42 out of 42 people found this review helpful.
Driving me Crazy with warnings
Date of Review: Jul 16, 2000
The Bottom Line: The concept is good, the functionality isn't always.
My husband bought the Whistler DE-1660 Radar Detector a little over three years ago, because he drives like an idiot and doesn't want to get a ticket for it. I liked this one best because of the other features it had.
First of all in addition to picking up on all the different radars that are out there it has a voice that tells you what it is picking up so you don't have to look and see what is going on every time it beeps. It has city/highway settings so that if you are in the city it won't pick up every little microwave you pass but if you are on the highway it will pick up the slightest thing. The Whistler DE-1660 Radar Detector also has a feature that will tell you if there is an accident ahead or some bad weather that you are going into. That is really useful. It also has a way of warning if there is an emergency vehicle near (so you can get out of the fire trucks way faster)
The Whistler DE-1660 Radar Detector has a radar blocker which masks the radar so that a police officer can't pick up on the fact that you are running a radar detector. I am not sure how important this feature is or if it actually works. Every time they come out with a new feature the police come up with a way around it. I like it for the safety features I mentioned previously.
However, it drives me crazy. I just want to throw it out the window sometimes. Even when the Whistler DE-1600 Radar Detector is set on the city mode it constantly beeps and has this woman saying "x-band" or "ka band" and it is loud. It never seems to shut up. Are there that many radars pointed at us all the time? If so and we haven't gotten a ticket yet, then what difference does it make knowing they are there? It hasn't yet told us about an emergency vehicle, the weather, street construction, or accidents... but it constantly beeps and yells out these stupid x k ka and laser warnings.
If it ever does warn us ahead of time that there is an accident ahead or some road construction it will be useful to us. Maybe it is worth the money we paid for it if we can turn around before running into construction, or maybe it was just a really expensive toy for my husband to play around with.
Compuplus.com
