Product Spotlight: Valentine One Savvy Radar Locator

This is not a new radar locator, but rather a quite affordable and helpful accessory that both simplifies "hard-wiring" your detector into the car, and allows you to automatically stifle all those annoying beeps from door openers and so forth below a selectable preset speed. We borrowed a test unit over Thanksgiving for a trip from Detroit to Memphis, with plenty of shopping-related in-town driving in Memphis. Here's how it works: The device (manufactured in conjunction with GoPoint) plugs into your car's OBDII port and includes a pigtail with two RJ11 jacks. The port provides 12-volt power to both your Valentine One detector and your Concealed Display, but it also includes circuitry that reads the vehicle-speed sensors and mimicks your finger on the detector's mute button if the vehicle is traveling below your preset speed threshold, which is selected via a small white thumb-wheel. You still get one tiny beep, but none of the continued bleating that would ordinarily have you repeatedly reaching for the mute button while driving amongst multiple door openers.   |   Savvy Unit The unit worked perfectly on my drive, and the OBDII mount in my test car even placed the thumbwheel where I could see it and easily tweak the adjustment (this won't be the case in most cars). I left it set at 55 mph. My peripheral vision is pretty good and I could see the arrows light up when the bogeys were located. The device, set to its "t" mode also successfully ignored all of the traffic-flow-monitoring (non-enforcement) radar units lining I-75 through most of Ohio. Bottom line, when this thing made noise, it usually meant business. We still love the locator function, as it confirms without a doubt where you need to look for the threat, and let's you know definitively when you've passed it. If the V1 beeped for Ka, I jabbed the brakes, and usually found a real threat just up the road. I managed to make the trip without enriching any local constabularies, but then it is also my custom to never stick my own neck out-I stray significantly above posted limits when I can do so in the company of others. We did experience a few apparently bogus laser blasts (we never saw a squad car after a laser alert), and we remain unconvinced that any detector can provide sufficient warning-they seem like ticket-detectors when the signal is for real. The Savvy unit will retail for $69 by itself, or $449 when included with a new Valentine One. It strikes us as a nice, affordable upgrade for anyone who owns a Valentine One detector.