Customer Ratings & Reviews

Horrible radar detection very unreliable and inaccurate

I was using a uniden r8 before using this detector and I have to say the uniden was a lot more reliable, had more range, and was a lot easier to use.

My previous radar/laser detector, also an Escort, was over 10 years old. Technology is much like dog years, and I was long overdue for an upgrade. The number of false alarms has steadily risen to the point it is becoming a useless distraction. Features on modern cars such as Adaptive Cruise Control and Collision Avoidance Systems were likely to cause many of these false alarms. The Escort Max has a few different technologies that greatly reduce nearly these false alarms. The few times I received a false alarm, it was very brief beep, and done. As if it figured out it was not a real problem. If a location has a steady false alarm, you can lock the location out from alerting you again. Once long ago, I had such a situation on my commute where the police took advantage and set up a speed trap, so I probably won’t use this feature much. The display is bright, clear, and legible, even at a quick glance on a sunny day. The directional arrows and Front/Rear signal meters are helpful in finding a potential threat or false alarm quicker. In my first two weeks and 400 miles with this new Escort, I only came across one legitimate radar threat. It was on the other side of the highway, so it hasn’t saved me, not yet. But the alert and arrows did work well. The Escort Max is on the larger side and heavy. While it has a metal case, whose protection I greatly appreciate at this price point, the stamped case alone does not really add much more weight to it. This unit must be packed full of circuitry and antennas with its numerous features. It has a solid quality feel to it. Important at this price. The first thing I did before use was to download the software to my laptop, connect the Escort to a PC using a Micro-USB cable and update the firmware if available. But the Escort flashed “low Voltage” in the LCD as the USB port did not supply enough power for the Escort to work. The other USB on my laptop could supply enough power. Wish they marked the USB jacks better, some do, many do not. After this, all went well and quickly. The firmware in the Escort I received was current, no update needed. Next, I installed the “Drive Smarter” app on my iPhone and easily connected to Escort using Bluetooth. The Drive Smarter app is a companion to the radar detector that adds many extra features. The app provides access to “Escort Live!” feature, a crowd sourced app for alerts like Waze. All users s hare alerts from their radar detector in real time. Just press and hold the mute button on Escort or the lighter plug to manually report a threat to other users; a verified radar alert, a speed trap, or a speed/red light camera. This is useful for the Instant on radar/laser traps that otherwise give little to no advanced warning. In the app I also signed up for the trial period of the Defender Database, which updates the speed camera and red-light camera location database on your phone. The Defender Database is used to provide you with advanced notification when you are about to come up on one of these enforcement devices. After the trial your database remains available but will no longer be updated. A paid subscription service is needed to keep the database current. Other features include a Car Finder to find your parked car, an alert in the screen Escort’s screen to let you know when you go over the speed limit by the number of MPH you set, an Emergency Contact and Insurance details to auto-notify your contact and/or insurance company in the event of an accident. I did not partake in the insurance alert; I prefer to be in control of what gets sent to my insurance company. No sense alerting them if there is not enough damage to make a claim. If you get the optional Dash Cam, the camera mounts to the Escorts mount. The camera and video footage are also managed in the Drive Smarter app where you can trim and send videos. If you have Wi-Fi in the car, the video is automatically streamed to a cloud account for safe storage, subscription required. The Apple App Store has many negative reviews on this app, which shows it is 4 years old. Don’t let this dissuade you. So far, my app experience has been all positive. Many of the negative reviews are older, many updates ago, others for different devices and models. The Escort comes with a soft Travel Case, useful if you travel. I often take my radar detector when I travel, especially somewhere new or where I’ll drive a great deal. The Defender Database and Escort Live features will no doubt prove especially useful when I travel in areas I am less familiar with. The EZ Mag Windshield Mount is a single exceptionally large suction cup design to hold it to the glass. The radar detector connects to this mount via a strong magnet and a slot the mount slips into, very slick. The mount pivots to adjust for any windshield angle you’ll come across. If your windshield angle is at all sharp, remove the Escort before you remove the mount. Do not remove together or the locking clamp may hit and scratch the finish on the Escort. The Escort Max 2 solved the increasing problems my old radar detector had with false alerts, added a wealth of cutting-edge features and capabilities I did not have, and some I did not know even existed. It is a worthwhile upgrade. At its core it works like a really good radar detector that does not overwhelm, if that’s all you want/need. You can delve deeper and learn to use the apps extra features as time permits to gain greater insight and protection. Judging by the quality feel, it should still be working well when advances in technology have me looking into my next upgrade. I would definitely get this one again.

