XTR 695 - My Review

[marko760]

Hi folks, this is my first post as a new member. Well I've been driving now for about a month with my new XTR695. First impressions are that it seems to be an OK detector. (I currently also have a V1 & Vetor 955.) As far as X band goes, it's very good, they still use it here where I live n Ohio. K Band on the other hand has
me a little concerned. I don't seem to pick up most of the usual door opener falses on the way to and from work, and on some of the ones I do get, the alert
stops when I get near the source, it's really strange. The few K band LEO alerts
that I did get, were fine, but the car was approaching with C/O, but I still had a bit
of time to slow down. KA- Band is superb. There is more of that around here. Plenty of time to slow down. I do have an issue with the RSID. It always gives the
frequency of the real deal, but on the false alarms ( what few I've come across),
I have also gotten a frequency display on most of them. In fact this morning, it popped up with a 34.0 on a false. I know it was a false because KA isn't used in the town I live and there was no LEO around. Other than these 2 issues,it seems
to work fine. A brighter display would be a big improvement, since the color changing feature is all but useless in daylight. No comment on laser, haven't had any hits yet. I'm going to keep roadtesting it, although I'm a little worried about the K band. Less falsing is great, but I hope it's not missing the real thing.
If need be, I'll send in for a checkup. Maybe it just needs a little fine tuning. Oh
well, it's still worth it, the KA saves I've had, more than paid for it.

Later.

[happya$$]

Hi folks, this is my first post as a new member. Well I've been driving now for about a month with my new XTR695. First impressions are that it seems to be an OK detector. (I currently also have a V1 & Vetor 955.) As far as X band goes, it's very good, they still use it here where I live n Ohio. K Band on the other hand has
me a little concerned. I don't seem to pick up most of the usual door opener falses on the way to and from work, and on some of the ones I do get, the alert
stops when I get near the source, it's really strange. The few K band LEO alerts
that I did get, were fine, but the car was approaching with C/O, but I still had a bit
of time to slow down. KA- Band is superb. There is more of that around here. Plenty of time to slow down. I do have an issue with the RSID. It always gives the
frequency of the real deal, but on the false alarms ( what few I've come across),
I have also gotten a frequency display on most of them. In fact this morning, it popped up with a 34.0 on a false. I know it was a false because KA isn't used in the town I live and there was no LEO around. Other than these 2 issues,it seems
to work fine. A brighter display would be a big improvement, since the color changing feature is all but useless in daylight. No comment on laser, haven't had any hits yet. I'm going to keep roadtesting it, although I'm a little worried about the K band. Less falsing is great, but I hope it's not missing the real thing.
If need be, I'll send in for a checkup. Maybe it just needs a little fine tuning. Oh
well, it's still worth it, the KA saves I've had, more than paid for it.

Later.

Yeah the 695 is a great RD in the real world. I have always gotten enough time to slow down and when it comes down to it this is what it is all about. Send it in to Mike B. for a checkup.

[marko760]

Maybe I will, but I want to give a little more road time first.

[WK446]

marko760: Thanks for taking the time to do a review! I'll echo some similar comments to yours. I do find the 695 to be fairly quiet in town, so much so that I generally run H (highway) mode all the time with automute engaged and the standard filter mode. I do not have X-band in my area so I have it switched off, but my K-band detection is similar to yours. The range is adequate, but it's nothing earth shattering, nor did I expect it to be. I find it to be an all round competent detector in real world conditions.

Are you running yours with POP off or on? If it is on, it could explain some of the Ka band falses.

[€]

... K Band on the other hand has
me a little concerned. I don't seem to pick up most of the usual door opener falses on the way to and from work, and on some of the ones I do get, the alert
stops when I get near the source, it's really strange. The few K band LEO alerts
that I did get, were fine, but the car was approaching with C/O, but I still had a bit
of time to slow down...

Whistlers have implemented unique alghorythm of false alerts rejection - if there are few (two or more) sources of radar signal and they're verry close in frequency (less then 15 MHz I think), detector won't annoy you with alarm. This is because 99.99% of such situations are door openers and trafic sensors. Verry simple but verry effective.

"the alert stops when I get near the source, it's really strange"

This is how it works - unfortunately this time Whistler possibly didn't see the second door sensor (because it was "looking" inside the building) untill you were close enough.

[marko760]

Thanks for the info. I appreciate your thoughts on K falses. If that's the design,
then more power to Whistler, K falses are a real pain around town these days.
Anything to resist them is fine by me, so long as it doesn't ignore the real thing.
As far as the Ka, I run POP OFF. I didn't mean to say it falses alot on Ka, quite the
contrary, it's actually quiter than my Vector 955. I have picked up so few falses,
it's not even a problem. Its just that it was displaying a frequency on most of them.

