Uniden R7 Review: Veil Guy Reviews Uniden’s Best Radar Detector

The new directional Uniden R7 Offers Extreme Performance

Review Updated: 1/19/2022 by Veil Guy

Veil Guy’s Uniden R7 Review

Update: Read about the all new Uniden R8 radar detector.

Introduction to the Uniden R7 Review

In the Spring of 2017, Uniden took the radar detector industry by storm with the introduction of two class-leading radar detectors, the Uniden R3 and the Uniden R1.  These two radar detectors quickly established themselves as performance leaders and became big sellers, particularly the Uniden R3.

Fast forward two years, Uniden has upped their game with the introduction of the Uniden R7, a GPS-enabled, dual antenna radar detector with arrows, following in the footsteps of the Valentine 1, the Escort Max 360 (now discontinued), and the Escort Max 360c.  While the V1 was the first directional radar detector, it has remained relatively unchanged in its 28 years and does not incorporate GPS.  The Uniden R7 is closer to the Escort Max 360c since that detector is also GPS-enabled.

Expectations for the Uniden R7 have been high and thanks to Uniden we received an early pre-release to review so we could see if the new Uniden R7 would meet or exceed those expectations.

After putting some serious seat time behind the wheel with the new Uniden R7 and subsequently with a full production model I’m ready to share my findings with this Uniden R7 review.

Uniden R7 Design

Uniden R7 Chassis

It appears the shape of the detector had its inspiration from the Valentine 1.  The Uniden R7 is a larger detector than the Uniden R3 because it must house both a front and rear facing antenna.  The Uniden R7 weighs in at 7.0 ounces, only two more than the Uniden R3.  This weight is on the lighter side as compared to the Max 360 (at 11.2 ounces), the Max 360c (at 9.9 ounces) but slightly heavier than the Valentine 1 which weighs in at 6.4 ounces.

The display is angled towards the left which makes it very well suited to left-seated drivers who drive on the “right” side of the road.  I imagine Uniden could easily flip components of the Uniden R7 to make it well suited for right-sided drivers who drive on the “wrong” side of the road.

The Uniden R7 is very well vented on three sides and supports a wider range of operating temperatures than their previous models.  That’s a good thing for those in especially cold or especially hot climates.

R7’s Connections

The Uniden R7 has its RJ11 socket located on the proper right-side of the detector which makes mounting on the windshield easier on the cord.  An audio port is on the left side and a USB connection for updating the detector is located on the right side.

Large Full-color OLED display

The Uniden R7 is the tallest current selling detector with a height of 1 3/8″ as well as the widest with the full frontal width of about 4 inches.  Uniden has put all of that real-estate to good use with what is currently the largest display yet to appear in a mainstream detector.  The viewable size of the screen in nearly three times in height of the 360c’s display and a little bit wider.  My middle-aged eyes have come to appreciate it size and the corresponding text and graphic sizes.

The Uniden R7 has a total of five brightness settings: BRIGHT, DIM, DIMMER, DARK, OFF, and AUTO.  The first three are self explanatory.  The DARK mode is nice for stealth driving.  In this mode, the screen stays off, except for a little flashing dot on the lower left of the screen, until a detection occurs, at which point the screen turns back on, displaying everything you need to know about your encounter and then goes back to its screen-saver mode when the encounter finishes.  This display mode works well for those driving at night who do not want to alert other drivers that they are driving with a radar detector reducing the likelihood that they’ll be used as a “rabbit” for other drivers who do not have a radar detector.  As an added bonus, the screen-saver mode can help extend the life of the OLED display.

As bright as the screen is, like most other detectors, the display can still be washed out in bright sunlight making it less usable in an open convertible or a motorcycle.

The Uniden R7’s primary display colors can be set to amber, green, pink, gray, red, white, violet, or blue.  That’s a lot of color variations and you should be able to tailor the look of the detector to the match the interior of your vehicle.  Color configuring options don’t stop there.  You can select with colors are used for the arrows and the radar band detected.  I tend to prefer simplifying the color scheme, because I react primarily to the audio and what’s actually being displayed, not the colors of those individual elements.

Also keep in mind as with all OLED displays, each pixel has a certain rated life-span depending upon brightness and color, so your display may tend to last the longest by not always driving it at full brightness or with heavy red colors.  While not as colorful, I have tended to select white as my primary color of choice or even gray.  It simplifies the display and may have the benefit of maximizing the life of the screen.  OLED screens haven’t been around for too many years, so knowing what the expected lifetime of their operation is not really established yet.

