[Aalfred]

Have had the R8 for about a yr with the R8 companion app. Had the settings changed per the vortex radar guy reccs. I happened to drive by 2 sheriffs parked on the freeway last weekend with their front end pointing towards the road and my RD didn’t pick up anything. Thought maybe they didn’t turn on their radar and were just standing there. Today drove by a sherrif actively pointing a radar gun at me and no warning, just crickets. I know the Ka band works coz it has picked up local police radars about a week ago but I’m puzzled about the lack of warnings with the freeway sheriffs. I’ve included the current setting and the default settings and can’t really pinpoint the issue except for the narrow option for the Ka band in the default. I know the R8 picks up laser and it usually says laser on my radar but this one has no warning or detection. Unless the sheriffs have started using something different anyone out there who has experienced this ?

[Berzerker]

These handheld radar guns can be either Ka or Laser. If your Laser is enabled then it's just simply these guns weren't on and were just out to scare people into slowing down.

It happens quite often in my area. I've seen it pop and not pop with cops sitting with their guns pointed out.

[PVC]

Where did you mount it? Cops usually aim for the license plate when they're using their radar gun and if your radar detector is mounted high under the rear view mirror, it may not pick up the laser signal.

[SwankPeRFection]

That R8 isn’t going to pick up laser very well at all. Lol

Hate to say it, but a V1 is about the only one that will give even the slightest lidar warning, if you’re lucky and they’re shooting a car in front of you or aiming down the road. No other one can pick up lidar due to the more simplistic design on the front eye they have. Even so, to even get a save without jammers you need to be lucky in the sense that you picked up a bounce or that you dove on the brakes hard enough for the cop to either not care or think his first hit was off. Some places they’ll shoot a couple of times to get a good reading to verify… it’s all a little bit of a gamble with lidar, but I’ve had about 4 saves with my old V1G1 against Truspeed lidars.

[Aalfred]

Originally Posted by PVC

Where did you mount it? Cops usually aim for the license plate when they're using their radar gun and if your radar detector is mounted high under the rear view mirror, it may not pick up the laser signal.

I do have it up near my drivers side visor. I havent had any issues picking up the K/Ka bands and once a Lidar when I was on the freeway. The K/Ka bands Im picking up when the cop is behind me too. Maybe the laser was pointed down at the license plate as the one time mine picked up the Lidar was when the cop parked his car in between the 2 lanes and pointing the gun almost at a 60-90 degree.

[Aalfred]

Originally Posted by SwankPeRFection

That R8 isn’t going to pick up laser very well at all. Lol

Hate to say it, but a V1 is about the only one that will give even the slightest lidar warning, if you’re lucky and they’re shooting a car in front of you or aiming down the road. No other one can pick up lidar due to the more simplistic design on the front eye they have. Even so, to even get a save without jammers you need to be lucky in the sense that you picked up a bounce or that you dove on the brakes hard enough for the cop to either not care or think his first hit was off. Some places they’ll shoot a couple of times to get a good reading to verify… it’s all a little bit of a gamble with lidar, but I’ve had about 4 saves with my old V1G1 against Truspeed lidars.

I think Im prob resigned to the fact that my area is now actively using Lidar than the radars. Thats not good. We have a lot of construction and double fines in speed zone and I thought maybe I could do 10 over when its really empty but now that they have switched to Lidars, might as well park my M a home..lol. I slowed down as the car in front of me hit the brakes (going 5 over limit) and then when I passed, I could look the cop in the eye and he had his gun straight at my car and luckily I was going under the speed limit but surprised that the RD didnt even give me any signals. Guess no more speeding even a little bit..

[SwankPeRFection]

You also need to consider that some filtering settings on the lidar side of the detector to stop fast pulsed lidar falses (like on Volvos or Yaris or Mitsu front collision systems) will also kill off some specific lidar guns as well. Truspeed TSS was one of them until recently where Valentine reenabled fast laser on the V1G2 to fix that issue. The previous gen never had any problems. I’m still a bit weary of the G2 until I can fully trust it with that and never would have picked one up had they not fixed the slow K band response with the last update. That said, like I said above, if it truly is lidar they’re using, it could be the subpar lidar eye the R8 has or just a software filtering issue.

