Customer Reviews

Bushnell Speedster Radar Gun

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

this radar gun is pretty good. It is easy to work and use. The only problem with it is that it is very ocward to hold and sometimes it doesnt read speeds right. I used it to rad the speed of hockey pucks and it did pretty well considering that they are small. It works great for cars but it cant read much over 135mph. This is a nice gun but if you want the best gun this is not it.

I've owned a Speedster for the past two years, and for the price, it work adequately for getting pitch speeds for my son's club baseball team. The accuracy was reasonable and it picked up most pitches. It would occasionally fail to lock on to a pitch.

While not as accurate as a Jugs or other high-end radar guns, for my use, it was a good price-performance tradeoff, i.e., I don't sit behind the backstop measuring every pitch of every game, and +/- 1MPH is OK for measuring prep players, so I simply can't justify spending $800+ for a Jugs. I'm a "team parent", not a scout.

My '4' rating is relative to price-performance ... not necessarily to absolute quality or performance. My only complaints: the battery door in the handle is pretty cheap and breaks easily if the unit is dropped; the unit requires relatively fresh batteries ... it gets dicey on readings when the batteries get partially drained; and, I wish it would hold the highest absolute speed reading until you reset instead of when you release the trigger.

I'm now buying a second Speedster ... my first took a hit by an errant ball to the handle while I was holding it, the battery door broke off, and the battery pack slid out and fell to the ground ... breaking into several pieces. Tried to glue it all back together again, but with the plastic, it simply didn't work. I thought about looking at a higher quality radar gun like a Jugs, but at 4-5 times the price, there's simply not enough value-add to me for that step up in price.

After reading the four previous customer reviews and giving a lot of thought to what was said, I decided to buy the Speedster. Fortunately, my gamble paid off. After a day of use, the Speedster appears to be all it's advertised to be. Though the battery compartment latch and the fastening point for the carrying strap could be improved upon, the rest of the design is impressive. It only took a minute to get used to knowing when to pull the trigger (to activate the radar beam) and when to release it ("locking in" the reading). In practice, I was able to easily read the speed of pitched baseballs from about 50 feet away, but later in the practice, I was surprised when I found I couldn't read any of the pitches. On a hunch, I asked the pitcher to use another ball, and I found I could read everything again. There must've been something about the troublesome ball that scattered or absorbed the signal, preventing the gun from calculating the speed of the pitch. It's unfortunate that a previous reviewer chose to return his gun when he might've been having a similar problem. By the way, just for grins I clocked the speed of a van driving past my house, and the gun worked like a champ. One final point: I can't say I agree that the trigger design is inadequate. The trigger isn't meant to be depressed more than 1/10" or so, and if you use it as intended, I can't imagine it breaking. The bottom line - the Speedster is well worth the [money] I paid through Amazon.com - buy it with confidence.

I bought this radar gun with some hesitation because of a couple of negative reviews. I put it to the test and was very pleasantly surprised!! It worked flawlessly on every pitch of the baseball, and was easy to use. The only slight problem is that the trigger is very sensitive. If pressure on the trigger isn't applied to the correct spot, the gun will not arm. Once this is learned, it is easy to do and it works very well. The "armed" alert is in small letters on the upper right hand corner of the display, and if one did not read the instructions properly one could miss this very important item. Just pressing the trigger normally as you would with any other such device will not necessarily arm the gun. At first I thought the gun was not working. You must apply the pressure to the trigger exactly right, or the gun will not arm. This was simple to learn. This gun is lighter, easier to handle and carry, and cheaper than all of the competitors.

For months I was looking for a radar gun that was less than $500, and I finally found it. That was a year ago and since then my Speedster has worked flawlessly and does exactly what I bought it for. I used to do a lot of highway driving and frequently would get passed by guys going 90+ mph. I noticed that these morons tend to have radar detectors. Thats where my "Speedster" comes in handy. If I see someone flying up behind me, I hit the power button and the speedster gets warmed up in less than 2 seconds. One zap from my speedster (which fits snugly in the door compartment of my Audi S4) and BOOM his brakelights fill my vision and sometimes even causes enough pleasure in my heart that I'll bust out laughing, even if I'm alone in my car. The "Ka" band signal of this radar is very strong within 100 feet. It works like a charm!

p.s. While driving by those roadside "your speed is..." contraptions, I happened to notice that they have a hard time getting my speed until I'm very close to them as long as I'm shooting my speedster their way. The speedster is great for experimenting.

I purchased the Bushnell Speedster to clock my nitro powered R/C truck. 42 mph top speed so far. For my purposes, I am pleased with the Speedster's performance. Does the Speedster perform as specified? Almost. When clocking full size cars, I believe it can 'track' a vehicle the full length stated (1300 ft). However, to 'acquire' a vehicles speed from scratch, the vehicle must be much closer. I would guess 500 - 700ft max. Also, my unit won't clock anything moving under 10mph (instead of 6mph). Not a big deal to me. The Speedster seems to be accurate compaired to a few different vehicle road tests. As for baseballs, it will clock them but I don't have any useful info on that application. Overall, for the price, I love it!

I have had the gun for a year. Although there is a slight learning curve it is pretty accurate once you get a feel for it. I use it on our youth baseball pitchers and it works good. It does not read every pitch, but I would say once you learn to use it about >95% of the pitches will be recorded.

I had a problem last week where it would not read ANY pitches. My son was in the backyard with his friends and I was attempting to shoot them to see the velocity of their pitches (the kids love it). It would not read a single pitch. Then I came on here to read comments and I saw where one gentleman said he changed balls and had no problem. Our next baseball practice I noticed that although the gun worked on most of our balls it did not on some of them. When it did not work I had the guys change to a different ball (they were using a synthetic leather ball) and it worked good. Having said that, some of the genuine leather balls would not record as well. Each group was able to get a ball that would register though.

Last week I was about to go and order a Jugs gun at ~$750. Needless to say I am glad that I read these comments on this board before I wasted my money. (BTW, after the fact, I realized that my son and his friends were indeed throwing a synthetic leather ball in the backyard.)

If you need EVERY pitch recorded this is not your gun. However, if you are just using it for fun and to monitor your pitchers and check their velocity this is a very affordable and good product. It is NOT perfect though.

After reading the mixed reviews for this product, hesitated but bought the Speedster. I am happy with the product, which I use to measure baseball speeds. It consistently picks up pitched balls unless they are very wild, and it is easy to use. Not as powerful as other radar guns (which cost $100s more) but more than adequate for my needs. A good product for the money.

This radar gun works fine for me. I didn't have the problems others have reported. The trigger does have a sweet spot as reported in another review, but it is a minor problem. The gun has a baseball mode, but I use it for measuring the speed of cars. It works whether the car is coming toward you or away form you. I also tried it from my vehicle and read the speed difference between me and cars passing as well as the combined speed of mine and those approaching. You can easily figure the real speed by additon or subtraction. I was surprised to find it will read my speed just by pointing straight out the windshield. I don't know how, but it does. I guess it reads stationary objects up ahead, although there were no signs or bridges nearby. It claims to read car speed at 1300 ft, so maybe it was locked on a structure far off. The smaller the object, the closer it has to be. I locked onto a 14 mph dog at about 200 feet.

This is my second Bushnell Speedster radar gun. I am having to replace the first one because the cheeply made plastic trigger broke on the inside of the gun. If Bushnell would have taken the time to design a sturdy trigger system, this would be an excellent product. Easy to use, tracks pitch counts for many pitchers. Just very disappointed with the low quality of this unit's construction