Customer Reviews

Whistler Xtr-690se High Performance Radar Detector

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I purchased this radar detector about a month ago, and so far I have been impressed. At roughly $160, it is very cheap when compared to some of the other brands that are out there. The sensitivity is excellent on KA and K band. Unfortunately, in Southern California I have yet to be alerted to a K band threat that actually is a patrol car/motorcycle. KA band seems to be the only indicator of a patrol unit.

Laser has been activated many times, of these times I have used the LSID which gives the Pulse Per Second ID on the display. They have been in the 900's most of the time with one alert in the 600's. The 600 one was a police car, but the 900's were false alerts. So make sure you use LSID to make sure it is a real laser threat, especially if you drive the same route everyday.

False-alerts are a big problem with this detector though. I have driven on the freeway with this detector for a while now, and the K band alerts too frequently. Driving through random parts of the city activate a full strength K band alert at level 9, only to shut off completely half a second later. I have no idea what causes this. Of course, the occasional speed trap off to the side of the freeway will alert to a K band as well but it will steadily increase to level 9 and slowly back to level 1 (3..5..4..7..8..9...6...5...2...1.....). This shows that the source is stationary, and it normally will be a gun either on the freeway or just a few hundred feet off the side of the highway.

For the price, you can't beat all of the features though. The KA band sensitivity, especially with the KAID feature, is excellent. It picks up KA as far as the 400 dollar models, with a frequency display. In So Cal, 34.7 is the key. The red display is perfect for me, its dim enough to live with daily, though not at all bright enough to see during the day. I had the xtr-695 previously (it broke) and the color display is not necessary.

Overall a great radar detector if you're on a budget. If you aren't, save and get the Bel Sti Driver, the performance on that thing is insane, and false alerts as non-existent. I would not recommend the Passport 9500 series, there have been too many complaints with it for the money. I don't think they have perfected the GPS technology yet.

Great features
Great KA band range (Radar Signature ID can be very helpful in distinguishing real radar threats from fakes ones)
Average K band range
Average X band range
LASER detection: fantastic

I bought this primarily to pick up the highway patrol. They use Ka around here and this guy did wonderful with that. k worked great as well. Unfortunately, the unit still picks up all the automatic doors at stores. That really bothers me, but don't they all? I keep the volume at max because I listen to my stereo on those long boring trips quite loud. After probably 7 months the speaker blew. I pulled it and couldn't find anything about it on the web. Guess its trash now

As of its feature is almost the same as others, and have the laser detector function, it is a great detector.
The only cons I have to mention, is that it sometimes resets itself while starting the engine. I don't have the habbit to turn it off by pushing the power button on the detector so it costs me much time to recalibrate the compass, set those functions back. The manufacturer should solve this problem for convinence to use the product.

I just got this less than a week ago, I'm an old time Whistler customer, and they do make stuff that lasts for years. I'm not a speeder, this is just to keep me from speeding when I'm not paying attention. I drive a large SUV so speeding is not what this thing is meant to do.

Pros:

1- Look and feels just like a top end radar detector, sounds just likes the V1 for 1/3 of the price.
2- Way too many features, I love the voice alerts, so you don't have to memorize the sound of every band, really handy
3- Price, is very attractive VS. the top end models.
4- In City mode, almost no false on X-band at all, this is the most annoying band in the city typically from super market doors and garage door openers.
5- Radar Band ID, is really cool, if you can isolte the rest of the generic KA signals.
6- Three years Warranty, most top end models offer just one year, and they have terrible reviews on customer service?

Cons:

1- With POP Enabled, you keep getting false pop alerts to the point that going the speed limit and turning it of is much easier on your mind.
2- With KA Max enabled, you keep getting Pulse and KA false signals, same as con-1
3- Compass has to display the bearing next to the heading N/S/E/W, nice if you were flying a F-18, but in the city do you really need to know that you're going N320? It is actually very distracting, I had to disable the compass to get rid of this throw back feature from when detector almost went absolute due to the new radar technology so they had to entice you with other features in order to justify the price for the unit.
4- It doesn't come with a hardwire kit or the dash pad as noted (What's in the box) I contacted Amazon to alert them, and they gave me a discount on the unit as a result (Thanks Amazon, Excellent customer service). The unit that comes with those items is the Whistler Pro-78se High Performance Radar Detector and not this one. You can verify the contents from the Whistler website directly.
5- The Whistler XTR-695SE comes with the option to change the color display, comes with an external speaker out jack and the function keys can eliminate at night if enabled, otherwise it's the same exact unit as the XTR-690SE!

All in all, features for the price, it's not bad, I may need to tweak the selections a bit to see if I get better results, less chatter and only alerts when you really need them.

