Escort launched Monday the Passport Max, a detector that is the first to convert analog radar waves to digital signals, Escort said.
The company hopes to accomplish for radar what the compact disc did for audio, namely, creating a shift to digital. The change will improve detection and greatly reduce false alerts, said Escort.
The company calls it “a paradigm shift” for radar detectors.
Typically, a radar detector is confronted with all sorts of radiation signals from which it must decipher a radar gun signal. This “background noise” is generated by cellphones, motion sensors, bank alarm systems, and even solar energy from the sun.
But since radar signals are now digital Escort can apply digital signal processing to subtract out the “noise.”
The Passport Max also processes the signals coming in 4x faster than the average radar detector. It analyzes the signal and can detect and filter certain patterns so that it might recognize a Mercedes collision avoidance signal wave and instruct the detector not to signal an alert.
“All this is done very rapidly. And even with scanning, the detector is still four time faster than the average detector,” said Escort Media Director Ron Gividen. He estimates the Passport Max is able to filter out the majority of false alerts at this point, but it may also be updated through its firmware so that more filtering capability may be added in the future.
The Passport Max also has a new 4-color LED display that can show an image of a stop light when it is signaling the presence of a red light camera, for instance.
It also has a built in GPS chip so it knows where you are and how fast you are going. You can set it to notify you if you are going 5 or 10 miles over the speed limit (you adjust the increments), or you may choose not to enable the feature.
Shipping for the Passport Max begins Monday at $549.95. It has full laser and radar protection. The first 1,000 buyers will get double the typical one-year warranty and double the subscription term to Escort LIVE (from one to two years) as well as free lifetime firmware updates.
YouTube video: http://youtu.be/osX27-mqBec
Source: Escort
