I like my Valentine One…
For close to two months I poured over forums and watched videos on YouTube. I still couldn’t make up my mind, so I ended up evaluating both the Redline and the Valentine One. I tried both out for thirty days, and ended up keeping the Valentine. Both units are extremely solid, however the Valentine One worked out better for me.
Truth be told I wish I could have kept both, but I plan on buying the Redline soon enough though. Not to run together of course! Initially I did make the n00b mistake of running them together, and I found the performance to about the same until I ran the Redline solo for about a week, and wow! The range blew me away! Like the example below, I picked up a highway patrol shooting CO radar from an intersection in the city 4 miles away
Personally, the extreme range wasn’t necessary for my driving habits, and what I found is that the Valentine One still puts down some impressive numbers as far as range is concerned(I’m seeing averages of 1 to 2 miles with a max alert of 11 miles) In this particular encounter, there is a K band speed sign(contrary to the Image) at the top of this hill that I picked up.
With that said, every situation I’ve experienced the Valentine One gave ample warning to slow down before I passed the source (They use a lot of 34.7 here, and some 35.5). In everyday driving, I even found the range to be almost on par with the Redline (run separately). As I said in the beginning, both are solid units.
So seeing how similar the performance could be, I decided to keep the Valentine. But OH the arrows! I can’t explain how infinitely helpful they can be. As I was driving through long stretches of desert, the highway patrols love to come up on you real fast from behind, and at night the value of the arrows really shine! (Pun intended). Granted, I realize once you get an alert and watch the signal strength meter on the Redline, you can slow down and wait until the source disappears. But I feel the arrows are just more helpful than a signal strength meter, especially at night.
The over-the-hill and around-the-off-axis performance on the Redline is very good. I thought the performance of the Valentines was sufficient for my needs. I also like the size and weight of the Valentine; the Redline feels SUPER heavy and over all felt larger.
The Valentine seems to false more than the Redline, and the Automute on the Redline make the falses less irritating. I have X Off, POP off and KA guard on, and mine doesn’t false intolerably when driving in the city. I did try the 30 second K band Automute, and I didn’t like it (It was sure quiet though) so I went back to factory and just run it in logic mode. Having X off gets rid of an infinite amount of falses. And from my perspective, I don’t think the Valentine falses as much as most might think. So with that said, I couldn’t justify spending an extra 100 bucks, plus another $30 or so for a hard wire kit for the Redline.
HUGE PLUS TO Valentine Research for INCLUDING the hard wire kit with the Valentine One at no additional cost! Now, if I could have got a hard wire kit with the Redline I was trying out, instead of a silly super-cup and another smart cord, that would have been cool!
Some gripes…I don’t like the mount, Its really cumbersome and the little ridged part on the top continuously gets scratched every time I remove it(I’m going to build a custom mount out of the sun visor mount though). And VR customer service feels lack luster. Other than those two things, I really like it.
Anyways, if anyone is trying to decide, feel free to PM me and i'll help anyway I can. Many thanks to the members who gave me their perspective on these two units...
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