Tested: BEL Pro GX65

Is GPS in a radar detector really a big deal? We use four vehicles, take two months and burn $780 worth of gas to find out.

[Last updated: 12/29/2009]

--Phoenix, Arizona

If you've been waiting for a GPS-enabled radar detector wearing the Beltronics (BEL) brand, it's here. The BEL Pro GX65 ($469.95) occupies the Beltronics lineup roughly opposite the equivalent Escort dash-mount GPS radar detector, the Passport 9500ix. With its genome shared with this Escort, and close in price, it would be natural to expect few differences between the two. But like a lot of assumptions, that one's a bit off the mark. There's a range of subtle differences in appearance, operation and features that gives each detector a unique personality.

The BEL GX65's black case is thinner than the Escort Passport 9500ix's and its speaker is on top, not the bottom. Like the 9500ix it has a double row of three top-mounted controls. But their shape and spacing differ from the Escort's, making them easier--for this writer at least--to locate and to press, without snagging an adjacent button in the process. With the Escort 9500ix, when rushing to mark a location it's possible to hit the power button and shut off the unit by mistake. With wider separation, the BEL GX65 controls are somewhat easier to locate by touch and to operate, particularly by those with XXL-size digits.

The task of button-location is also aided by the BEL GX65's more sharply-slanted upper housing, making the controls easier to see from the front, particularly when the unit is mounted high up. The font of their labels is also larger, making the BEL GX65's switches easier to decipher for anyone with less than 20-20 vision.

The Beltronics (BEL) GX65's high-intensity text display is red instead of the Escort Passport 9500ix's trendy blue and although it's canted back several degrees versus upright, as in the Escort 9500ix, it doesn't benefit from being inset and thus somewhat hooded. You won't notice this during daylight hours but at night the more-exposed display casts a wider area of light upward and onto the windshield. There it joins the reflection from the red-backlit switches to create a visual replica of itself on the glass.

But reflected light is somewhat less than that of the Escort Passport 9500ix as the intensity of the BEL's backlighting seems to be lower, regardless of the brightness level selected by the driver. Windshield glare can be sharply reduced or made to disappear entirely by selecting one of several user menu options for the display: An abbreviated "pilot" mode, either a single letter--an H for Highway, for instance--or dark mode with only a faintly pulsing red LED shown to verify status. Other options for discreet nighttime operation are also available.

This range of menu items allows the user to tailor the radar detector to personal taste, rather than the opposite. Menu items and selections are verified by voice prompts, letting you keep eyes on the road instead of scanning the display for confirmation.

One feature not found on the BEL GX65 that's standard on the Escort Passport 9500ix ($499.95) is Auto Learn. Pass the same microwave source--an automatic door opener, for instance--on three occasions and the radar detector locks-out the signal automatically. Next time you pass the location there will be no alert. With Auto Learn absent, you'll have to do some button-pressing and mark these locations yourself. Not a big deal but once accustomed to Auto Learn, its absence in the BEL is noted.

Knowing the BEL GX65's family history, it wouldn't be a leap of faith to guess that it's a pretty hot performer. But mindful of making another of those risky assumptions, we ran the BEL GX65 through our usual battery of tests. For comparison, a top-performing conventional (non-GPS) model, the Valentine One ($456 as tested, with options), was also tested. As always, retail samples purchased anonymously were used for the test.

Field Tests

Radar detectors able to spot these radars at five miles on straight, level roads often fail to alert at this site until the target is 650 feet away and already being clocked.

We used our desert Curve Test Site, a particularly difficult challenge. Here the radar vehicle is parked in mid-curve, its radar aimed uphill and at a 45-degree angle away from oncoming traffic. The police vehicle isn't visible until the moment the radar operator has already locked-in the speed of an approaching car, at about 650 feet. Watching the radar's target-speed display take a sudden dive makes it easy to tell when drivers belatedly spot the hidden police vehicle. With nothing to deflect the radar beam toward the detector's antenna, only extreme sensitivity--or X-ray vision--can deliver enough warning distance.

In this test both contenders delivered stellar scores. Although the BEL GX65 turned in excellent X-band performance, the Valentine One was the clear winner in X-band sensitivity. The two were within feet of one another on K and Ka bands, which are the only important radar frequencies in this country. (We would later find during an extended road trip that this prowess at detecting X band would plague the Valentine One.)

Urban False Alarm Test Setup

The next test checked their resistance to fixed radar sources in metro Phoenix. We used the same 87.4-mile-long route employed for our recent test of resistance to urban false alarms in the Escort Passport 9500ix and two Cobra GPS radar detectors, the XRS R10G and XRS 9960G. It includes 35.1 miles of 6-lane urban freeway into and out of the city core, zoned at 55 mph or 65 mph depending upon the location. Two more segments totaling 52.3 miles are comprised of city streets in Phoenix and Mesa, Arizona, zoned variously from 30 mph to 45 mph.

