Twice a Max Owner -- Thoughts from 2nd Take

I was in the first 1000 in the launch of the Max back in the summer. I got the Max, kept it a few days and sold it. I hated the constant falsing and strange things going on, including what seemed to me to also be rather poor range compared to the BSRedline and V1C. That has been of course several months ago. I now purchased another Max from BRDs after giving it time to get some kinks worked out. I thought I would write a first impression review of my 2nd take with the Max today. I just received the Max today, but did quite a bit of testing with it all day long. This is with the newest firmware.

My Settings:

TSR off

Highway Mode

X Band off, Pop off, Laser on, KA on, K on

GPS and Auto Learn On

Cruise control at 45 (Love this setting option)

Pilot (FULL WORD) --

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THE GOOD:

1. Range is greatly improved with new firmware.
I verified with a K band source. Once I updated
the detector firmware the range was much better and right
up to par with my BS Redline and V1C

2. You get more of an "ALL IN ONE" kind of package with
this detector which I absolutely love. I get so sick of the
phones and cords etc. With this detector you have your
cruise alert (savvy emulation if you will), also the GPS lockouts
I did are very reliable and do a good job keeping everything
locked out. Moreover, you can not beat having the auto-learn feature.
Personally I know where all of my falses are so I just get impatient
and lock them out manually, but I think it is a great "set it and forget it"
kind of feature.

3.The color display and sounds are very modern, pleasant, and just plain
awesome to sum it up. I think the color display is great. Also the sound to
me is just a little less harsh like and more pleasant to the ear, but it doesn't
give up any volume. It is more than loud enough and probably has capability
of being the loudest detector I have ever heard without external speaker sources

4.Sticky Cup material is a plus for holding the detector very solid. It seems built for
business and doesn't seem like it will fall off easily at all.

5. Love that the new firmware lets you turn off the scanning bar "knight rider" as
many have called it. I just like the full word Highway for the pilot mode.
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THE BAD:

1. The mount could have had more thought put into it IMO. As many have stated before
it is so hard to press the release button and to work with this unless your fingers are
EXTREMELY small. Also the max does have a little bounce on this mount. So far the V1
is the only detector I have witnessed that has a perfect mount IMO. No bouncing and very solid.

2. The size of the detector seems rather large to me. It also does not seem as solid and
quality built as the Redline to me. It seems quite "fragile" if you will when holding it.
If you give it a slight squeeze everything just feels a little "loose" like and not very
solid. Not a huge deal to me as long as it performs. However for an expensive piece
of equipment such as this, I think they could have did a little better. But then again
they've got all their money on the insides of this thing, and I can kind of understand
what happened there to a certain degree. To keep costs down we go with a more
cobra-ish outside. lol

3. Still getting some wild K band falsing which I deemed to certainly be some lane assist
systems. I agree with Bob. It would have been expected to be that this detector
should be the best out there at filtering out these Lane Assist systems. Especially
the way that it has been advertised. I mean, this is the "noise" that they call it.
There's no way to lock those out, and filtering in a "world of noise" would certainly
be expected in this unit. Have they even said if they are working on an update to
possibly address this issue?

4. How hard would it be to add KA Band Segmentation to this unit?? I mean come on..
It originally had this feature. It makes no sense to me why it should not have been
left on there especially for the enthusiast. I see no reason scanning unneeded
frequencies. To me it just to adds more risk for the leaky cobra ka falses which
annoy me very badly.

There you have it. Those are just the main things that stood out to me as the good and the bad. Again this is coming from someone who had the original launch firmware tested and hated, and now I am seeing the improvements. My feelings at the moment are to hold on to this Max now and jump on board the "evolving" roller coaster of this thing. I am very curious if anyone has any information at all as to the next update that might be released and what issues it is supposed to address. My overall feeling about the max is it is the closest thing out there to an all in one kind of unit. The only thing it is missing is the arrows. ;-)