As most of us know, Valentine One vs. Passport 8500 vs. whatever has had MANY threads here on Maxima.org. Sorry, but I need to add one more. Anyways, as most of us know by now, Motor Trend declared the Passport 8500 the winner over the V1 by a measly 0.1-point and of course Escortradar.com and Escortstore.com are claiming "Winner of the Motor Trend 2004 Detector Test".
I'm a DIE HARD fan of my V1, so I seriously looked into the article because before I had never believed the biased BS of radartest.com and lots of other clearly anti-Valentine reviews. I like MT since I believe they are pretty non-biased plus they used Speed Measurement Laboratories(
www.speedlabs.com), so I thought well if they gave it the nod maybe it's time to dump the V1 and switch to the Passport 8500.
So, I look at how SML tested and finally rated the detectors. Upon reading, SML chose 10 tests and MT chose the "weighting" of each and added 3 subjective categories as below:
Objective(STR = Straight, OTH = Over The Hill):
Band Type/V1 score/E8500 score/Weight
1)X STR/5.00/5.00/5<~~~~~~Tie
2)X OTH/5.00/3.30/5<~~~~~~V1
3)K STR/10.00/9.50/10<~~~~~~V1
4)K OTH/10.00/9.60/10<~~~~~~V1
5)KA STR/10.00/10.00/10<~~~~~~Tie
6)KA OTH/10.00/10.00/10<~~~~~~Tie
7)Combined REAR/6.00/6.00/6<~~~~~~Tie
8)LASER/10.00/7.20/10<~~~~~~V1
9)Invisibility/10.00/9.50/10<~~~~~~V1
10)POP mode/3.00/6.00/6<~~~~~~Pass8500
Raw Score: V1=87.75, Pass8500= 85.85
Subjective:
11)Ergonomics/4.00/5.00/5<~~~~~~Pass8500
12)Features/4.75/4.75/5<~~~~~~Tie?!?!?!?
13)Value/7.00/9.00/10<~~~~~~Pass8500
TOTAL(100pts.): V1= 94.75, Pass8500=94.85
These results show the Pass8500 won by 0.1pt for the TOTAL(combined Objective and Subjective tests), however the V1 clearly won the objective, ie PERFORMANCE, category by ALMOST 2pts~! So, that means the Pass8500 surpassed the V1 in the SUBJECTIVE categories, which are Ergonomics, Features, and Value. Ok, I'm not sure about you however I myself would rather have a better PERFORMING radar detector then a smaller/lighter or cheaper(~$100) detector, but that's up to the buyer which varies more then the damn MT staff testers!
Ignoring the PERFORMANCE vs. subjective importance, I noticed an inconsistency with their ratings. According to MTs' statement, "In each category, the top-scoring unit gets the maximum number of points with the remaining units scored against the category winner on a percentage basis.". Ok, they followed this rule in every category EXCEPT the "Features" category, where they did NOT give anybody the "top-score". Instead, they gave BOTH the Pass8500 and the V1 4.75 out of 5 points. Now, I've only used the Pass8500 once, but I'd be hard pressed to believe that the Pass8500 has more "Features" then the V1 ESPECIALLY with the arrows and bogey prioritization. Either the Pass8500 gets the full 5.00 or the V1, but then again it's SUBJECTIVE and to me not all that big a deal, however I'd be willing to bet MT would give the additional 0.25 to the V1 making the final score V1=95.0, Pass8500=94.85. Small difference still, but 0.15pts. is more then the final 0.1pt difference MT's "TOTAL" differed by in the magazine and all the Escort "supporters" are jumping up and down about.
MT recommends the Pass8500 "a slight nod" over the V1 for its "$100 lower price" and "ability to add Passport's optional ZR3 laser-shifting technology", which is a $500 option for a grand total of $800 for the Pass8500+ZR3. Although the V1 clearly outperformed the Pass8500 in performance, ie OBJECTIVE category, the $100 premium IN THEIR OPINION for the V1 isn't worth the additional X, K, Ka, and Laser protection over the Passport 8500, however the Pass8500 w/ZR3 laser-shifting is worth the $400 premium for laser immunity..
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