We found with the DIM and DIMMER settings that the display wasn’t consistent with its intensity with the color display set to white, gray, or violet.  The other primary display colors appear less affected.

The OFF display mode, turns the screen completely off and it remains so even during detections, providing only audio alerts (more on this later).

A wealth of useful information provided at a glance

Uniden has put the sheer size of the Uniden R7’s display to good use.  Like other GPS-enabled Uniden detectors, the Uniden R7 provides a lot of useful information on their display, including your current speed and direction of travel; the sensitivity setting of the detector; the current time of day–courtesy of GPS satellites; the band of police radar and frequency of the primary detection; the direction of the detection (front, rear, side) and up to three additional concurrently detected police radar bands each with their own signal strengths and directional information (when ALL THREATS mode is enabled).  No other detector comes close to providing all of the information, especially in an eminently readable manner.  Granted, when encountering a lot of radar, the display can get pretty confusing with all of that information, but it’s there nonetheless for those interested in such detail.

Additional information can also be display in place of the compass and speed such as the battery/alternator voltage or current altitude.

R7 Button Configuration & Layout

To be honest, I found the button layout a bit odd and perplexing.  The Uniden R7 has the four standard button on the top of the detector that you will find on other Uniden detectors, the MENU, –, +, POWER.  The MARK and MUTE/DIM buttons, however, are hidden on the left side of the detector behind the angled display.  Those two buttons would have been better positioned in the front of the detector below the display.  Fortunately, muting and marking can be accomplished with the push button of the power adapter, but it requires a bit of work to handle the two side buttons directly while you are driving, particularly since you can’t directly see them and you have to do it by feel.  I understand from Uniden, that they didn’t have the room to place the buttons in the front because of the inwardly angled bezel surrounding the display.  Perhaps making the inward pitch less so and the front more vertical in that area would have allowed Uniden to place them in the front.

While not labeled as such, the MENU button also serves as the sensitivity setting.  To change sensitivity, you simply press and hold the MENU button.  To enter the programming, you press and release the MENU button.  It would be nice if the button were identified as having two functions MENU/SENS like the MUTE/DIM button for better consistency.

Unlike the Uniden R3 and Uniden R1, the Uniden R7 does not have backlit illuminated buttons, which in my opinion, is out of place with a detector at this price point.  I suppose I understand that since the two buttons are located on the side, there is little point to backlighting them, but it would be my preference to have the two side buttons located on the front and all buttons backlit.

Packaging & Workmanship of the Uniden R7

The R7 comes with a 12 volt power cord with an RJ11 connector and USB port to power a smartphone.  It also comes with two different kinds of windshield-mounting brackets–a conventional two-cup mount and a single “sticky cup” mount.  A neoprene sleeve and carrying case are also included as is a small USB data cable for updating the detector and of course an owners manual.

The detector’s outer case material is a little underwhelming and not as substantial to the feel as I would like to see on a $600 detector.  The buttons could be more consistent in feel.   The top-buttons have a light touch and good tactile feel to them, however the two side buttons require a little harder pressing and have a louder sounding “click” to them when pressed.

Utility & Behavior of the Uniden R7

Audio & Tonal Quality

The voice qualities and alert volumes of the Uniden R7 remain exceptional and are very discernible. The sound levels can be made very loud and still remain clear with the alert tones easily recognizable and distortion-free.  Voice augmentation is very natural and not all “synthetic.”  The R7 allows up to 12 selectable tones for each radar band.  My personal preference is the following:  X-band, tone 3. K-band tone 2, Ka-band tone 9, MRCD tone 8, and Laser tone 1.  There are also five “bogey” tones for when the detector picks up additional radar sources.  My preferences are for tone 1 or tone 5.

Alerts can be set to auto mute after the initial alerting volume.  You can configure up to six variations of muting.  Another nice feature that GPS brings is that you can set the detector to initially alert at its muted setting when driving below a set speed.  I tend to use 40mph.  Anything below that speed including when stopped at a traffic light will cause alerts to be muted.  That’s a great feature when driving around town.

Another cool and unique feature to the R7 is the ability of the detector to announce the direction, band, and frequency of your radar encounter.  Now that I have gotten used to the feature, I’m surprised it hasn’t already been done before.

