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Wireless Radar Detectors
The disadvantage is that running on batteries, the RD's must conserve power as much as possible, and this means lower sensitivity. While it is certainly possible to build a wireless radar detector that can match the performance of a cigarette lighter powered model, it would drain the power from its batteries before you even had a chance to encounter a speed trap. This means there is a trade-off between sensitivity (performance) and battery life. The best analogy was made by Don Rich from Beltronics himself; "It's no different than comparing a laptop to a desktop computer," he says. "If you want go-anywhere, cordless convenience, you give up a little in performance. It's a tradeoff many are willing to make, particularly if they travel frequently and need the ultimate in portability." In order to preserve battery life, every cordless RD has a duty cycle; which means it shuts down for a period of the time to conserve power. This shut-down time is only milliseconds, so you won't actually notice the detector "off" and any one time, but this cycling lowers the sensitivity of the RD. Worst effected is Ka band, being such a wide range of frequencies to scan through, takes powered detectors a reasonable amount of time to scan before being compromised with duty cycles from a cordless. So no matter what model, there will always be a trade-off from battery life to sensitivity or performance, and to date, no wireless model is radar detector detector immune. Copyright © Delonix Australia 2004 - 2020 All rights reserved |