Go on RDF and see if you can ask Vortex to shoot his test R8 with the latest software with his lidar guns and see if it picks up any, but that may be a lost cause. I don’t know anyone who runs anything but a V1 who’s even come remotely close to picking up lidar with them. Most of those guys run jammers as their countermeasure against that and nobody really should depend upon a windshield mount RD for lidar detection, but out of all of them, the V1 is about the only one that will give you any remote chance for a save, but it’s conditional on a few elements of the encounter.

Also, you may want to look up what each of the lidar guns look like online and see if that matches up with what you’re seeing the cops point at you. There’s a small chance it might just be radar and perhaps your detector is having technical issues or one of your segmentation settings has excluded the band range for a specific gun your cops use. There is also a radar and lidar use database online that you can look up and see what guns are used in your area and what frequencies, just to be sure, but it may not have the absolute latest info, especially for lidar use, since the depts could have just gotten some new equipment. Rule of thumb is… if it’s handheld on a traffic enforcement cruiser, it’s probably lidar because the normal radar unit will be hard mounted heads in the vehicle itself. Sometimes those guys forget to turn off their radar or they cannot due to how it’s hooked up and then try to shoot lidar and shoot themselves in the foot because we can pick up their radar and slow down anyway. Depts will usually hand out lidar guns to some cruisers that aren’t strictly traffic enforcement because they are handheld and can be moved from car to car easily, so perhaps that’s what’s newly happening where you’re at.

[BzsBimmer]

Interesting. I have experienced a lot more silence on my R8 after the latest firmware update.

I have my K band off but I usually get chirps during certain areas of known enforcement but not lately. Granted I don’t drive much but I subconsciously thought it was a abnormally quiet.

I’ll have to keep an eye out.

[SwankPeRFection]

Originally Posted by BzsBimmer

Interesting. I have experienced a lot more silence on my R8 after the latest firmware update.

I have my K band off but I usually get chirps during certain areas of known enforcement but not lately. Granted I don’t drive much but I subconsciously thought it was a abnormally quiet.

I’ll have to keep an eye out.

If your K band was Off, you’re not going to get any beeps whatsoever on those bands. If you were, then something wasn’t right with your settings or maybe you meant you were seeing the occasional long distance Ka blip and nothing else for the encounter. Keep in mind that rare Ka falses can happen at 33.6 from leaky Cobra Walmart detectors and somewhere around 33.7 for some satellite dishes.

[BzsBimmer]

Originally Posted by SwankPeRFection

If your K band was Off, you’re not going to get any beeps whatsoever on those bands. If you were, then something wasn’t right with your settings.

Ka still chirps and is what I was referring to. I have a lot less Ka notifications, even driving long stretches where I would normally get at least two.
I’ve had K band off pretty much since I bought this unit.

[SwankPeRFection]

Yeah, those are going to be either really long sniffs of a legit threat or someone around you with a leaky cheap detector. There’s also the occasional Jeep or sometimes semi that might set it off due to some of their driver aids, but that’s extremely rare and I can’t remember the specific frequencies, but I had it happen a couple of times on the V1G1 a couple of years ago. Super rare though as most BSMs are K based. It’s the rare radar cruise setups that I saw on Ka once or twice and I was surprised they were on Ka.

[Aalfred]

Originally Posted by SwankPeRFection

Yeah, those are going to be either really long sniffs of a legit threat or someone around you with a leaky cheap detector. There’s also the occasional Jeep or sometimes semi that might set it off due to some of their driver aids, but that’s extremely rare and I can’t remember the specific frequencies, but I had it happen a couple of times on the V1G1 a couple of years ago. Super rare though as most BSMs are K based. It’s the rare radar cruise setups that I saw on Ka once or twice and I was surprised they were on Ka.

