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I drive cars for a living. I’m no stranger to a radar detector constantly chittering away as I drive through suburbia filled with innocuous emitters competing for its attention. For almost a decade, I drove more than 25,000 miles in 150 different vehicles, every year. I was always concerned about tickets. I don’t drive that much anymore. Testing the Escort’s Max 4 for over a month was an eye-opening experience. It showed me just how far radar detector technology has come since I last used one. But, I wonder if we’ve given up some of the signal in an effort to filter most of the noise.
Escort sent me a Max 4 for product testing, but there is no sponsorship here. No money changing hands in any way. They were nice enough to give me time with a couple of the company’s experts to catch up on the current state of the industry. Including some market info, the latest tech, and some pointers on how to best use a modern radar detector. I consider myself to be an experienced user. But far, and I mean really far, from a radar or legal expert. Also, reviewing and devoting a fair amount of mental energy to detectors, driving habits, speeding, and traffic citations is triggering some rants—I will try and rein those in during this review.
The Bottom Line
The new Escort Max 4 is an entry-level radar detector. It works pretty well right out of the box without a learning curve or many false alerts. That is ideal for new users. It does offer a high level of adjustability with the accompanying app. So it lets you dive a little deeper if you want. It’s similar to a mid-level camera. It works great as a point-and-shoot, but has some adjustability in case you want to play around with settings. But, if you find yourself interested, you’ll eventually upgrade.
| Escort Max 4 | |
|---|---|
| Ease Of Setup | 9/10 |
| Ease Of Use | 8/10 |
| Value | 6/10 |
| Accuracy | 6/10 |
| Overall | 7.3/10 |
Peace of Mind is Priceless, the Escort Max 4 is $400
The list price from Escort for the Max 4 is $399.95. Of course, you might get a deal if you look around. This will eventually replace the Max 3, but as I’m writing, it’s currently still available and right around $300. The head-to-head competitor is most likely the Uniden R4, which has similar features and a list price of $379.99. The Max 4 comes with a 12-month warranty, which can be extended an additional 24 months for $40 if you buy it directly from Escort or for $37 from Amazon.
We Got a Thing That’s Called Radar Love
Golden Earring was more prophetic than anyone realized in 1973; our society is smitten with radar. When I got my first radar detector in the late 1990s, the biggest source of false alerts was automatic doors at grocery stores. Now, cars produce huge amounts of radar pollution. That’s thanks to sensors that monitor blind spots, collision detection, and active cruise control that are interfering with radar detectors.
The Max 4 has different methods for reducing false alerts. First, it uses a dual-core processor. Escort claims it is capable of providing twice the computing power of older models to filter out false sources. Second, using either buttons on the unit itself or within the Drive Smarter app, you can customize just about every aspect of the Max 4’s performance. Besides the obvious X(which is becoming rare), K, KA, and laser signals, you can drill down to specific frequency bands for filtering. With the onboard GPS, you can either manually mark spots with known false alerts or the Max 4 can mark them on its own. Lastly, while using the app, it will also crowd-source data so you can get help from other Drive Smarter users.
Who Uses Radar Detectors and Do I Find Them Useful?
I don’t feel like a scofflaw driving around with a radar detector on display in my windshield. I’m not a particularly fast driver on public roads, but I do find myself above the limit at times. As a society, we seem to agree that speeding is like a lottery, every once in a while one of us takes our turn to pay for our impatience.(I’ll stop myself there, I promised no rants.)
The folks at Escort tell me the main customers for radar detectors are the types of drivers who regularly do 5-10 mph over the limit, but they aren’t the people doing top-speed runs on the interstate. I never make the mistake of thinking my experience is representative of how an entire industry operates, but in this case, it absolutely does. The people I know using radar detectors are people I would consider responsible drivers. It’s the people with action cams on their cars trying to become social-media-famous you need to watch out for.
I live in Las Vegas, which is a valley continually expanding in an orthogonal grid from its central point. There are no rural roads, there are no country highways. There are varying sizes of city streets and freeways, that’s it. We also have some much bigger traffic problems than speeding. Being a well-known drunk-tourist destination, we have a high rate of pedestrian-involved accidents. We also have a HUGE problem with drivers running red lights and stop signs—it’s apparently a sign of being a conformist to come to a full stop.
The policing around the valley seems to favor the reduction of accidents that stem from blowing through intersections and tourists being tourists. During the month I’ve had the Max 4 in my car, that’s been reflected in my experience with local enforcement. I’ve only seen one motorcycle cop sitting under an overpass holding a laser gun. While he seemed to be pinging other cars, he didn’t bother to hit me. So I didn’t get a warning. Want to be stealthy in traffic, drive a dark-colored mid-sized boring crossover.
In my area of town, several active speed limit signs use radar to remind you when you’re exceeding the posted limit. Think photo-radar, just without the camera. These are more useful for those testing a radar detector than they seem to be at influencing speeders. The Max 4 gives me a good half-mile of warning from their locations. Some of them are in areas where the roads are lined with trees and/or are around corners. The Max 4 will still give me plenty of warning, even without a direct line of sight to the emitter. This is a good time to point out, the Max 4 has a single forward-looking antenna, which means it likely won’t catch a signal from behind and it doesn’t have directional arrows in the display like more expensive units.
I have seen several Highway Patrol Cars on the freeways but they pace drivers rather than use radar while on the move. The Drive Smarter App never alerted me to speed traps, probably because I never encountered any. I’ve been watching the app while sitting at home, and it is constantly filled with construction alerts, it’s rare to see a speed enforcement icon on the map.
Silence Is Golden and the Mute Button Is Black
When I used radar detectors in the past, accepting that they were constantly beeping and squealing was a necessity. You had to learn to listen for specific squawking sounds to alert you to what was probably a cop instead of Walgreen’s front door. The Max 4, even right out of the box, is quiet. To get a false alert during testing, I had to roll right up to the front of shopping centers to get a reaction for an automatic door.
I’m well aware of other reviewers stating the Max 4 is filtering too much out and that is ruining the response time for real alerts. I have a feeling that may be the case in more rural areas, but for where I live, it seems like an advantage. Speaking of other reviews, both professional and from average users, some have said the Drive Smarter app doesn’t have much activity in their area. As I mentioned, I do see a lot of construction activity on my local map. The lack of speed enforcement on the map is representative of what’s happening in the area. The effectiveness of crowd-sourced data is completely dependent on the size and activity of the crowd.
Final Thoughts on the Escort Max 4 Radar and Laser Detector
I tested the Escort Max 4 in both urban and suburban settings. I got outside of town several times, but without encounters with speed enforcement. I’m impressed with how well the filtering works in town at stopping false alerts. This detector doesn’t use Escort’s latest Blackfin signal processing and that comes with pros and cons. This seems like a decent radar detector if you also want to rely on Escort’s Drive Smarter app all the time and you have an active community supporting it in your area.
I can’t say it offers much more utility than using Waze in populated areas, but the Max 4 will give you more security out on the open road than just an app. Besides coming in at an entry-level price, I do feel like the Max 4 is a entry-level unit that doesn’t ask much in terms of the user right out of the box, but does offer a decent amount of tuning potential when you start diving into the tech a bit more. If you drive on highways on a regular basis, or consider yourself to have some preexisting knowledge, I would probably go with a higher-end model with directional arrows and better sensitivity.