Sensitivity Settings Galore

The R7 provide three sensitivity settings: HIGHWAY, CITY, and ADVANCED.  Highway mode puts the detectors in maximum sensitivity for all radar bands–X, K, and Ka.  CITY mode reduces K and X-band sensitivity which can help reduce falsing to stationery K-band door openers you’ll encounter around town, but it also reduces the range that your detector may alert to the K-band collision avoidance systems that can still make it through the filtering.  The R7 supports a user configurable sensitivity setting by individual band, ranging from 30% to 100% sensitivity in 10% intervals.  The decrease in sensitivity percentage-wise roughly corresponds to the potential reduction in alerting range.  In terms of dBs, the decrease in alerting range is 1dB at 90%, 2dBs at 80%, 3 dBs at 70%, 4.5dBs at 60%, 6dBs at 50% (equating to about half the detection range as compared to full sensitivity), 8dBs at 40%, and 10.5dBs at 30%.  Uniden is the first to offer this fine-tuning in sensitivity for those interested in tinkering.  Setting K-band sensitivity to 60% or thereabouts can reduce the amount of K-band falsing from vehicle’s collision avoidance systems and is a popular choice with the more advanced detector enthusiasts.

The rear facing antenna, is a bit too “hot” for my taste which can result in a greater amount of falsing and confusion in the display of directional information.  Most dual antenna detectors are designed to intentionally have a somewhat less sensitive rear-facing horn because you really don’t need the full range that you do on the front.  The rear antenna primarily serves for providing directional information (like when you pass a radar source).  It doesn’t have to be super sensitive to do this.  It would be nice if Uniden would allow the operator the ability to reduce the sensitivity of the rear-facing antenna (if possible) similar to the Advanced sensitivity settings mentioned above.

Easy to use Menu Configuration

While some detectors can be difficult and time-consuming to program, the Uniden R7 continues with the Uniden tradition of being easy to do so.  There are a ton of options to select from and that can become pretty overwhelming but actually programming the detector is pretty painless and intuitive.   You enter the configuration menu of the R7 by quickly pressing the MENU button located on the top of the detectors and then you can step to each option by either depressing the left or right volume buttons that straddle each side.  To change or toggle a feature, simply press the MENU button quickly.  Some features have multiple settings, so pressing the MENU button repeatedly will cycle through all of your options.  As simple as the programming is, I believe it be event further simplified by having the menu system be entered by pressing and holding the menu button instead of a quick push.  This would be more consistent with the method for exiting it.

There are three ways to exit the menu programming:

1. Press and hold the MENU button until it EXITS
2. Cycle all of the way through the options until the EXIT appears on the screen and then quickly depress the MENU button
3. Let the configuration mode simply timeout and it will exit on its own

Superior Alerting to Police Radar

The R7 does an exceptional job at alerting you to radar detections.  Visually, you will be presented with the primary detected radar band, its frequency, and its signal strength with bars of varying colors indicating the levels and relative proximity and there are two different alert styles you can choose to how those alerts appear.  Of course as with all dual antenna detectors, arrows are also displayed indicating which direction the source is coming from.

The voice annotations, if enabled, are clear, the volume and tonal characteristics are distinct, and perhaps most importantly, the duration of the trailing alerts after the radar signal is no longer detected is superior to anything ever to come from Beltronics or Escort, which have remained  far too long in duration to be useful.  Like the Valentine and Whistler detectors, in particular, the R7 turns in essentially perfect performances when approaching quickly triggered instant-on police radar traps.  The effectively convey the alert texture needed to really help you recognize the most lethal form of police radar operation when you are approaching it.  This stuff just doesn’t happen by accident, the engineering team clearly knows what they’re doing.

Dynamic range is very good so you get a very good sense of how close you actually are to the radar source, an important trait in communicating how you should react.

Unique to Uniden is the R7’s ability to indicate by voice the direction, band, and frequency of your encounter.  You don’t even need to look at the detector to know what’s going on and from where.  This capability is especially useful when you have your detector’s display in OFF mode for the most discreet operation at night.

Arrow directional transitioning is also quick when passing a source.  The quickness of the arrow transitions coupled with the high sensitivity of the rear antenna can lead to inaccurate arrow displays on occasion but overall the arrows work very well at helping you identify the location of the threat.

