Some of you may have caught me mention in another thread that I had recently picked up a new 9960G. I've had Cobras before, of course. An ESD 737 because I didn't know better but didn't have high hopes. Then I picked up an XRS 9930, admittedly b/c I liked the screen but also b/c it was cheap and I'd hoped it would be better. It was, marginally so. K detection was great if that matters. Also, straight on C/O Ka wasn't bad. I passed that on to the wife when I got my v955 and she drove with it until it started going fritzy and falsing a lot (I thought). So I got her an Escort 8500 which she's driven with for well over a year now and sent the 9930 back to Cobra. They sent me an XRS 9940 instead of "repairing" anything. It had the exact same issues as the 9930 and was falsing in the same locations. So either they both had identical flaws or there was some new source of of RF that was only agitaing the Cobras. Long story short, I gave the 9940 to my brother, who drives about 55 on the interstate anyway.
Well, I changed jobs a tad over a year ago and the route I take to work is much more challenging for my v955. I have a lot more curves and hills and I'm commuting over the border into NE Texas now instead of to a job in the backwoods of NW Louisiana. So I pretty much don't feel comfortable speeding at all now b/c in addition to the roads, the DPS guys on my route are awesome with I/O on their Stalkers. I've already been pulled over once when they blasted me after ovetopping a hill. Now I dare not go more than 5 mph over the limit unless I am looking at a LONG straightaway.
One thing that has been tripping me up are the redlight cameras along one part of my route. I drive around them if I can but sometimes I have to run the gauntlet if I need to go by a store on my way home. So I figured the 9960 has gotten halfway decent reviews for its redlight capabilities so why not give it a try. In hindsight, had I realized the new Whistler standalone redlight gps was out there, I would have picked it up instead. But not knowing that, I figured I'd try the Cobra since I was cheapish on Amazon.
What can I say, I am plesantly surprised. Dare I say Ka seems to be at the same level as my S7 v955? I've had a couple of good over the hill 34.7 hits in the past couple of days that my 955 would not have picked up any better. Now, I will readily admit, K has either been tuned down significantly or it's just remarkably horrible at of-axis detection. There are a couple of K falses I pass that are on hilly curves that the 955 has no trouble catching from around 1/2 mile away. The Cobra will pick them up then drop them intermittantly until I am less than 1/4 mile away. I've not had a reason to run the redlight camera gauntlet yet but will take a stab at it before the week is out. Until then I can't speak for that aspect. But as for extraneous Ka falses and K falses, this Cobra is no worse than my V955 and since I can turn X off completely, it's actually a lot quieter. So, all in all, it's definately a step up as far as Cobras go. I know it's no V1 or Redline but for a mid-price detector it's not bad. Add in the GPS capability and it's even better.
Like I said, since I was mainly interested in red light detection, a standalone redlight/gps unit like the Whistler RLC-100 to augment my v955 would have been a better option. But I don't think I lost much if anything in switching to the Cobra.
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