I received a Whistler 3600 yesterday with a rear antenna and did a quick visor install of the front antenna on the passenger side visor where the V1 normally rides, in order to got a comparison with the Redline. That is, they are both mounted in the cab and at the same height as opposed to the 3600 being outside the cab and lower down in the grill.
Initial impressions.
Simply and efficiently packaged -- no velvet lined hard shell jewel case like Escorts have needlessly jacking up the price.
Instruction manual is brief and straight to the point--no long winded marketing prose telling you what a wonderful product you just purchased ad nauseum.
I wish the type in the manual was a little larger, especially the pages that list all the settings. Mentioning settings, there are over 40. The display (remote) is very compact, oval shaped, about 3/4" high and 3" long, with four buttons, two on each corner. You can mount the display "right side up", "up side down" or vertical, and change a settings so the text displays right side up.
There is a reflector for the antenna, intended for use when you cannot mount the antenna horizontally and facing forward; you mount the antenna pointing down, and then position the refelector to guide signals into the antenna. I don't know how well this will actually work in practice, but I think the concept is brilliant, and recognizes that mounting options are often limited on vehicles.
Installation is pretty much a no-brainer. Connect power and ground, mount things, run cables, and plug them into the control module. The ports on the module and the cable ends are clearly labeled.
The speaker has a volume control wheel right on it, and is loud enough to hear over a diesel engine with a big turbo whistling.
There are two different mounting brackets for the antenna, both of which are simple and very versatile.
One thing to note in the instructions on page 10: "Note: When unit is displaying the vehicle speed the radar antenna is turned off!" (The GPS module is needed to display speed)
There are quite a few filtering/sensitivity mode options for both radar and laser.
During the power on self test, the 3600 causes the Redline to briefly alert full strength to Ka-band, and I think I've noticed very slight loss in sensitivity on the Redline running it with the 3600, but I'm not 100 percent sure about that. I have only 2 hours or so driving time with it so far. I'll be running it in highway mode, no filtering, Ka Max on, POP off, stardard ramp-up.
The 3600 either has some extremely sophisticated filtering for eliminating false alerts from k-band door openers, or it's off-axis sensitivity is very poor compared to the Redline.
Videos are coming.
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