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 | Title : PNI Inc. RX5010 Radar Detector with Digital Altimeter and Compass
Author : PNI, Inc
Release Date : 20001017
Binding : Electronics
Regular Price : $199.99
Amazon.com Price : $149.99
(25
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Editorial Reviews :
Navigation has never been easier, thanks to Precision Navigation's RX5010, a radar/laser detector with a built-in altimeter and digital compass. The compass uses Precision Navigation's magnetic-sensor technology, radar and laser technology, and safety warning alerts. Both the altimeter and compass are accurate and reliable.
The RX5010 alerts you to all radar bands and provides 360-degree laser coverage. When no alerts or warnings are detected, the unit displays directional and altitude information with numeric digits and cardinal points (such as N, NE, and E).
Other features include a VG-2 sensor, which alerts you to the presence of radar-detector detectors, and Safety Warning System alerts regarding road hazards, emergency vehicles, and train crossings.
The unit plugs into a 12-volt lighter with the included power cord and comes with suction cups and Velcro tape for mounting either on the windshield or dashboard. This detector is covered by a one-year warranty.
Buyer Reviews :
Since I passed on the option of a pricey built-in compass in my 2001 Forester, this combination unit seemed perfect: a compass WITH an altimeter and radar detector at about half what I'd pay the dealer for the compass alone.
Sorry to say, a recent road trip from Philadelphia to northern Vermont and back convinced me that buying this unit was a big mistake. Here's why:
1. The compass: It's kind of a pain finding a place where you can make two complete calibration circles in a tightly packed city like Philadelphia, but I managed to get it done. The instructions for calibration are quite clear and I followed them to the letter. The compass seemed fine as I drove the 12 miles into work that day, but when I drove back home that night it registered almost nonstop 'DISTORT' messages, or indicated a direction I knew to be about 120 degrees off the correct heading. Well, I thought: OK; must be the urban environment. The next week we left for Vermont. I picked a fairly rural location to calibrate the compass again. And again, it seemed to work fine -- for a couple of hours. Then the DISTORT message came on again, to be replaced intermittently with a series of headings that again were patently false: showing us southbound on a northbound freeway, for example. We made it into northern Vermont that night and really could have used an accurate compass driving around some dark back roads trying to find our ski area. But the compass at that point could simply not be trusted. We recalibrated again at the start of the trip back, and once more the compass couldn't provide an accurate heading for more than a few miles at a time. Bottom line: the compass is absolutely useless.
2. Altimeter: The calibration instructions here were also quite simple and straightforward. I entered my starting alitude and drove into work, really enjoying the readout changing as I descended into Philadelphia. Emerging from work that night, I fired up the unit and noted that I was now approximately 250 feet below sea level. This seemed odd, since there hadn't been any significant weather change to indicate a shift in barometric pressure. But as my trip to Vermont and back also demonstrated, the altimeter requires constant calibration as weather conditions change. On a long road trip, you'd have to calibrate once when starting out and a couple more times during the day. Since calibration requires that you already know the altitude you're starting from, the altimeter becomes meaningless. I think you could rely on it to provide readings that are within 1,000 feet or so of your true altitude, but that means there are few areas along the Eastern Seaboard where the display would provide much useful information. Bottom line: the altimeter may be of some use in the West, but in the Northeast it's absolutely useless.
3. Radar detector: I can report that the radar detector seemed to work fine on the open road, twice alerting me to state troopers who showed up a couple of seconds after warning chirp. Since I wasn't actually speeding I can't say it saved me money, but it was comforting to know something on my new...unit was actually working. Unfortunately, a good portion of my trip took me through Massachusetts and Connecticut, where urban interference produced a large number of false alarms. I know you can reduce the sensitivity of the unit in such conditions, but I didn't feel like tinkering with it in expressway traffic. By the time I got home, the alarm had sounded so many times I simply ignored it. I was speeding by then, too, so for that particular trip I can't say the detector was a lot of help. Bottom line: the radar detector works fine, but you might as well shut it down along the Northeast Corridor -- the area is just too congested to allow much speeding anyway, and too full of false signals to help those who do...
Obviously, I really can't recommend the unit. While it may yet work as advertised under ideal conditions, once you become inured to all the erroneou back
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