Cobra XRS 9970G – Bargain GPS Radar Detector
The Cobra XRS 9970G is the current top of the line radar detector from Cobra Electronics. It’s a GPS enabled radar detector that promises to keep you protected from not only police radar and laser, but also from red light cameras, speed cameras, dangerous intersections, and known speed trap locations using an onboard GPS chip and a constantly updated database of known locations.
There isn’t a whole lot of competition in the GPS radar detector game, but there are a few models that we can use for comparison. The Beltronics GX65 and the Escort Passport 9500ix are two examples of competing devices. The Cobra costs about half of the other two units and delivers a surprising amount of functionality for the price.
The Cobra detects all the current police radar bands used in the USA today. It has respectable performance on X, K and Ka bands, and will also detect police laser guns. The Cobra also brings a bunch of GPS features to the table. First off, the XRS 9970G will display your current speed during alerts. This allows you to see your speed and all the alert information on one screen, instead of looking at your speedometer and then looking at the radar detector. This device comes preloaded with the locations of speed cameras, speed trap locations, red light cameras, and dangerous intersections and will warn you as you approach one of these locations. The unit has the ability to lower sensitivity to filter out false alerts when you are traveling slower, and will increase the sensitivity as you drive faster.
The display on this radar detector is quite nice. It features a 1.5 inch full color touchscreen LCD. The Cobra’s large size allows the device to show a lot of information at once, and when you get alerted to a radar source, it can display the police radar band, your current speed, the signal strength of the radar source, and the frequency of the radar source all at one time. You can also set the color of the display to match the interior of your car by using one of the preset color themes. You can select red, blue, orange, green, or full color.
The only feature lacking on this model that the competitor’s units have is the ability to lock out a false alarm signal based on location and frequency. Both the Beltronics GX65 and the Escort Passport 9500ix contain this feature and it really helps to filter out false alarms at known locations. Hopefully Cobra will add this functionality to the next version of this excellent radar detector.
All of these features together pack quite a punch, especially at its low price point. If you are a casual speeder looking for radar protection, you should definitely take a look at the Cobra XRS 9970G.
