Escort continues to reign as the industry leader for radar detectors, continuing to slide right by the competition thanks to models like the Max 360c MK II (Review) and the Redline 360c. These models offer some of the fastest response times, the most accurate results, the fewest false alerts, and the longest list of features. They are the muscle of the industry, and they have just flexed themselves once again using nothing more than a firmware update.
The firmware update is for the company’s Redline 306c Radar Detector (its flagship product), and it came from a breakthrough that the company had during its efforts to improve upon its technologies. These efforts netted a result that cuts the detector’s response time by nearly 50%. A new benchmark to help drive a little deeper competition for everything else out there.
Escort says that this makes the Redline 360c the absolute fastest detector on the market. A title that we assumed it already had (and likely did at one point).
“The Redline 360c has always been our most distinguished flagship product – but with these new improvements, users will feel like they’re unboxing a brand-new product,” said Jonas Forsberg, CEO of Escort parent company, Cedar Electronics. “Our loyal customers know performance when they see it, and based upon their ongoing feedback, we built this update with our most demanding users in mind.”
It isn’t every day that you come across a company that continues to enhance its products to such a degree (that are already on the market). Yet, Escort was dedicated enough to put this much effort into improving upon its firmware through continuous R&D and communication wth its customers.
Cutting the response time in half is quite the claim when you are just talking about firmware vs physically improving upon a product (which normally results in a completely new product). But we took one of these updated detectors on several drives (thus far), while having the Max 360c MKII and a model from K40 in the vehicle at the same time to see how quickly each registered officers nearby. We mostly drove outside of town and back, where our proud local officers are commonly hard at work looking for people joyriding a little too hard.
We were taken by surprise when it came to the Redline catching things noticeably sooner than the other two units. Before this, we could only base our experience on communication with our own readers and other communities. This communication typically resulted in experiences that claimed the Redline was slightly better at detection than the 360c MKII. However, side by side (now), with the new update downloaded and seeing things for ourselves, we noticed quite an improvement compared to those past discussions. Mind you, all of this is measured in mere seconds (or sometimes less than a second), but every millisecond counts when you are aiming to be safe out there.
Escort also backed their claims with both lab and in-depth field testing. Quoting a Ka Band average response time of 0.29 seconds compared to the average flagship detector results of around 0.5-0.6 seconds.
The update focuses on improvements surrounding filtering and alerts, POP alerts, directional indicator responsiveness, adaptive K-band filtering, and an update to OnStar/Wi-Fi. And all you have to do (if you own one of these) is update the firmware.
We will focus on a full review of the Redline 360c (with its updated firmware) soon, after we have spent a little more time with it. We had hoped to have it out by now, but sadly, it takes time driving around looking for active speed traps (while still working on everything else we have on our plates). So keep an eye out for that story when it launches.
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
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