Alerting to Police Laser (LIDAR)

One aspect of the R7 alerting nature which could still use improvement is the alert duration to detections of police laser.  Unlike the quickness and sharpness of R7 alerts to radar, detections to laser last too long, in my opinion.  While improved over the R1 and R3 detectors which alert for about 11 to 12 seconds in total whether the actual detection is brief or lasts as long as five seconds.  The R7 appears to do better at around 6 to 7 seconds, an improvement to be sure, but I would still like to see alerts in the 3 second range.  With these shorter alert durations, you get a better sense of how long you are really being targeted or if the officer is having difficulty finding an aiming point (more on this later) to get your speed.  It’s interesting to note that with a laser detection, the display does not indicate the direction of the detection like it does with radar.  It would be nice to see that ability added in a future firmware update.

Solid GPS Performance

The incorporated GPS chipset is very good.  It provides quick signal acquisition, accuracy in geo-location, good reactivity to changing speeds, and the ability to display the time of day.  In a number of instances, it even has the ability to retain satellite acquisition without a clear line of sight to the sky.

Muting & Signal Lockout

At a touch of a button, the R7 can have its alerts muted.  But like the other detectors, it can also be UNMUTED by pressing the MUTE button again.  Generally, with other detectors when a signal is muted, it remains muted until the signal dissipates and the detector alerts to the next detection.

The GPS-enabled R7, like other Uniden GPS detectors, has the ability to manually lock-out a stationery radar source by its geolocation.  When you drive by the source again, the detector will still detect it, but the detector will remain muted.  The R7 is expected shortly to have the ability to AUTOLEARN these locations and it has an increased number of positions it can remember.  I still prefer to lock-out falses manually, but the feature will be there for those that like the detector to do it automatically.

Quiet-Ride (Speed sensitive alert muting)

The R7 also has the ability to mute alerts to detections when you are driving below a set speed threshold.  This feature is fabulous and can make for a very quiet detector around town.  I typically set the threshold to 45 mph.  Anything below that, the detector stays quiet.

RLC Quiet-Ride

This is a feature, that I don’t use or particularly care for in its current configuration, not that some wouldn’t find it useful.  The idea behind it makes sense, but I feel there is a better way to accomplish the same outcome.  What RLC (red light camera) quiet ride allows for is the setting of a speed that if you drive above it, the detector will not provide an audio alert to  red light cameras that may be located just off of a highway at the end of an off ramp .  With a detection radius of about 1000 feet, it’s not uncommon for GPS detectors to alert.

I much prefer Whistler’s approach.  Instead of tying the alerting behavior to your speed, I believe it’s better to control it by distance.  Allowing for a reduced alerting radii from 1000 feet to 800, 600, 400, 300 feet would accomplish the same thing.  The reason I am resistant to the idea of muting by speed is because some red light camera monitored intersections also enforce speed limits with technology called speed-on-green.   If you are traveling above an arbitrarily set threshold of the posted speed when you traverse the intersection on a green light, you can still be issued a speeding ticket!

At this point, I choose to leave this feature off.  If you are going to use it, I would suggest you set the muting threshold to something like 65 or 70 mph, a speed you are not likely going to be driving at when going through intersections.

Near SPECTRE RDD (Radar Detector Detector) Immunity

Contrary to other reports and “tests”, the R7 is detectable by SPECTRE RDDs, although detections were inconsistent and when they happened they are close.

The latest models of SPECTRE, particularly the SPECTRE Elite, have been designed to be less impacted by spurious RF and as a consequence, they’re more heavily filtered.  This may account for results are vary, but it does show that the R7, like the R1 and R3 remain not completely immune to SPECTRE.  That distinction still belongs to the Escort Redline EX.

Still, the use of these radar detectors should be fine in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Washington D.C., military bases, and most provinces of Canada–each area where detector usage is banned.  I would caution truckers, though, when pulling into a weigh station.  It is not uncommon to see SPECTRE RDDs in use at these facilities and I would recommend powering off the detector.

Filtering & Signal Rejection

More Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Power than the R3 & R1

Uniden incorporated a processor that is 50% more powerful to perform advanced digital signal processing to maximize alerting ranges while also filtering out bogus alerts.

BSM Filtering (K FILTER & K Block)

Uniden’s rejection of the K-band transmissions emanating from vehicles’ collision avoidance systems is very good, but is not quite up to the level of the Escort Max 360c.  It feels about a year behind.  I fully expect Uniden to continue to improve with subsequent firmware updates, however.

Acuras, Honda, GM, and Fiat vehicles have proven to be the toughest to reject (filter out) in general and these systems tend to alert on the upper side of K-band.  With their recent firmware release, the R7 now includes a “notch” filter called K Block to effectively stop it from alerting in the range of these vehicles.  I would like to see additional K-filtering options for even further upper ranges of K-band as I have never seen police radar at those upper K frequencies.  Perhaps providing K-band segmenting like Escort does would do the trick.

