and go off inherrently in 'laser' mode. For those of you who are familiar with the unit, it has an 'escalation' bar like many radar detectors. This unit will simply say "LASER" on the face of it, and the sound is as loud as it gets, as if im being tagged head on. I have been told it may be due to leaving it in the sun, on the dashboard. I heard that the manufacturer warrants this unit for one year, is that correct? Im not sure what to do with it, though I did spend $300+ on it (topline unit of Solo), only to use it for 3 months...any help or suggestions?

 

when you say "escort passport solo" are you referring to the cordless version??
If so....check that your batteries are not dieing - itll cause it to lose range and possibly spaz out.

 

Escort will take care of you if you return it and have proper proof of purchase (receipt from one of the auth'd sellers).

You can contact them here:

http://www.escortradar.com/contact.htm

Regarding the sun - if you were running on batteries and left the radar detector in the sun it would certainly drain the batteries faster

 

The model is the 8500 most recent... its cord-powered...

Ill see what they can do for me... thanks for the help

Anyone else?

 

Not a Solo then - Solo's are cordless.

I purchased an 8500 last March and found the sensitivity to be quite low. I sent it back to Escort a couple of months ago and they installed a new antenna and re-tuned it for me. Took less than 2 weeks to get it back.

 

You are probrably right about it not being a solo... I havent seen teh detector in two months or so, its in the car in storage...I must be mixing types of detectors made by Escort...I called customer service today, but I need to get a purchase proof from my credit card company...thanks for the help guys

 

Send it back and get it "tuned" I've done it and it helped all around. It's a high dollar good detector.

 

I'll toss one other thing out there - there probably isn't an escalation with
laser as there's no such thing as strong or weak - in the case of the V1
it goes full alert when it detects because you need to slow down NOW.
there are more and more sources of laser false alarms these days
with the laser adaptive cruise control on certain cars. you didn't say
how often or where your detector is suddenly alerting, but think about
whether it's a possibility it's simply picking up stray non-police laser.

 

My 8500 has had increased LASER alerts too. I find them mostly around traffic lights, but not limited to that. And it does come and go. I may choose to send it back for a tuning, didn't know you could do that. Thanks for the tip.

 

Certain vehicles' tail-lights leak energy in the same band that police lidars use, which sets laser detectors off -- my V1 does this, and it's quite annoying. I'm thinking it's late model Chevy Trailblazers for one, but I may not be remembering right (this explains the correlation with stop lights). HPH