When I made a long trip from Maryland to Wisconsin I bought a Passport 8500 at a Best Buy in Maryland and then returned it the next day at a Best Buy in Wisconsin. The guy at the customer service desk gave me kind of an odd look but otherwise there were no problems. Apparently this was rather commonplace and now Best Buy has a 15% restocking fee on all radar detector purchases.

On the whole trip it went of a total of one time and it was for a cop that wasn't in any sort of position to be clocking people so go figure. I'm sure it's a good detector but the display is kind of cryptic. I don't get why Valentine 1 is the only detector that will display stuff plainly but that's the way things are.

Personally I hate a cluttered interior and having that thing sticking off the dash with the cord stretched down to the lighter outlet plain annoyed the crap out of me. It was good for piece of mind while doing 90 mph on huge stretches of open road though. If I owned one I would probably only break it out for those types of trips and not use it on a regular basis.

 

This is why you hardwired it.



I agree with you on using it for trips. The V1 is really sensitive in the city/town, even using the most filtered mode. These days I don't even bother to turn it on until I get on the freeway.

 

glad to see you have it mounted high up.. i see so many people with their detectors very low on their windsheilds :nono:

 

Mine works and it sits on the dash in the left side of the gauges in the corner (hiden basically) and it works very well. would it work better up high?

 

from mine and my friends experiences, and informal testing, we have noticed that the higher up it is mounted, the better the range in detection. maybe its just us :dunno:

 

:werd:

Valentine actually recommends to mount it as high as possible.

 

definately, and that's been my experience as well. the V1 has a sensor aimed straight towards the back. putting it low to the dash means there's more stuff to get in the way, whether it be other cars, your own back seats, or passengers.

anyways the V1 is amazing. i really just got used to it picking up all the X band radar waves from grocery stores and such, so i don't really care about it anymore. the extended logic mode filters A LOT of it out, so i'm happy with it. and the fact that it tells you which direction the radar signal is coming from is priceless, i'd say.