Went out and bought a $49 crapra special (e-5330 or something like that only has nine bands???WTF) and took it out on the road to see how it performed against some Kband speed signs in my neck of the woods compared to my x50. I even told the clerk at the store what I was doing and he looked at me like I was a moron but I just laughed.
Down to the meat of the story, I was suprised to see that the cobra actually alerted at almost the same point on the road as my x50 did when I turned around and came back at it. The difference was that the x50 immediately jumped up to 3bars as I rounded the corner about 3/4 of a mile from the sign and the cobra barely alerted and actually lost signal briefly and then did not go to full alert until I was maybe 100feet from the sign. The x50 on the other hand ramps up and hits full alert at over .5 miles from the source. There is a concrete berm that divides the highway so I think what is happening is that the detectors enter the beam at the same moment and due to the berm the signal could not be detected any sooner by either which would explain the x50 suddenly jumping up in alert strength where the cobra has trouble holding onto signal until it was directly in front of the sign (road has a long sweeping curve that spits you out about .5miles from the sign and is straight all the way in from there).
I was of course taken aback because it seems like the x50 should have been noticeably better than the 40buck special. Then I drove next to some K band falses that my x50 gives fair warning of, but the cobra was dead silent even when it was directly in front of them. At some pint it started persistantly alerting to Ka band for about 10 seconds then stopping for about 4 seconds and then picking back up sometimes going to almost full alert (solid tone). Shut it off and flipped in the x50 and drove the same road again with nothing(big shocker eh).
And finally just for laughs with the x50 still on I flipped on the cobra and the instant it finished the startup sequence x50 goes full alert on Ka, I didnt leave it on for long though ebcause I have heard of damage occuring to nicer detectors in such an environment.
Anyways as the the subject suggests this was just for kicks, post what you want...
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