Escort MaxCam 360c Long Range Testing

Yesterday I went out to do some testing with the new MaxCam 360c. Escort says it performs better than the Max 360c, but not quite as good as the Redline 360c, so I was curious to test and verify. Additionally I was curious if we finally have a radar detector / dashcam combo unit that, for the first time, uses a good radar detector.

Here’s the full lineup of detectors to test:

Top: Max 360c, MaxCam 360c, Redline 360c. Bottom: R7, Road Scout, V1 Gen2

Escort MaxCam 360c, fw 1.4 (Retail unit)
Escort Redline 360c, fw 1.9 (Provided by @Rags)
Escort Max 360c, fw 1.13 (Provided by Escort)
Uniden R7, fw 1.37 (Refurb provided by Uniden)
Valentine 1 Gen2, fw 4.1025 (Retail unit)
Cobra Road Scout, fw RScout08 (Retail unit)

Every detector set up similarly with X off, K on, Ka segged 2/4/5/6/8 (or equivalent), Ka filters off, and MRCD/CT off.

Reminder: This is only one test with one copy of the detector on one test course. The MaxCam I tested with is a retail unit with current public firmware. Traffic was light. I also encountered some weather which I’ll address in just a moment. No test, including this one, is designed to be the end all be all. This is just one set of datapoints while all the early test results continue to roll in. We need much more testing to get a sense of the big picture. YMMV.

33.8 Test Results

So right as we arrived at the test course, it started raining… We had a whole discussion about this recently. Rain does negatively impact range, but hey it rains a lot up here so what can you do? Obviously I’d rather test without rain, for multiple reasons, but we decided to setup and test anyways and see what happens. Maybe we can learn something regardless? Because rainfall changes over time, we’d cycle through the Max 360c, MaxCam 360, and RL360c with just one run each and then swap detectors after each run. (Thank goodness for the same mount and power cable!) It rained hardest in the beginning and progressively calmed down over the course of the test. After we finished 3 runs with each detector, it stopped raining. Because of this, we skipped testing the remaining detectors to avoid giving them an unfair advantage, and moved on to 34.7.

Here’s how 33.8 testing went:

MaxCam and RL360c both alerted just after the red barn. Max 360c didn’t alert until a later detection zone when the signal got stronger. So far it does indeed look like the MaxCam is more sensitive than the Max 360c.

Here’s a clip of the MaxCam in action.

You’ll see it alert after the red barn, briefly lose the signal, and then reacquire around where the Max 360c first picks it up. You’ll also notice the arrow transition was great when passing the radar course. All of the detectors had great arrow flipping when passing the radar car. I also liked the MaxCam’s rampup better than the RL360c. It was more progressive over time while the RL360c likes to go full tilt wayyy too soon.

34.7 Test Results

Since the rain stopped and the forecast called for a break in the rain, we decided to run all the detectors, again cycling between the main 3 while giving the other 3 back to back runs.

MaxCam did great, terrain limited right alongside the V1 Gen2, RL360c, and R7. Max 360c lagged behind again and the Road Scout was surprisingly close for 2/3 runs.

Here’s another MaxCam run so you can see it in action again.

35.5 Test Results

For 35.5, weather again mostly remained clear. There was a super light sprinkle for a few minutes during one or two runs, I forget which (and I can review the footage as needed), but it was very minimal and brief. Otherwise things were clear.

When I got back to the radar car though, the phone had fallen off the windshield and I was worried it moved the radar gun antenna, messing up my results. After reviewing the footage though, it only affected the last two runs, run 3 for the MaxCam and RL360c. I also noticed the antenna alignment only just barely moved, thank goodness. So the results should still be okay, but I’ve starred the in the test results for that reason. MaxCam results were very similar, RL360c result was close to its first run, but a bit better.

Here’s a clip of the phone mount falling.

On another note, it’s the first time in ages my radar car GoPro (and phone) have ever managed to not overheat and shutoff by the end of the test! Thanks to a cooler day, cloudy weather, and shorter test, haha.

Anyways, here’s the numbers:

So in this case, the MaxCam lagged behind the big 3: the V1 Gen2, R7, and RL360c. It also managed to again outperform the Max 360c and the Road Scout.

Based on just this very limited and imperfect test data, so far it does look like the MaxCam 360c does indeed outperform the Max 360c while sometimes, but not always, get closer to the RL360c.

It always beats the Road Scout. (This is a new Road Scout from the one I tested with previously. It had poor performance in previous testing so Cobra replaced it with a new unit. These are the results from the new unit. It still got scarily close to getting C/Owned against 35.5.)

Averaged Test Results

As a bonus, here’s the overall averages for each freq. Half the detectors are missing 33.8 runs of course, but just as a way to sorta summarize the available results. 🙂

I’d like to say the MaxCam is close to the other strong competitors on 33.8 and 34.7 and less so on 35.5, though it still beats the Max 360c on all 3 radar frequencies, at least looking at just this test alone, but I think we need a ton more data to draw any proper conclusions.

Either way, the new MaxCam 360c is looking very promising in terms of results and so far I can confirm that it outperforms the Max 360c and is able to sometimes hold its own relative to the Redline 360c.

Additional weather notes: Temperatures were 57-61 F. Humidity was 57%.

Finally a big thank you again to @ferius for helping with this testing and for his amazing RD Test app. It’s the reason I was able test and get the results up same day like this. (Testing way fewer detectors also helped a ton too, lol.)

For further discussion, here’s the full testing thread on RDF.