Both detectors spotted all of the radars from over 28,000 feet at the Straightaway test site. At the Curve Test site the off-axis radar beam shortened their range dramatically.

We circled this loop three times before beginning the test. On lap one we drove with the Valentine One powered up and placed in advanced logic mode, Valentine's term for city mode and designed to minimize falses. Each time the unit sounded an alert, the exact location was recorded along with the frequency (or frequencies, as this unit sometimes alerts simultaneously to X and K band in town, even when only one signal is present). We also noted the number of "bogeys" or total number of radar sources the Valentine One displayed at each location.

This lap was repeated with the BEL (Beltronics) Pro GX65 set to Auto mode. By using Auto NoX, which dials back sensitivity while also disabling X band, we could have shut off X band, or accomplished the same task by using Band Defeat, a user preference. This would have given the BEL a huge advantage. But the Valentine One has no similar user preference, verified by scrutinizing the owner manual, so in the interest of fairness both units were run in their factory-default settings.

We made two laps with the BEL GX65. On the first one we executed the identical routine as with the Valentine One, recording the same details of each false alarm. Here the BEL GX65's Tech Mode feature was used to identify the exact frequency of each alert. On the second lap we marked each location with the brief, three-tap sequence of button-pressing, to store it in memory. According to BEL, it would ignore these radar sources on future laps of the route.

Over our 86.5-mile-long city loop the non-GPS Valentine One (pink line) gave 50 false alarms, claiming to have spotted 92 different radar guns. BEL GX65 remained silent. This super-quiet operation is the big advantage of a good GPS radar detector.

The following day, using the same vehicle and personnel and starting at the same time, we made a fourth circuit, this with the Valentine One, and recorded its false alarms. The number and frequency of the sources were identical to those encountered the previous day-- nearly all of them door openers.

Next up was the BEL GX65, its settings unchanged. After completing an identical circuit, we had a direct comparison of their behavior in town. Valentine One: 50 total falses and 92 bogeys, BEL Pro GX65: 0 falses, 0 bogeys.

The disparity between total false alarms and total sources identified is due to the design of the Valentine One. Its two antennas frequently receive multiples of the same signal as it reflects from various nearby objects. At four Phoenix locations, for instance, it warned of seven to nine bogeys coming from all points on the compass as the signal ricocheted among buildings and vehicles. The bogey counter proved more accurate on the open road but in town, it can be annoying. Unfortunately, this feature can't be disabled.

Highway False Alarm Test

The last test examined the two detectors' behavior on a fast freeway blast from Phoenix to Mission Bay in San Diego and back, using two major freeways and an 85 mile-long stretch of two-lane state highway. For any good radar detector, this test should be a no-brainer. Over its 379 miles the route traverses a moonscape of Arizona desert; in California it crosses a swath of the lower Imperial Valley and a barren mountain range, much of it nearly devoid of human activity. No humans means no stores with automatic door openers. Light traffic means few encounters with polluting radar detectors in other cars.

We never operate two radar detectors in a vehicle at the same time since generally they interfere with one another. But the well-shielded Valentine One and the equally well-shielded BEL GX65 proved to be compatible when operated within inches of one another. The Valentine One was mounted in mid-windshield, the only option if its directional arrows are to work correctly. The BEL GX 65 was windshield-mounted near the left A-pillar. The Beltronics unit was set to highway mode and left there for the duration. Its settings were left in factory default with the exception of X band, which we disabled and Tec Mode, which digitally displays the frequency of the radar signals received. (Deactivating a radar frequency is a three-step sequence using a pair of adjacent buttons. It takes 10 seconds.)

On this trip we didn't want X-band detection. Although there's a comparative handful of X-band radars still being used, they're common only in Ohio and New Jersey. With rare exceptions, the devices most frequently using X-band today are automatic door openers. There seems to be a million of them, so many that if you get an X-band alert anywhere else in the country and if you're in or near an urban area, it'll probably be a door opener. Lately we've taken to calling some radar detectors with amped-up X-band performance Supermarket Detectors, as they detect vitually nothing else in 48 states.

Valentine One gave 84 false alarms and reported 133 radar guns. Only seven were real.

There's one exception, though: Cellphone towers. These increasingly employ microwave-frequency repeaters that blanket the countryside with X-band signals. In the desert Southwest, the height of the transmitter towers and the nearly-flat topography combine to propagate the signal considerably.

