Reactivity & Latch Time Performance Review

We test three top-rated radar detectors–the Uniden R9, the Valentine V1G2, and the Escort Redline 360c–for responsiveness and latch times on Ka-band.

 Originally published: 6-30-23, Updated: 7-16-23  by Veil Guy

Ka-band Reactivity & Latch Time Performance Test: Uniden R9 vs Escort Redline 360c vs Valentine V1G2

This article is part two of a two part series.

As we have maintained over nearly five-decades of driving with radar detectors, we continue to believe a true measure of what makes a radar detector the best, is not its sensitivity or if it alerts at the longest distance to constantly transmitting (C/O) police radar, on an isolated closed-course test.

In the real world, there are other radar detection performance characteristics—that are just as important if not more so—that need to be taken into consideration what we call, the “big four” which additionally includes reactivity (or responsiveness) to alert to the initial transmission of constant-on radar or how quickly a radar detectorcan catch briefly appearing instant-on radar.

If your radar detector is too slow at reacting to police radar transmissions primarily for the sake of being quieter and more “falsing resistant,” the increased risks to getting ticketed from instant-on police radar is not worth the trade-off, in our opinion.

Latch times or the decay times relate to how long a radar detector continues to alert once the radar ceases transmitting.

If the latch or decay time is too long, the radar detector will blur the nature of instant-on radar that could be ahead of you and that’s an important piece of information to know.

In this test, par two of a two part series, we compare some of the best radar detectors—the Uniden R9, the Escort Redline 360c, and the Valentine V1G2 against Ka-band.

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flKblSHc9UE[/embedyt]

In this test, we test the responsiveness of each radar detector to the initial transmission of constant-on Ka-band police radar and the look at how the radar detectors handle their alerting when the source of the police radar is no longer present.

Since good reactivity is essential for a radar detector to alert to the most lethal form of police radar, called instant-on or I/O radar, we also examine how each radar detector responds to briefly transmitted radar as you would encounter when you approach an instant-on police radar ambush.

For good measure, we also throw in some quick-trigger (Q/T) to see which radar detectors are the most blisteringly fast.

As expected, the performance of these three radar detectors are much more close and consistent with each another than on our other K-band reactivity test where both the Escort Redline 360c and the Valentine V1G2 were found to be significantly more sluggish than the Uniden R9.

As you can see from this test, the Uniden R9 and the Valentine V1G2 are consistently the best at reacting to Ka-band and therefore are the best at alerting to Ka-band I/O in the real-world.

The Redline 360c, while very good, wasn’t quite as sharp as the other two, but still we felt it was adequate to Ka-band I/O, in any event.

What most impressed us was the fact that the Uniden R9 was blisteringly fast on all of these tests of both K and KA bands, and it was the most consistent and detecting I/O and Q/T.

We believe, Uniden has found the right balance and their approach to not sacrificing reactivity for the sake of appearing to be better at filtering as do the Redline 360c and V1G2 is why we rate Uniden detectors—including the Uniden R8, R7, R4, and R3–as our top picks and why Uniden remains our top choices as daily drivers over the other brands.

We do prefer the somewhat shorter latch times of the V1G2, however.

We also conducted the same test using K-band where the differences where quite dramatic.

You can also read about that test, here:  Uniden R9 vs Escort Redline 360c vs Valentine V1G2 Reactivity & Latch Time Test – Part 1

If you are interested in learning more about the new Uniden R9, please read our in-depth Uniden R9 Review.

If you would like to learn more about the Uniden R9, we’ve created a collection of related Uniden R9 videos.