My Ka band is frequently triggered by the semis and gives me false alarm. The R8 companion app has been good about suppressing most of them but sometimes it doesnt and its annoying as Im trying to find out where its coming from and it goes from front, rear and front again sometimes until the semi has gone

[PVC]

I've been actually thinking about upgrading from an old Escort to R8. I wonder if I should go a different direction if R8 isn't working as expected. Maybe Valentine 1 or Redline 360?

[jrhav]

Originally Posted by PVC

I've been actually thinking about upgrading from an old Escort to R8. I wonder if I should go a different direction if R8 isn't working as expected. Maybe Valentine 1 or Redline 360?

Funny - just pulled the trigger and upgraded to the R8 from an Escort Max360. rdforum.org is a good source of info with a lot of experts that are really into RDD (testing, settings, performance, upgrades, apps, etc). Anyhow - the R8 and the R7 (with special firmware) seem to be the 2 most recommended units over there FWIW

[SwankPeRFection]

V1G2 on the latest firmware is pretty good. I had a previous gen one and so maybe I’m a bit biased, but I’ll take it over any other detector. Biggest thing missing from it is a frequency display in my opinion, but that’s easy to fix with either an app or a Bluetooth 3rd party open dev display I’ll add once the RDF guys finish the latest one they’re working on.

It wasn’t worth it before the last firmware update as it had some K band issues still, but now it’s finally an upgrade over the previous gen overall.

I don’t think it’s worth the new price, but if you can find one used from someone who doesn’t want theirs anymore, that’s the way to go. I got lucky and found one for super cheap that was still on the first firmware from when it came out. Win! 🤫

[Berzerker]

Originally Posted by PVC

I've been actually thinking about upgrading from an old Escort to R8. I wonder if I should go a different direction if R8 isn't working as expected. Maybe Valentine 1 or Redline 360?

Originally Posted by jrhav

Funny - just pulled the trigger and upgraded to the R8 from an Escort Max360. rdforum.org is a good source of info with a lot of experts that are really into RDD (testing, settings, performance, upgrades, apps, etc). Anyhow - the R8 and the R7 (with special firmware) seem to be the 2 most recommended units over there FWIW

I couldn't be happier with my R8. Paired with V1 Driver on iOS, it's a perfect setup. I've definitely seen it pop laser before but mine is on a blendmount, so I think the laser sensor has a bit more room to get more pops from it. Keeping it blocked like how OP has it against the headliner might part of their problem.

[M4ord]

I have been running the R8 for about 18 months now, primarily between Baltimore and Richmond with the bands set for Maryland based on rdforum recommendations. In that time I have one laser hit on I-95 South before the Baltimore Tunnel. State trooper lazed me, luckily I was only doing about 6 over at the time due to trooper being already identified on Waze. If Waze was not on the R8 would not have saved me.

Ka hits have NEVER been a false positive in my experience, the source is always a cop looking for speeders.

K band on the other hand hits on all sorts of noise but the R8 is good at filtering so the false positive it does fire on (K band) are easy to determine if false (e.g, 2 or 3 bars of signal never increasing).

As a side note I have been hit with police radar on K band three times in the last 18 months, and in those cases the alert has been a quick ramp up to full bars. I know where you live helps determine if one wants to turn off K band alerts, but at least around my area its still a valuable alert as some of the smaller counties in MD still have older radar guns.

[Aalfred]

Originally Posted by PVC

I've been actually thinking about upgrading from an old Escort to R8. I wonder if I should go a different direction if R8 isn't working as expected. Maybe Valentine 1 or Redline 360?