Reduced K-band Frequency Scanning (K NARROW)

Uniden, like Radenso, offers a very useful feature, called K NARROW, where the frequency range swept in the K-band region is reduced and more centered around a properly tuned police radar gun.  Why look for something that isn’t there?  Not only does this further cut-down on falses from these automotive annoyances, they can also effectively filter out stationery K-band drone signs that you will often encounter in construction zones.  These signs are battery operated and can stray far out of “tune” and outside of the frequency range of a properly calibrated police radar gun.

If you are driving in areas that have either Gatso, MultaRadar, or especially Redflex photo enforcement radar, you would be well advised to leave K-band in its standard wide sweep.

Reduced Ka-band Frequency Scanning (Ka NARROW)

Years ago, Cobra radar detectors, used to be sources of Ka-band falsing.  These models have long been out of production so Ka-band falses today can come from different sources.  Some falsing can come from harmonics of lower frequencies or perhaps from some dish or cellphone towers.  Others can come from sweeping frequency modulated K-band automotive transmissions.  It’s not uncommon for a radar detector today, regardless of manufacturer, to be fooled by these FMCW K-band systems and alert with Ka-band.  Some are more prone to doing this than others.

These Uniden detectors are not immune to being duped by these systems either, but they’ve been making progress with each subsequent firmware update.  Uniden also offers a KA NARROW mode, which focuses the detectors on the three primary Ka-band police radars used in North America: 33.8 Ghz, 34.7 Ghz, and 35.5 Ghz.  If the R7 is used outside of the U.S., where other frequencies are used, of course, the standard Ka WIDE mode is the one to use.

In both the KA and K NARROW settings, there’s always a possibility of a slight improvement in performance and reaction time to quick-trigger I/O. But the good news is, even when sweeping the full KA WIDE band, performance doesn’t drop like a non-segmented Escort Redline does as compared to a segmented version.  So it’s more of a filtering benefit, than a performance increasing one, which is just fine with me.

In addition to Ka NARROW, the R7 allows for Ka-band segmentation like Escort.  I haven’t opted to use the feature, however, because the sheer range of the R7 crazy long as it is without having to resort to segmentation.

Performance

Sensitivity

As I stated in my review of the Uniden R1 and Uniden R3 detectors, these two detectors redefined what is actually possible in a radar detector.  So what did Uniden do with the R7?  They upped the performance even more (about 1dB or about a 12% potential increase in alerting range).  This makes the R7 the reigning champ in detection range for a windshield-mount detector.  If alerting range is your top priority, look no further than the R7.  All radar bands of X, K, and Ka-band are exceptionally sensitive and the highest I’be seen with any windshield-mount radar detector.  I don’t know how Uniden does it, but the detection performance of the R7 is truly mind-blowing.

Why Extreme Performance Matters

Ability to Detect Instant-on (I/O) Radar

Candidly, there has really only been one radar detector that I have come to historically trust to reliably notify me to an approaching instant-on police radar trap and that detector has been the Valentine 1.  The V1 has been the one detector, in my mind, that has done the three essential things it needs to, to do this.  First, it has the sensitivity across all radar bands to see weak radar from a distance.  Second, it has the reactivity to be able to detect and alert to brief (weak) transmissions of radar.  Three, its trailing alerts are nice and tight so that it accurately conveys the texture of brief detections of radar transmissions.

Ability to Detect Police Laser

Which brings me to the ability to detect police laser.  Anyone who tells you that the ability of a radar detector to detect police laser is not important, either doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about or are trying to sell you expensive laser jammers.

Besides benefiting from the effectiveness of the police laser absorbing Veil coating, even if you have no such protection on your vehicle, suggesting that it’s not important if your detector has the ability to reliably alert to police laser is like suggesting that it’s not important if your detector isn’t able to alert to instant-on radar, especially if and when you are the one being targeted without any advanced warning.

Who wouldn’t want to know that you are being targeted by radar or your speed being clocked by anything else for that matter?

Having a detector alert well to laser, is most important.

Even without passive or active police-laser countermeasures, I’ve personally been able to avoid speeding tickets, on multiple occasions, when my detector has alerted to police laser when I wasn’t the one being targeted and at least twice, when I was.