Update Jan 2012:

I just took a 700 Mile trip with this unit, after turning off pop mode, the unit is much quiter. In Highway mode, every time it alerted with a band-ID the cop was about a mile or two down the road.

This is a great unit complete with updated features. Fantastic value. The 3 year warranty is the best out there on the market. I've had to call Whistler in the past for other units & always had good customer service. I love the LED lights on top of the unit that light up when radar is detected. Great feature in case you didn't hear the detector due to other noise or music. I like the Identifyer feature of the radar / lasar signals. Helps you to indentify false from real. I've had top of the line of both Bell & Escort units & found they only last so long due to heat in the car or what ever. They all start to fail after a few short years. I feel that this unit performs good enough for me & I don't notice any inferior performance enough to make a difference compared to Escort or Bell so I'll stick with the savings of this unit. I love the compass also. It is very accurate. I leave the compass displayed all the time & when a radar signal is detected it'll display the signal then return to compass. I agree with other reviewers about the speaker being loud. I set the unit to #4 so the speaker doesn't blow but it's only $15 to replace a speaker or free if under the 3 yr. warranty. Give this unit a try & I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I travel for work once or twice a month so I wanted something to carry with me and for 99.00 on sale I figured I would give it a go. I have 3 other Whistler remotes all about 8 years old I ran this unit in each car to check to see its performance, it was about the same or worse then my 8 year old Whistler remotes , K and KA were better with my older remotes they picked up the signal little quicker and after passing the moving radar this unit went quiet the remote was still getting signal. In one location there is a K band radar speed board so I know its always there so I ran them both the units each day past this radar site the radar is facing the oppposite direction of travel the remote nailed the signal almost half mile before the new one , once passed the radar the remote keeps picking up the signal good 1/4 to 1/2 mile longer then the new one. On the way back the remote again sniffed out the signal good 1/4 mile before the new unit in fact the new unit on the dash picked the signal when the radar board was clearly in site if it was real radar I would have been nailed thanks to the remote I had warning before even seeing the board

I was going to buy the Xtr 695SE it is the same unit as this one but with out the multi color display , and this is also a unit Whistler makes for walmart called 693SE all the same inside. Most reviews were pretty good its not a top of the line Bel or Escort but for cheap it works for me for travel , but I would think that the top of the line units from Whistler should be better then my 8 year old remotes maybe they didnt do any changes and just slap new form factors on the same old hardware

So my old Whistler remotes have little better sniffing power then this new one , for the price its not bad not worth more , for the higher price get a Bel or Escort I have owned both in the past and must better quality and performance but for travel if this one gets ripped off it wont hurt as much as a 500.00 Bel or Escort but again it dosnt work no where as good as those units

I recently used the Whistler XTR 690 SE on a trip from Michigan to Florida. The unit performed well, and identified police cruisers using radar between a 1/2 to 1 mile away. The unit does pick up a lot of automatic door openers on K band and you can shut off this band. However, I found that the Ohio troopers still use K band. The feature that identifies the frequency of the radar was helpful in sorting out the real and false alarms. I highly recommend this unit.

I've used this detector daily for 6 months now, here are my observations. This unit intermittently falses on K band for no apparent reason, full scale alerts. POP mode is useless, alerts like crazy, I keep it disabled. Although most reviewers of the SE series awarded high marks to the "Ka Max" mode, I find I get many false alerts with it enabled and the ID feature introduces a slight delay indicating the frequency of the Ka radar received, in normal mode the ID feature reacts quickly. I've encountered Ka police radar which didn't set any ID frequency so I question it's usefulness. X band performance is very good on the one occasion I encountered it. The ergonomics of this unit are great and the voice feature is excellent. When the unit isn't falsing it performs well. I have yet to detect any laser even false alarms. Because of the K band falsing issue I cannot recommend this unit, for a few dollars more the Beltronics v995 is a better performer and the Tech Mode ID feature works on all the radars bands.

Great tool for added peace of mind against tickets. This does not replace common sense and attentive driving, however. It has probably paid for itself already in the month or so that i have had it. I have noticed on a couple of occasions that the warning time for the presence of radar monitoring was pretty short, as in a quarter mile or less. So if this detector goes off and there are no automatic door openers around to cause a false alarm, you had better react fairly quickly. Don't ignore the detector alerting to the presence of radar, unless you know the area produces false alarms. The Ka band radar ID is useful for determining if Ka band radar warnings are actual police radar. The red LED readout is more readable in sunlight than the LCD used in the XTR-695 SE, although sometimes even the red LED is hard to make out in strong sunlight. Overall, this is a great detector, especially for the money. You can't get anything better for less money.