anyone have any experience using laser jammers like the Blinder X-treme M20? a friend demonstrated it to me once and we sped by a police officer using a laser gun and he didn't even give us a second glance. unfortunately he lives in asia and i don't know if these jammers are legal in north america or not. any insights or comments are appreciated, thanks

Yes, a website I host had tested them extensively. The can work in THEORY, but the circumstances have to be perfect, and you'll be lucky to get a 20% success rate. You'll have better luck with a high end radar/laser detector.

Mixed results, according to Craig Peterson of RadarTest.com. [As an aside, although Mr. Peterson is a well published tester of police radar and laser countermeasures, I question his impartiality in light of some of his radar detector reviews, so I'm somewhat reluctant to cite his work.]

Personally, I have my doubts about the effectiveness of laser jammers. I'm even more skeptical of radar jammers, which might better be branded as electronic snake oil.

One factor you should definitely consider is the relative scarcity of laser units in the United States. They are still much more expensive than radar units, so only a fraction of police traffic enforcement vehicles are equipped with laser instead of radar. Depending on your jurisdiction, I'd be skeptical of the utility of a laser jammer.

I have a chronic lead foot, so believe me, avoiding traffic tickets is critically important to me. My weapon of choice is the Valentine1 radar/laser detector. It is head and shoulders above the competition in my personal experience for two reasons: (1) it's incredible combination of accuracy and range; and (2) it's unique directional arrows that make it the only detector on the market to tell you from what direction you are being clocked. And Car and Driver rates it number one in a landslide as well (97 points out of a possible 100 to the second place Escort's 73). I would strongly urge you to consider spending your money on a Valentine1 before worrying about a jammer.

As an aside, a good source of information for would-be speeders is the National Motorist Organization website.

thanks for the website. i actually live in an area where radar detectors are illegal, so i thought laser jammers would be like a loophole that i could use. but from the website i see that the higher-end models come with this VG-2 protection, so now i will consider a radar detector instead. anyone know if there are any other types of detector-detectors beside the VG-2 or how it works?

ok i finally found more information about detector-detectors and it seems there is a new technology that cannot be circumvented. oh well, i guess my purchase will be put on hold for awhile

What new detector-detector technology have you unearthed? I am only aware of VG-2 which can be fairly easily foiled. I'd love to see a link.

[Edited to add: I found a very informative article on detector-detector technology. This article suggests that ohbahsan may be correct that a new detector-detector technology has no nemesis as of now.]

Virginia?

A radar detector is much more critical than laser protection given the relative scarcity of laser units versus radar units. Having only laser protection and not radar protection would be a bad idea. If your going to spend some money, the very first prophylactic tool you should get is a radar detector.

Just a point that radartest.com is not an impratial 3rd party site, and, in particular, Peterson has had a long-running feud with Mike Valentine of Valentine 1 fame.

If you're looking for a radar detector, buy a Valentine 1. Everything else is a toy with blinky lights by conmparison (IMNSHO).

Not completely true, the Valentine One is not tested as perfect everywhere... Oddly enough most tests outside the US test it as one of the worst detectors even though many radars there use the same frequencies...

In tests I've helped with Bel's, Quintezz, the Valentine and many others and where even the cheapest Quintezz detector would detect handheld radar guns and stationary Gatso and Multinova radars at around 800meters the Valentine wouldn't beep till around 250-350 meters, certainly not enough to break on time.

A Bel 980 will do a better job than a Valentine One any day, and costs just half.

90% of the name Valentine has is in his name and his marketing. It's the Bose of the radar detectors.

"Better sound though marketing"....

Radar Jammers have a nasty habit of telling the gun they are jammed, showing "E3" on a ProLaser will mean you are instantly pulled over, and rest assured they will find something wrong with the car.

A laser detector usually only works well when there are either no cars in front of you, or the laser bounces off other cars, but as said laser is still pretty rare as the detectors are harder to operate and require the operator to look through the viewfinder instead of keeping their lazy backside rested back on their seat eating a doughnut waiting for a speeding alarm on the gun.

I've personally used the Valentine1 as well as the top of the line Bel and Escort/Passport offerings, and my anecdotal experience as well as a lot of test results (albeit not all of them) suggest that the Valentine1 is the pick of the litter. And if anybody needs a radar detector (and very good brakes), it's me!

For the most part, the higher end manufacturers' radar detection products are fairly comparable in terms of range and accuracy. But the Valentine1 has one extraordinary feature that none of its competitor's offer: direction arrows. If you have not experienced the Valentine1, you may not appreciate the significance of this signature feature, but if you have you will certainly be unlikely to ever go without it again.

the link i found was radarbusters.com.
the site also gives tips on how to deal with these RDDs, as apparently they only alert to the presence of radar detectors but don't actually pinpoint which vehicle(s) have them.

Easiest way to defeat a RDD is to disable the X band, as that is the one that leaks the most. K and Ka bands hardly leak at all.

I didn't know that. Interesting tip. Here in Texas, radar detectors are a-okay, so I don't have any issues with detector-detectors. But I personally have disabled my X-band coverage on my Valentine1 because I'm about as likely to encounter a police X-band unit here as I am to run across the dodo bird.

where did you hear this?

that definitely won't work for the vg-2, and more than likely won't for the spectre either. even if it did work, it would be dependent on how a given radar detector disabled bands and not universally true. many detectors share a single local oscillator with more than one band, so disabling one band won't make any difference whatsoever - the local oscillator will still be on.

there are basically two ways to prevent a radar detector detector from detecting a radar detector (wow what a sentence ).

the first is shifting the radar detector's local oscillator frequency to something the radar detector detector doesn't pick up. thats how the valentine one prevents being picked up by the vg-2. however, the spectre radar detector detector is designed to pick up the newer radar detectors, and to make things worse, they claim they will update it for any shifts in local oscillator frequencies in the radar detectors.

the other is shielding the antenna. unfortunately, thats tough to do without compromising the sensitivity.

I would be troubled by accuracy of this contradiction. I have used the Valentine 1 for years after being an Escort owner. I have even sent my V1 back for an upgrade. I don't want to jinx myself, but the V1 has saved my butt too many times to count. In addition, I have to agree with the above mentioned comments regarding the directional indicator. I once had a state trooper coming off a ramp at night and was probably doing 90 MPH to catch up to me. I was doing about 75 in a 55 zone. The V1 not only alerted me to his presence but because it told me he was behind me and I saw the distance between us (his headlights) I downshifted instead of braked (no brake lights showed) and managed to slow down before he caught up to me. I them set my cruise control to 53 MPH while he tailed me for about 10 miles and eventually gave up.

IMHO, the V1 is the best unit out there. BTW, I recently saw the display built into a car's rear view mirror, and the owner had a specialist hide 2 units in the car's body (front & rear). It was extremely cool!!!