The Valentine One's red-hot X-band sensitivity led it to detect what must be every cellphone tower between Phoenix and San Diego-- twice, both outbound and returning. The nature of the alerts was a bit annoying. There'd be an initial alert that lasted a few seconds until the mute button could be pressed. (The V1 has no auto mute function like the BEL GX65; the button must be pressed for every new encounter.)

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. After a pause there'd be another alert, usually when the road's elevation increased slightly and the signal was regained. The mute button would be pressed again. A few seconds later another alert. Another press of the mute button. In the low mountains of western Arizona a single cellphone tower resulted in the Valentine One alerting 11 times over a 19-mile stretch of interstate, six while approaching and five more after passing it, as the V1's rear antenna enabled it to detect the tower at a nearly-equal distance.

All told, the mute button was pressed 86 times during this trip. To help quiet the Valentine One, while driving within metropolitan areas we placed it in Advanced Logic mode in an effort to limit false alarms. About 10 percent of the total miles were driven in this mode. The BEL GX65 wasn't allowed similar preferential treatment, though, and was left in highway mode--at maximum sensitivity and not recommended for urban use--for the duration.

Over the next two days we encountered seven police radars: two K-band and five Ka-band. There were no close calls and both detectors gave plenty of warning, even against the ubiquitous instant-on radar.

False-Alarm Resistance

The two exhibited markedly different behavior, however. In unfiltered highway mode (called All Bogey mode), the Valentine One is designed to report each signal without thoroughly scrutinizing it first to weed out non-police radar sources. Aside from cellphone towers, nearly all of the Valentine One's alerts were triggered by radar detectors in passing cars.

During the trip it alerted 91 times and reported 133 separate radar signals. This meant receiving one false alarm, on average, every seven minutes during the two-day journey. Aside from wearing on our nerves, the frequent alerts led us to wait before reacting to X and K, knowing that statistically, it was almost certainly a false alarm.

A contemplative pause before making a decision is not recommended, however. Even a one-second delay can sometimes mean the difference between avoiding a ticket and getting nailed.

In contrast, on the outbound trip the Beltronics GX65 alerted to two K-band non-police radar sources, both of them door openers. Each was locked-out and on the return trip, the unit did not alert to either. On every other occasion when the BEL GX 65 barked a radar alert, it was warning of police radar. In comparison, dealing with 84 false alarms from the Valentine One made it a rather labor-intensive device and a somewhat vexing traveling companion.

The BEL delivered one other service during the trip: it warned of 11 photo enforcement cameras, all of them in California. Six of these were red light cameras in San Diego, a city in which the writer lived during 2001-2002 and knows well. But these particular cameras arrived beginning in 2003 and each came as a nasty surprise to the return visitor.

A bigger surprise was the flash along eastbound I-10 that greeted our return to Phoenix, courtesy of one of the dozens of speed cameras being installed along freeways here, a former governor's ill-conceived plan to help balance the budget. This was one of the few that had been activated up to that time and it was so new that it hadn't been entered into the GX65's database. For that matter, it hadn't been active when we'd passed it mere days earlier. We belatedly handled that task manually but now await the $180 ticket in the mail. (In our ground-breaking recent test, the BEL and Escort Defender speed-camera database trounced the competition in both accuracy and timeliness of data updates.) BEL charges $29.95 for a three-year database subscription with weekly downloads provided.

Can't justify nearly five bills for a radar detector? Better do the math. If we'd been nailed by just three of these 11 cameras, instead of only one, the tab--including the fines, court fees and three years' worth of insurance surcharges--would total $1,644. (California's photo enforcement tickets vary, from $330 and up.)

And it doesn't take long to collect a briefcase-full of tickets. In a notorious recent case, a visitor unfamiliar with photo enforcement was flashed by the Phoenix cameras so often that Highway Patrol officers showed up at the door and led her away in handcuffs.

With those economics, we look at this GPS-enabled radar detector as an insurance policy--against surreptitious government-imposed road taxes collected via photo enforcement.

Oceanside (CA) red light camera shows the classic rear-end collision common to camera enforcement. Data box in upper right corner shows light had been red (R007) for 0.7 second at the moment of impact.

There's a safety benefit as well. Rear-end collisions always increase where photo-enforcement cameras appear, usually by 25 percent or more. Advance warning not only allows time to check your speed and traffic light status, but also your mirrors. The last place you'll want to find yourself is first in line, stopped at a red light.

Former Governor Janet Napolitano's photo-flash homecoming for us illustrates that GPS-enabled radar detectors aren't foolproof. But they're still a major advance in technology over conventional detectors. Those orbiting satellites also make the new BEL GX65 the quietest radar detector--by a huge margin--we've tested at this price point and definitely one of our favorite traveling companions, especially in speed camera-infested locales.

Looking for something else? Go directly to: More of the latest radar detector reviews Action Video: How Radar Works How to get the most from your radar detector