Originally Posted by Goldwing
Wow - lot's of good info in this post. I've used Bel's over the last 8 years and they work great. The high end models are almost as good as the V1 and less expensive. I don't expect the detector to save me when I'm running 90-100 -- there's no time to slow down. But I usually drive 10 over and pick up enough scatter to slow down when there is radar in the vicinity.
Laser on the other hand, has scared the crap out of me when it fingers my car. There's only a couple areas on I96 where they have it so I make it a point to drop close to the speed limit when I'm in that area.
I do drive the speed limit, or close to it, most of the time. But those long highway drives are less boring when you push the limits a little bit.
reason i went with valentine 1 is the reputation of them is amazing and no one can argue that. only issue is the amount of false alarms you get compared to the escort 9500ix due to gps. i had an escort 8500 x50 and it got stolen plus it wasn't all that great.
the nice part about valentine is the resale value. i sold my old valentine to try out a different radar and ended up making around $30 bucks on the sale. they hold their value really really well and they have an upgrade program where once new technology comes out you can send it in with like $50-$200 and get the latest model depending on how old you current model is. that means you do not have to keep buying new radar when technology changes but instead pay small upgrade fee's.
if i could do it again i would maybe steer towards the escort 9500ix but they will loose their value quick as soon as a new one comes out.