Don’t even ring when there cops right beside me not worth the price

The escort Max 360 MKll really blew me away. I remember the radar detectors that your dad had in his car when you were a kid. And escort has leveled up the playing field. With an extended range and 360 awareness, which shows you exactly what direction the detection is coming from, you can feel even safer and more comfortable on your road trips. I travel a lot for business and have not considered the speed traps. But I put this baby in the car and plugged it in, and it showed me, wow, the police are everywhere. I'm not saying go out and speed with this, but it's an extra level of protection, as a quiet mode that, after the alert, volumes itself to not disturb you continually. It also has Auto learned technology and begins to reject false reads, especially in areas you travel frequently. The mount is magnetized, so it's easy to remove in seconds. The companion app is excellent since the escort is preloaded with GPS, giving you a visual of your area, which significantly helps. The ethernet-style plug-in makes it an even better connection and easier to unplug and stay put when in use. That also has an extra USB so you can use other things, such as your phone, when you have limited power ports. And I love the colorful lit display on the front. It includes a convenient carrying case so you can easily pack it in your luggage if you're a traveler in another town. If you are a speed demon or want to know where the bad boys are, check this out. You will love it.

This was my first experience with using a radar detector and I was not impressed by it, BUT, I will say this upfront, I don’t think only 1 week of use can truly give it a fair shake. Ideally, the more information you provide to back to the detector, by confirming when alerts are accurate or marking ones that are nuisance, the better the detector should get at identifying real threats. There are also numerous settings that can be adjusted in the Drive Smart app, so after much more use one might be able to adjust these settings to what works best for their travel routes. Right out the gate, upon receiving the detector, I disappointingly realized that it wasn’t battery powered and had to be plugged in at all times. (I didn’t even consider checking that in the specs because so many small electronics are wireless today.) Another small nuisance was the short length of the power cord. Additionally, an usb cord for connecting the detector to a computer wasn’t even provided. (The plug-in for the usb cord is a mini-b usb connection, even though so many other electronics have migrated to a c-port connection. I had to dig up old cords so I could connect the detector to my laptop for the firmware updates and the first cord I found didn’t provide enough voltage. I eventually found another cord that did work.) Updating the detector was easy and relatively quick. The Drive Smarter app, that can be ran in conjunction with the detector, was easy to install and navigate, but it will seriously drain your phone’s battery. I also noticed that the app doesn’t always stop running when closed and it killed my phone quickly after the first time using it. The included zipper case was a positive as it is very nice and makes it easy to pack the detector for storage or when changing vehicles. I live in a rural area of the Midwest and I primarily drive on the interstate with a little bit of small city driving. The detector only triggered once accurately for a squad car in town, but it had already been going off for possible red light cameras and other nuisance triggers so I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t a coincidence. (The officer was sitting in a parking lot so it’s possible he was running his radar but I wasn’t certain.) During my time spent driving on the interstate, I passed a few state police officers and the detector never picked up on them. One already had someone pulled over, so it’s possible he didn’t have any radar running, but the others were sitting in locations where they would typically be looking for speeders. The detector alerted for numerous nuisance triggers, some of which I realized were from cars due to certain safety features (Honda vans and Hyundai SUVs seemed to be its favorite), but many triggers I was never able to identify. Signs that show what your current speed is also triggered the detector, which was understandable considering those signs use radar to do so. I first used the detector without updating the firmware and then again after updating everything. I didn’t notice any difference with the firmware update other than the accuracy for identifying the speed limit worsened. While driving on the interstate, the detector kept showing that the speed limit was 45mph instead of 70mph. (There are no speed changes in the stretch of interstate I was on so I’m not sure why this happened. The Drive Smart app clearly showed that I was on the interstate as well.) I also used the detector with and without running the app and to me, the best benefit of using the app was that I could turn off the over speed notification. My biggest annoyance with the over speed alert was that the detector didn't store your settings. If you weren’t running the Drive Smart app with the detector, it would go back to alerting you when you were speeding, even though that feature was turned off within the app. Overall, I found this detector to be more annoying than beneficial. I do think that more time spent using it could improve the accuracy of the device with consideration of its Autolearn intelligence, but I do wish that there would have been less nuisance triggers during this initial period of use. In the end, especially for this price point, I can’t say I’d recommend this device to others.

My product does not work and can’t get it replaced or updated

Picks up a lot of false signals. Can’t hear it after the initial beeps

Just got a ticket last night, by laser. There was no detection from this product.

Unreliable. Did not alarm when lasered by motorcycle office on the highway. Busted.

Annoying it started ringing and picks up every radar at any moment.

