Valentine 1

I've owned a Snooper 815i for about nine months now and had been perfectly happy with it. Travelling along at around about the speed limit, it would give me enough notice of a GATSO to check my speed and adjust it if I was going maybe 10mph over the limit. As most of the speed cameras I come across are in 30 or 40mph limits, this was perfectly adequate for my purposes. The other major benefit was in determining which speed cameras are active and which aren't. Testing it against Police Laser speed guns showed it to be as much use as the proverbial chocolate teapot. Despite driving through one speed trap three times (and getting some odd looks from Mr. Plod) I didn't get so much as a bleep from the Snooper.

I compared the Snooper to a friends Valentine 1 under fairly controlled conditions and immediately decided to buy one. Where the Snooper gave twenty yards warning, the Valentine picked it up at a hundred yard. The directional indication on the Valentine also makes determination of false alarms much easier. It has two antennae, one facing forward and one facing rearward. Depending upon whether it is receiving a contact on one or both antennae, it decides where the contact is and illuminates a large arrow pointing either forwards, backwards or to the sides. You also get a "bogey count" which will tell you exactly how many radar sources the unit is tracking. These two features (which were lacking on the Snooper and which I haven't seen on any other radar detector) make it much easier to decide whether the alarm is real, or just the local Tesco causing false alarms.

Another useful feature is the provision of a secondary volume control. This allows the mute volume to be set to any desired level. Where most other detectors simply turn the sound off when you mute them, you can decide just how quiet you want the mute to be with the Valentine.

The only possible downside of the Valentine is that it is designed for use in left hand drive cars. As a result, the controls are inclined away from the driver. This deficiency can be easily overcome by the optional remote display unit. It's about an inch and a half inches wide and three quarters of an inch high (small enough to mount anywhere convenient). It has a duplicate set of indicators for all of the radar and laser bands with strength indicator and direction arrows. It also has a mute button (ideal in my case, as I have the main unit mounted high up on the centreline of the windscreen and I use four point harnesses, which would make reaching the mute button a bit difficult). I have the remote display mounted on top of the instrument cluster right in my line of sight. In this position I don't have to take my eyes off the road to see what the contact is, it's right there where I want it. This proved rather useful the other day when I needed to determine what the contact was, check my mirror and then scrub xx mph off my speed in the time from first beep to cruising past the GATSO.

Scoring

Pricing/Availability

The V1 is available in this country for about £500. The best way to get hold of one is to bring one back from the US (or get a friend to). Mine cost (including the remote display costing $30) £272. That's about half price (I'd guess that the remote display would be around the £30 - £40 mark over here).

Link: www.valentine1.com