Beltronics BEL 980 Radar Detector

When I decided I wanted to buy a radar detector, I figured I should do some research first. I ran some searches on the Internet to locate the best radar detectors. There is really a lot of helpful and useful information out there once you get past all of the Phaser crap. For those of you that don't know the Phaser is marketed as a passive radar jammer. That is suppose to send out a signal to the detecting radar and scramble the signal. Well EVERYTHING that I have read says that these don?t' work, so don't bother with them.

Now back to radars. Of all the information I looked through the consensus was on 3 radars. 1) Escort 8500 2) Valentine One 3) BEL 980. For the most part these 3 radars were all tested to be very similar and very effective. The biggest determining factor for me was price. I went to ebay and looked at prices for all three of these models. I did not find the Escort 8500, seems to me you can only purchase it direct from the manufacturer. The Valentine One was listed in excess of $300 dollars. So I decided to buy the BEL 980, which I bought for $235 dollars, brand new and unopened. I really felt that I got a good deal considering you could walk into any circuit city and buy this detector for over $300 dollars.

This radar detector has worked extremely well. We have sections of our highways that have radars mounted on them to encourage driving slowly through dangerous curves. The BEL 980 always gives ample warning even though they don't distribute tickets it gives me a check on the actual range of the radar detector.

One of the special features that I really like is the City-All Mode. In this mode the radar detector lessens its sensitivity for all bands while in city mode. So it gives you less false warnings on all modes as opposed to the default X Only City Mode. It works like a charm and gives fewer false alarms in the city.

My only real complaint about the BEL 980 is for some reason in one area of town I continually get a false Laser detection. From everything that I have read false laser detections are almost unheard of, so I have yet to find the source of these false lasers. Oh yea now I remember. The BEL 980 comes with the Safety Warning System (SWS). It has never worked for me. Maybe I have to activate something for it initialize but I have never seen a warning scroll across my radar. I have pulled over several times to let police cars on chases pass by, as well as fire trucks with lights a blazing. Maybe my cities technology has yet to reach that of the BEL 980. However, this has little affect on me. It would great if it worked like it says it should, but maybe it's not a problem with the radar as much as the police cars and fire engines not being equipped with the necessary equipment. Regardless neither of these deficiencies do enough to suppress my happiness with the radar.