Ok so honestly, I only have a couple things good to say about this. Why it is only a 2 star rating from me. A lot has to do with the APP at least on iPhone. I will start off with what I did like. This is easy to take off the mount. If you need to update the firmware, this is handy. It also has a carry case for it. So you can take it easily off the mount, place in the case and then take it with you to a PC to update. The mount seems to be pretty strong. The part that goes against the window was sticky and then it also had a suction cup for it as well. It does seem to pick up a lot of detections, and I mean a lot. This also includes picking up what I am assuming alarm systems that some buildings have. And great with red light cameras. But after going past the same buildings a few times, it would memorize that and not beep but just have the icon show. That is about it with the good that I can think about. What I found out though, although it picks up a lot, I felt the things that I was needing it to pick up, it would pick up late. Most of the time I saw the cop, or was just about to go thru the traffic light, or would pass by the speed detectors and then it would go off to warn me. And yes, I updated the firmware. That said, how this connects, they use a telephone connection to plug in for power. Then a micro USB connection that you have to use on a PC. Downside is that they did not provide a micro USB cable. These are starting to get out dated and most of mine were just for charging phones so I had to keep trying different cords until I found one that did data. I would have liked to see them provide the cord at least and have it 6 feet long. Or better, I would have liked to just have seen a USB-C for both the power and to update when needed. This could allow someone to possibly use a USB-C cord with a regular USB on the other end for car as this uses a cigarette lighter end and I already had that used for dashcam. IT does have a USB port so you can also plug in a regular USB cable into it, but it is not a fast charging. It connects to phone via bluetooth, so I am not sure why I can't update via bluetooth. The power cord was not long at all. So you have to run it from the power source directly up to the unit. It would have been nice to have a long power cord that could be ran around and out of the way. The app. They need to improve the map and update the speed limits. My area were I live is 25 MPH. However the app says the speed is 30mph and at times will either just not display the mph or I have had it say it is 70mph. I have verified that it is not set to do the 5 mph over warning etc. And it properly displays the mph when I get on certain roads. Other map apps seem to have it correct. It lacks more directions out of the box. Like what all the different warnings might be. I would have liked to at least seen that. Or even thru the app itself to maybe explain what the different bands are mainly. I have to go online and look up the manual to get that info. But having it more readily available would have been nice. I have never had a radar detector before, so I have nothing to compare this with. But my experience with this was not what I was expecting. So, I was a bit disappointed. I just felt that I am better off using another map app that is a lot more up to date. And then just use my eyes and drive the speed limit. I felt that if I did speed using this, I would get a ticket.

You can't use this if you have just usb c in your car

I received the Escort MAX 360 MKII Radar Detector and Laser Detector in Black, seems to be very well made, it has a 360-degree detection awareness, and a dual-band WiFi connectivity to maximize functionality, also a GPS enabled radar detector and rated as being both a city and highway detector The device works by being installed onto the dashboard area where it will use its dual-antenna design to detect for radar and lasers to warn the driver when they are being tracked. Featured include 4 different display color settings: Blue, Red, Green and Amber, Cruise Alert warning you when you’re exceeding the posted speed limit, Bar Graph for identifying the signal strength of the threat, Expert Meter identifies up to 8 multiple alerts with signal strength at once SpecDisplay identifies the actual numeric frequency of the radar signal 5 levels of brightness including full dark mode. Also has easy to understand voice alerts, which warns you in either English or Spanish of approaching threats, enabling you to keep your eyes on the road and not on your detector. One downside is, you will need to pay a subscription fee to keep the database updated. Also you will have to physically plug in the device to your computer using the Detector Tools PC application to perform database and firmware updates.

I’ve had this for about a week now and have been presently surprised by its performance. The last time I had a radar detector is when I was 18 years old and drove what I considered to be my first sports car (94 Pontiac Grand Am GT). I later found out it really wasn’t a sports car but it was to me. That was a different time. I normally use the Waze app with my phone and it does a decent job of alerting me to police in the area, but I believe it relies on other drivers to get accurate information. This radar detector has worked flawlessly for me. I drive anywhere from 75-150 miles per day on average and most of its highway miles so having something that alerts me to police presence on those stretches of road where I feel a little more comfortable hitting the gas, is a necessity. It paired with my phone easily and I did a software update using a windows based computer and so far no issues. I’m debating on trying the annual service but I’m going to wait on that for a little while. The only complaint that I really have is with the audio alerts. The radar is sitting on my dashboard and the audio still sounds muffled. I don’t know it has interference with the radio or center channel speaker but it’s definitely not the best. I also wish there was a way to mount the radar to the dashboard as opposed to the windshield. I do like the arrows that light up to show which direction the radar is coming from and the extra long cord which also allows you to plug in another usb-a device instead of losing your cigarette lighter. Overall this thing is pretty feature packed and easy to setup.