Advanced detections to police laser can happen quite frequently if you are driving along side another vehicle that is slightly ahead of you and when he or she is being targeted before you.  I’ve also detected police laser when the vehicle ahead of me was being targeted.  It can and does happen, provided you have a detector that’s good at detecting laser.

To my way of thinking, the ability to detect police laser is one of the most important characteristics of a radar detector because it almost always comes without any advanced warning and it’s always used in an instant-on fashion.

The R7’s ability to detect police laser isn’t on the extreme level as it at detecting police radar. Overall sensitivity isn’t at the level of some other high-end detectors.  Testing the R7 against the latest generation of police lasers, we found that the R7 would alert to the Kustom Pro 4 and the LTI SxB consistently.  Variable pulse rate (VPR) lasers were a different story.  The Stalker RLR was more problematic when the unit was in its default ECCM mode.  It only alerted occasionally.  When ECCM was turned off, the R7 alerted consistently again.  Similarly, the R7 struggled a bit with a late model DragonEye Compact not always catching it.

I would like to see Uniden work on improving laser sensitivity and ability to consistently detect some of the more exotic police lasers so it would be more inline with its outrageous performance on police radar.

Detecting Difficult to Detect Radar

What’s especially impressive about this Uniden is that it can still alert effective to both RedFlex and MultaRadar while its BSM filtering in on.

RedFlex Photo Radar

RedFlex photo radar is some of the most difficult to detect radar out there.  It operates on K-band, often on the very low side of K-band and is horizontally polarized.  This polarization can cause a 30dB of more drop in detectable RF to a radar detector which has its antenna vertically polarized (as all detectors are today).  Therefore, you need the most sensitivity you can find.  While still very tough to beat, the R7 is one of the best detectors to have when you come up against Redflex mobile speed vans.  If you have RedFlex in your area, you would be well served to keep K-band set to the WIDE sweep setting.  RedFlex radar can be on the very low side of K-band (well below 24.100Ghz) so you want to be sure you allow the R7 the ability to alert to it.

MultaRadar (MRCD/MRCT)

The R7 does an exceptional job of being able to detect another difficult ticketing radar source, MultaRadar.  The R7 even does it better than the R3 because it can look at lower K-band frequencies where some MultaRadars operate.  What’s especially nice about how the R7 handles MRCD/MRCT detections is when MRCD is enabled, the detector does not misidentify K-band BSM systems as MRCD.  Certain Escort models can alert to MultaRadar too (as well as Gatso) , however when the feature is enabled, they false excessively to it.  Their falsing behavior makes those detectors basically intolerable with their current firmware (hopefully this will change).

The nice thing about the R7 is that it can alert to MultaRadar without falsing MultaRadar alerts.  K-band falses increase slightly when in proximity to certain vehicle’s K-band BSM systems, but it’s very tolerable.

Like other detectors, the Gatso RT4 when operated at traffic intersections, is extremely difficult to detect.  Fortunately, there are only a handful of these systems currently installed an operated in the U.S. and they are all fixed in nature, meaning a good photo-enforcement database should provide you with the warning of their presence.  I understand that Sensys Gatso is working on a mobile system, like those of RedFlex, so if an when this happens, the Gatso RT4 could be a bigger threat.  Fortunately there is plenty of time for Uniden as well as other manufacturers to respond to this as of yet nascent threat.

Conclusion

The R7 is an exceptional detector for use on both the highway and around town.  It is one of the few detectors I rely on when I drive in areas where MultaRadar and RedFlex photo enforcement systems operate because I can use every bit of sensitivity this detector has to offer.  Having directional arrows really helps when you have an extremely sensitive radar detector because if you detect a really weak radar signal from a great distance, it’s important to know if the potential threat is ahead and you have to be concerned about it, or if its from the rear, where you can relax more knowing it’s way behind you.

Uniden is very engaged with the consumer market and listens to customer feedback and is actively updating their firmware.  With future firmware updates, the R7 will improve even further.

So, bottom line, is the new R7 worth its $200 price premium of the Uniden R3?  The R7 does have some idiosyncrasies and could benefit from future refinements, but overall I would say most certainly it is worth the price premium, especially if you want the same extreme performance of the Uniden R3 but with arrows or you are concerned about being prepared for RedFlex or MultaRadar.  I could go on about the R7, but it should be patently clear by now, when it comes to sheer performance, the R7 reigns supreme.

Best Place to Purchase

We believe the best place to purchase your Uniden R7 is from RadarBusters.  They are the oldest and most experienced retailer of radar detectors and offer the best pre and post sales support in the business.

Veil Guy