Surprisingly, the Uniden R8 trailed in X-band relative to the Uniden R4, this could be accounted by a model to model variation or the relative designs of the convex lenses on the two radar detectors, but still the performance was very good. Police Laser Detection Performance

The R8 uses a newly designed twin-LNA architecture with a convex condenser lens. These lenses act as a wave-guide and improve sensitivity on certain radar bands which are off-axis. Uniden R7: The R8 beat out the R7 as well. The R7 had one freak short detection in City Mode. I’m not sure why that happened so I reran it and it did fine the third time. Weird. Note: I’ve tested two R8’s, both provided by Uniden. One has pre-production hardware, the other production. Both are running beta firmware. I’ve been mostly driving with the production R8. It has firmware 1.22 which is very close to the production firmware 1.23 that will be shipped on retail R8’s and should offer the same performance and overall experience as what we’ve been testing, according to what I’ve been told. Also, as always, this is not a paid or sponsored review. Design X-band: operating between 8.0 and 12.0 GHz, the X-band is an older band used mostly by automatic doors. If you receive this alert, it is most likely not law enforcement. You may want to turn this band off if your radar allows you to.There’s other stuff too that is nice and may benefit others, but that I don’t personally need. For example, the R8 also offers Gatso detection and longer MRCD/MRCT detection range if you face those photo radar systems, it supports Uniden’s optional (and not yet released) wired remote keypad, and it supports Uniden’s upcoming (and also not yet released) laser jammers. The Uniden R4 comes with an improved design and more features, while building upon the already exceptional performance of the R3 by incorporating dual LNAs (low noise amplifiers). The Uniden R8 has good laser detection capability and like the R4, has the ability to indicate the type of laser you encounter. We tested the R8 against the LTI Truspeed SXB, Kustom Pro Laser 4, Stalker RLR, and the DragonEye Compact and the Uniden R8 successfully identified them all, although it identified the Stalker RLR as the XLR.

This new platform allows the R8 to have things like the aforementioned Auto Mute Memory function and upgraded dual LNAs to detect radar sources from farther away. Likewise, the R8 has a laser gun identification feature and can detect Gatso radar used by the latest speed cameras. These are differences between the Uniden R8 and R7 and may help you justify the price bump. When driving directly along side of the vehicle with the R8, there was no SPECTRE detection on either side. If you are working on a dedicated budget but are still interested in a Uniden radar detector, both the R3 and the R4 are good options (this helpful guidewill explain the difference between the two). The R3 and R4 are a little smaller in size and have a few less features but still offer excellent detection range and reliability. Although I love my Uniden R8, I still use my R3 and R4 here in Detroit.

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For the sake of review brevity, many other features of the R8 are similar to the R7 and can be found in our in-depth Uniden R7 review. Conclusion The devices we tested range from not-too-pricey to serious investment status, so finding the perfect combination of price and performance can be challenging. Comparing our scores to the price is a great place to start.

This is a new feature which was made a part of the firmware recently. Uniden has not given any confirmation as to how this function will be integrated with apps that can take advantage of bluetooth. But the Uniden R8 takes things even further: it has a dedicated false alert filter called Ka Guard. Ka Guard detects and mutes any K band false alerts from other drivers’ collision avoidance systems that are scattered throughout your vicinity. The Uniden R7 does not have this feature, so the Uniden R8 wins out here! Laser Sensitivity Most people don’t need stealth capabilities, myself included, but if this capability is of critical importance to you, you may want to consider choosing another detector. Bluetooth Thanks for the informative review. Would you say the R8 is less stealth than the R7 or on par? Have an R7 and have had no issues in VA. Just curious. Starting off with 33.8, the newer Uniden platform detectors (R4 & R8) were off to a great start. They managed to overall outperform the other detectors.When overtaking in the same direction of travel, we would occasionally get alerted just as we were beginning to pass the vehicle with the R8, again on either side of the vehicle. For those wishing to reduce the clutter of electronics in their vehicle, the Escort MAXcam 360c is a worthy offering that no longer requires its owner to compromise performance with a combined dash cam and radar detector. Finally another trip to the red barn course, I finally got results that I’m satisfied with (mostly, lol). Rarely does this stuff go to plan, but on that day I really wanted to get as much done as possible, so I heavily cut down the number of detectors tested so that I could test on all 3 Ka frequencies as well as on K band.