This is truly the most confusing little piece of machinery I’ve ever tried to operate. And there isn’t even anything that I’m required to do in order for this to function! I’ve had it for weeks and am still trying to figure it out. To start, it’s nicely packaged and easy to get set up. It’s a very bulky item, I was surprised at the weight of it. Because it’s on the larger size it does create a distraction so I had to strategically place it on my windshield. I downloaded the app and was able to connect quickly but it was all downhill from there. The most inconvenient part is that if you want to change any settings of the actual radar detector itself you have to be in the vehicle and connected to the device via Bluetooth. Super irritating! I wanted to be able to look through the settings and take my time figuring out how it operates but I don’t feel that I should need to be in my car to do this. There’s no other option as the only power source is the cord that plugs into the old cigarette lighter, so it’s not as if I could take it inside and connect to it like that. I finally did end up talking about an hour the other day to sit in my car in the driveway and look at all of the settings, which was super overwhelming too because there are so many! But, most of them have a little i icon in the top right corner and if you click that it will give you the info about the setting that you are viewing and each option within that setting. Even after all that though, I’m still beyond confused. So I never changed any factory settings, I left it as it was straight out of the box. We took a road trip from northern Colorado to ABQ, New Mexico and what I can say is that we definitely were alerted to several different law enforcement agents running radar LONG BEFORE they were ever even in our view. The detector would announce “Ka band” and then it would start beeping and soon we’d see an officer come into view. We had more than enough time to decrease our speed if needed. There were many other instances of the detector announcing “K band” and “X band” but so far none of those have resulted in any law enforcement sitings. I’ve had several instances where it beeps and the screen says Stored, which silently blocks false signals that cause the detector to alert. Overall I feel this is a high quality product and I need to dedicate much more time to figure it out. I believe it’s worth every penny and if you are an avid user of radar detectors and you’re familiar with their operations this one has so many options I can’t imagine it would disappoint. I would recommend to a friend, but with the caveat that you’ll need to invest time and effort to make it work to meet your own specific driving needs.

I drive a lot for work with a daily mileage of 36 miles per day. On the weekends I take the family out and we have no problems driving far for us to enjoy, sometimes 50-80 miles away. So having this Escort - MAX360 MKII Radar and Laser Detector has really enhanced our driving experience, not just for searching for radar/laser but also a way of self accountability. Setting up I immediately noticed that I was going to have a problem. The MAX 360 MKII requires being plugged into the cigarette charger which was already being occupied by my dash camera. As I drive a minivan, I have a AC/DC power outlet right behind my center dash so I ended up needing an adapter for the MAX 360's power source. The mount attaches via suction on the windshield, and the MAX 360 MKII attaches via a magnet at the back base. This is where again I found it challenging: un-mounting was no issue, but the mounting was problematic as you have to attach it at an angle. Connecting this via bluetooth on my phone was easy along with the app set up. The overall car experience is very good. The scanner detects my speed which is about 1mph off compared to my van's digital speedometer. There is also a way of setting up a Over Speed Limit Alert, a max speed where the MAX 360 MKII will alert me if I am going beyond that set speed. It can be set up at Speed Limit, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, and 25 over. I placed it at 10 mph over because I naturally drive 5-7 over the limit (don't judge me) so I think it's great accountability of maxing me to 10 mph above. The Radar/Laser Detector is where I feel that this works decently. When in conjunction with the app, you are notified by the scanner of active K band radar signals. The app does indicate it and on my iPhone, it wants me to verify that this is accurate or not. Most of the time, I do not see any police on their devices checking for speed. I have noticed that the K band detector does go off when I am near businesses with automatic doors. Also, when approaching Camera Lights it does notify me when approaching those intersections. I felt that the voice is muffled and can't hear clearly what it is it is indicating. The map on the app does clearly show where I am and the direction/speed pretty accurately. When entering into parking structures, I immediately lose GPS connection. So it is a mixed bag for me, and I do feel that it does work well enough to keep me aware of my location and speed. Detecting K band works well and it is somewhat annoying that I have to be made aware of radar signals from businesses. Overall, this works for my needs and am glad to have it.