I might be tempted with the Valentine too based on SwankPeRFection experiences. I know the R8 has gotten glorious reviews from RDforum members and here but for me it hasnt really been what I was expecting based on the reviews. I had to install the R8companion app to suppress 90% of the false alerts. Had to turn off MRCD to stop the annoying warnings on this highway speed display radars. I had initially completely turned off the K band due to constant alarms but since some cops in the county still use K bands, I turned them back on and used the R8 companion app to mute most of it. When it picks up the Ka band, it does a great job picking it up really early, but when it picks up the semi's it could be annoying as you keep slowing down to see where the cop is and the strength bar never goes beyond orange for a while and then the directions change and thats when u know it picked up the semi Ka going in the opposite direction. If this keep happening, I might just sell this R8 and get a Valentine myself lol

[SwankPeRFection]

If you’re used to using apps with your detector to get it more quiet on K band than by itself, then you’ll be fine. Don’t get me wrong, on the latest firmware (which only came out last month) the V1G2 had no more K alerts from Mazdas, Honda’s are almost all gone unless you get maybe one quick peep depending on traffic conditions and stuff like that. K band reactivity is now fast for quick legit K shots, so IO K band from backwater cops isn’t an issue anymore. Really what you’re left with is door openers and legit speed signs, but those are all the same frequencies as cops, so nothing you can do outside of lockouts via apps which is what you’re used to doing anyway. The onboard GPS lockups that some other detectors build and keep is a gimmic that if you’ve never had, it won’t be missed. It can also be very easily abused by cops sitting in those same spots and being masked if you’re not careful with your lockout markings.

Me, so far I’m happy with the V1G2 under the current firmware build and I was NOT an advocate for it at all prior to Mike finally fixing all the issues with it. Is it worth $599?… not for me from the standpoint that I had a G1 which was performing just fine. If you’re selling the R8 to offset the costs, then that drops the price a good amount and then it does make sense. Mid $300’s it’s worth it, especially once the latest firmware is loaded on it. Good luck.

Also, FYI, I run mine default settings and A mode and it’s not annoying and chatty, but that’s dependent on location you’re in and what you consider chatty vs legit saves you get out of it. How I drive, I only trust a Valentine. Lol

[PVC]

Originally Posted by Aalfred

I might be tempted with the Valentine too based on SwankPeRFection experiences. I know the R8 has gotten glorious reviews from RDforum members and here but for me it hasnt really been what I was expecting based on the reviews. I had to install the R8companion app to suppress 90% of the false alerts. Had to turn off MRCD to stop the annoying warnings on this highway speed display radars. I had initially completely turned off the K band due to constant alarms but since some cops in the county still use K bands, I turned them back on and used the R8 companion app to mute most of it. When it picks up the Ka band, it does a great job picking it up really early, but when it picks up the semi's it could be annoying as you keep slowing down to see where the cop is and the strength bar never goes beyond orange for a while and then the directions change and thats when u know it picked up the semi Ka going in the opposite direction. If this keep happening, I might just sell this R8 and get a Valentine myself lol

I don't think anybody uses K in California. At least not in LA county, so I've had that turned off for years.
My concern with v1 is that it doesn't have a built-in GPS, so it uses the phone connection more heavily than the others.

I think R8 has better detection for some of the bands they use with speed cameras (I could be wrong), and if it has good Ka and decent laser detection, that covers most of my concerns.

With laser, you just need to know there is a cop in the area and to avoid accelerating to make things worse. I've been in a few situations in the past where I was hit with laser and backed off the throttle or I would have been a target.

[BIGW0RM]

I have had zero issues with my Uniden R8.

I got 2 miles warning going down the 40 from socal to Lake Havasu on Ka band.

Mine never goes off unless there is a LEO with Ka on in either his car or the gun. Laser warning seem to be hit or miss though. But it seems Ka still rules the most around here.

[Aalfred]

Originally Posted by BIGW0RM

I have had zero issues with my Uniden R8.

I got 2 miles warning going down the 40 from socal to Lake Havasu on Ka band.

Mine never goes off unless there is a LEO with Ka on in either his car or the gun. Laser warning seem to be hit or miss though. But it seems Ka still rules the most around here.

Can u pm me your setting or post it here. I wanna know whats different from mine or maybe its just a faulty unit.