I just recently spent about 1 month researching this very topic. Even joined a forum that is dedicated to Radar Detection. Among the biggest enthusiast group online the winning device right now is the R3 by Uniden. Escort got major dings because the company seems to be in shambles and not offering very good support. Valentine has some great features and offers updates but they charge you for them and if you don’t run the detector with a smartphone app it’s kinda tough to really get the best setup. Uniden R3 was considered the best open the box plug it in and use it detector on the market currently. It also had he farthest and overall best detection. The company has already released multiple FREE firmware upgrades and is currently working on another big relaease right now. It’s major perceived shortcoming is its lack of arrows to indicate what direction the radar detection is coming from but overall most users (including many apparently that have switched from escort 360 and valentine 1 which both have arrows) have seemed to really like it. I have been using my R3 for about 2 months and really liked it. I am by no means an expert but based on the enthusiasts reviews I just felt that for the price of $400 the R3 was the no brained compared to almost $700 for the Escort Max 360 or $500ish depending on accessories for the V1. Any of the cheaper escorts will be a waste of money as they won’t have the latest filtering that keeps your detector from alerting to every car with blind spot monitoring or lane awareness features.

Again, this is based on actual testing from the leaded online forum for radar detectors. Google Vortex and watch his videos and you will see what an expert thinks of each of the big players in the current market, and see what they look like and how they compare.