Let me preface this review by saying I don't exactly have a lead foot. I'm not someone who is using this radar detector as a way to regularly evade police. I simply mean that I'm not living on the edge, driving 100 mph down the highway, slamming on the brakes as soon as I hear the alert, then back up to cruising speed. I personally use these as a tool to know what's going on around me. The more aware I am of my situation, the better driver I can potentially be. If the knucklehead in front of me is likely to slam on his brakes when he *sees* the cop up in front of us, maybe I'll be able to have a better chance to avoid if I get some advanced notice. I'm certainly not a radar detector "power user", but that being said, I'm not against preventing a speeding ticket or 2 if the situation arises... With all this in mind, I found this new Escort Max to be a fairly solid performer. Setup was relatively easy (though potentially not as easy as they claim in the "quick setup" manual"), especially if you stay out of the more in depth settings. And the setting can get as in depth as you need them to be, all the way from a simple default to an super in depth tweak-every-setting session. For mine I set to "auto" (you can choose "highway", which is more sensitive, "city", or "auto", which intends a balance sensitivity based on speed, as well as auto with X or K band lowered sensitivity) and I've found this to be a good sweet spot. I've found very few false alerts, which you can manually tame but I understand this unit is equipped with some automization for this purpose. In my testing I've also seen notifications a good distance in advance, and the directional notification system (arrows which light up pointing the direction towards the signal) are a welcome feature. In all, I've found it to be a relatively quiet-unless-it's-important detector (meaning fewer false alerts). Repete drives over the same area resulted in even fewer false alerts. the good - quick notifications - long range - few false alerts - alert direction arrows - IVT filter - blind spot monitor (BSM) and other "in vehicle technology" filters (think blind spot, auto driving, adaptive cruise control, etc.) - auto vs. highway mode - auto = lower sensitivity, filters out store door openers - wifi - dual band connectivity - drive smarter app for easy setup - AutoLearn GPS lockout - easy setup the bad - none misc - carrying case - alert sharing - I've not got this feature to use yet, but supposedly works by updating locations in the Drive Smarter app overall I've found this radar to be a solid performer with a great feature set and no real issues to speak of. 5 stars.

I will say that this has saved me already, I don’t really speed anymore, I used to have that issue quite a bit but it was an expensive habit I decided to kick. However, radar detectors aren’t necessarily just for the excessive speeder. There is a town close to where I live that has a love for unnaturally low speeds and a plethora of police to help enforce that decision. This is a helpful reminder as every time I drive through there the detector goes off at least twice and one time it picked up on radar during the entire drive through the town. This brings up two nice features. The mute button is built into the power plug as well as the strength detector. It will buzz at pretty low strength warn me well before I actually see a cop or detector and then I can just hit the mute button quickly to keep the peace in the car. The power plug is nice in that it has a USB built into it, but it is USB A and not C. The other disadvantage is that there is only one USB which can be annoying if you don’t have a second outlet upfront. The mounting is simple and secure and the device itself pops right off of the mount if you don’t want to just leave it up there to tempt thieves. A really nice feature that I didn’t know I was missing in my life is the red light camera notification. I have a tendency to stretch yellow lights still and red light cameras seem to be quite liberal on when yellow turns to red so this is an extremely nice feature. The speed limit and speedometer is nice but the speed limit depends on your phones GPS and this is where I’ve found the experience a little lacking. The app is great and easy to use, but it is a battery hog. When I ended the app it still used 9% of my battery. I ended up having to force quite it as just swiping up never actually stopped it. I’m not sure if the iphone app is better on the battery (I’m pretty sure it is as most of time that is the case) but the android app needs some help on the battery management side. Overall, I love having this in the car and I don’t turn on the phone app unless I’m going on a long trip where I want the extra features.

Up front removed one full star due to price but mostly for the complicated learning curve. But it has features galore and the community database really is the icing on a fantastic radar system. The real time updates via the app is very useful once you get through the learning curve. The dual antennas is also wonderful especially the front facing one. No stars removed for false alerts as that is a given with any radar detector regardless of pricing and this one’s false alerts are minimal at best. This radar detector also comes equipped with auto-learning technology. Through GPS intelligence, Auto Sensitivity, and IVT Filtering, the MAX 360 can learn what to expect on your daily routes. This technology also includes automatic location lockout which keeps you from having to lockout every single benign stationary threat manually. The auto-learning technology uses intelligent GPS-based technology to learn your routes and reject false alerts and usefully for those who drive the same route to work every day similar routine errand runs. Because of the dual antenna system allowing for a 360-degree range. This means that the device can pick up on frequencies coming from in front of, behind, or to the side of your vehicle. The front-facing range works better than the rear-facing range, but they do both work and you get decent advance warning in order to,slow down. If on sale, then a great buy for a superb detector but with a learning curve that needs time for you to get accustomed to it.