Later

[Michael B]

34.0 is a frequency used in some European countries therefore it is displayed.

The other frequencies that are displayed are 33.8, 34.3, 34.7, 34.9, and 35.5

Each of them has a tolerance that will yield the appropriate response.

Given that Ka super-wide band is 2600MHz wide the areas that do not respond with a frequency comprises approx 900MHz of this while the other 1700MHz is close enough to a known Ka radar frequency that we feel it should be reported as such.

Yes some falses may fall into these areas but from my 6 months of driving with the 695 prototypes, it is not often and most of the time a Ka false simply results in a Ka alert with no frequency displayed.

Keep in mind that falses in general are rare with the filter options.

Has anyone noticed that the unit in addition to giving a frequency will also display the signal strength?

[marko760]

Thanks for the info Michael, I appreciate you taking the time to explain the RSID
feature in such detail. I'm really impressed with this new Whistler model. You guys
did a superb job producing such a feature packed unit a fair price and on top
of it, giving a 3 year warranty without having to pay extra for it. Again, thanks.

[GET 1T DONE]

Has anyone noticed that the unit in addition to giving a frequency will also display the signal strength?

I was wondering about that... whether the RSID, along with an audio warning, was the only info supplied or whether there was a visual signal strength display in addition to the RSID and audio warning.

So there is in fact all 3 aspects... an RSID, signal strength, and audio info provided during a valid police radar frequency Ka alert?



Plus, everyone, keep providing feedback/opinions in as much detail as possible regarding the new XTR-695. I, as I'm sure many others, are interested in getting new RD's and are considering this particular unit. I personally am looking at the XTR-695, Escort 8500 x50 (or red), and Bel V955 or V995.

[PaulP]

I have been following this Whistler XTR 695 thread for a few days now and I too have been using one for about a week, along with a Cobra 9930 and a CORDLESS Whistler XCS 800 (same as the 1788) with these observations.

The Cobra was simply to noisy in town as well as on the highway. I never realized how many vehicles had radar detectors! The full color graphic display was nice with plenty of information and readable in bright light. It’s sensitivity on KA band was way below that of the others and the constant false alerts made it untrustworthy and annoying.

Using the XTR 695 and the cordless together to compare performance, both were set to Highway mode, Auto Quite OFF, POP OFF and with the 695 set to Filter1 Mode (the 1788 has no Filter setting), I found that the 695 had a much greater KA band performance of the Cordless (which was also pretty good on it’s own) and was expected. However, when approaching a known and very weak K band source (stationary YOUR SPEED sign), the 1788 alerted me about 500 feet before the 695 at about ¾ mile from the source. As I approached, the signal strength quickly maxed to about 8-9 on the XTR 695 but only reached 6-7 on the 1788. Since I virtually had no K band falsing from the 695 as compared to the cordless (a real problem here in south Florida) I suspected poor K band sensitivity with the 695 (although the signal strength meter was in contrary to this) or over filtering (using the #2 Filter 1 Mode). Using another stationary K band source (local CVS store door opener) I found that reducing the Filter mode from FILTER1 to just FILTER had greatly increased the 695s response to K band. It seems that the Filter settings for K band may reduce the 695s receiver gain to help with false alerts where as these filter settings for KA band only drop those signals that are outside of the police frequencies while still maintaining a high receiver gain. I will compare the two again with the new settings.

On another instance, I picked up and alert from a KA band radar gun mounted to a Police motorcycle within a school zone. The gun was firing rearward (toward me) and he was moving within the traffic. The 695 detected the signal about ¾ mile out (in heavy bumper to bumper traffic). The 1788 detected a weak signal a few seconds after the 695 and reported a signal strength between 1 to 3 while I was still some distance away. The XTR 695 reported a strength of 6 to 8 at the same distance. I can see ahead that the officer made a U turn where the gun was then firing away from me. The 1788 signal dropped to 1 where the 695 reported a strong 5 to 6 alert.

The only complaint I have on the 695 is with the LCD display , it is hard to read in daylight. The very similar trans-reflective display of the 1788 has darker characters and is much clearer, however, the multi color backlight option of the 695 is still very nice. The KA frequency readout is a major plus for identifying false KA band signals and may be my most important reason for using it over the very portable Cordless XCS 800 (and yes, the batteries do last about 20 hours). The signal strength alert also ramps in and out at a much more linear progression than any other detector that I have used. My older Bell 890 which is also an excellent detector, has now been retired in favor of the XTR 695.