Cordless Radar Detector Showdown
by: William Ford
Posted on: Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 8:36 pm by: William Ford
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In one of our test cars, a lightning quick Acura TL, we’ve mounted what is arguably the best radar detector on the market today, the BEL Sti Driver. Unquestionably worth the $500 we dropped, it has saved us from thousands of dollars in tickets, but sadly, because of travel, we often find ourselves in a detector-less rental car, spending more time looking at the speedometer than we do at the road.
But those days may soon be over. Recent technology has made cordless radar detectors just as effective as the plug in models of old, and with many companies adding them to their radar lineup, the choices are varied.
So for the traveling businessman we reviewed three of the top cordless detectors available in stores now: the PNI Silver Bullet, the PNI Steel Eye and the Whistler 1788.
PNI Silver Bullet
The first in the lineup, the PNI Silver Bullet, is as eccentric in its operation as it is in its design. It can function with or without a cord, and looks just like the nifty next gen cell phones flooding the market right now.
But that’s where the fun ends.
The long arm that attaches the unit to the windshield shakes violently under acceleration, vibrates annoyingly when the tunes are bumping, and worse, the batteries have a tendency to fall out whenever the Silver Bullet is detached from the windshield.
You would imagine that a 180$ unit would do something right, but when night falls, a whole new set of issues arise; With no power-on indicator light, and the unit constantly going into power-save mode, there is no way to tell if it’s working, and in the time it takes to cycle through the three different modes, your hair starts to turn gray. But the most damaging mark against the Silver Bullet is that its reaction time to radar is glacially slow. X band detection offered up marginal performance but the K band detection strayed into the realm of completely and utterly pathetic.
Our recommendation, save your $180 for the speeding ticket you’d still get if you were to buy the PNI Silver Bullet.
PNI Steel Eye
The PNI Steel Eye offers a slight improvement over the Silver Bullet and costs $30 less. The battery pack holds two AA batteries firmly in place and the bright LED lights are a vast improvement. There is a large volume knob with an earphone jack and all controls are easily accessible and utilized. The POP Ka-band radar is detected well by the Steel Eye but only at a very close range. So the Steel Eye will alert you, but long after the blue lights already in your rearview. We also noticed that it could barely detect the X Band radar. In the end it’s a step up from the Silver Bullet but with irregular performance we wouldn’t rely on it to save us from a reckless driving ticket.
Whistler 1788
As you guessed, we saved the best for last, the Whistler 1788. Sexy black casing, a relatively cheap 200$ price tag, and chrome buttons that would make any low rider worth his chops jealous, make it the best looking cordless detector tested. It’s also well thought out, as the shiny upper case insert can be removed to reduce windshield glare, and the hot blue LCD is brightly lit and easy to see in even the brightest conditions.
Four high powered Nickel Metal Hydride batteries allow the Whistler to operate without a duty cycle and yield far better performance than the previous detectors tested. It’s also the only cordless detector of the bunch that can pick up both K and Ka band radar, and its range on both K and X bands is supreme in comparison to the Silver Bullet and Steel Eye. If we had anything negative to say about the Whistler, and we’re nitpicking here, is that it is extremely heavy; almost twice the weight of the PNI detectors, but we genuinely feel that with the extra weight comes improved performance.
At the end of the day the Whistler wins out as the best traveling companion, and is the one we’d keep in our briefcase
