Uniden Releases R/TACH Radar Detector App

Uniden has finally released their own native app for their Bluetooth compatible detectors including the R4/R4w, R8/R8w, and R9/R9w. The free app is called R/TACH and is available for download on iOS (available now) and Android (coming soon).

It was just released this week and I’ve just started playing with it. Here’s a look at the app’s features and my initial impressions.

Key Features:

• Change your detector’s settings
• Display alerts including band, direction, and signal strength
• Mute/unmute the detector
• Manually lock out signals
• Display RLC’s, speed cams, and user marks on a map
• Notification of available firmware updates, but doesn’t update the firmware
• Configure WiFi for R4w, R8w, R9w

Pairing to Detector

The app connects to your detector via Bluetooth. You’ll want to enable Bluetooth on your detector, turn on BT pairing in your detector, then search for your detector in the app and connect to it via the app.

Note: The detector can only connect to one app at a time so be sure to disconnect and any third party apps before connecting Uniden’s R/TACH app.

Main Screen & Menu

Once you’re up and running, there’s two main displays for the app. One shows your speed, detector mode, altitude, and battery voltage. The other shows a map of your location.

Alert Display & Controls

When your detector alerts, you’ll see the signal pop up on screen.

It displays the primary signal’s direction, band, frequency, and strength on screen.

When there’s multiple signals present, it’ll show the direction, band, and strength (but not frequency) of up to 3 more signals underneath the primary signal.

Additionally you have buttons to mute/unmute the detector, and to manually lock out this signal.

RLC / Speedcam / User Mark Display

Uniden also mentions that the app can alert you to known red light camera and speed camera locations. Browsing around the map, I’m not seeing any show up the way we see in other apps like Google Maps and Waze. I wonder if they only show up when you approach them or if it’ll be added in a future version of the app.

Uniden also mentions that the app will alert you to user marks as you approach and Uniden provides two example screenshots in the app store.

I’d like to see some UI tweaks like controlling the map orientation, whether you want north up or direction of travel up. Currently there’s no way to adjust this.

Change Settings

Speaking of buttons, tap the button with the four squares in the top left and you’ll pull up the menu. You’ll see options to change your detector’s settings as well to check for available firmware updates.

Let’s start with settings. The app gives you the options to view and change all the different settings in the detector. I find this to be much more convenient than doing it from the detector itself.

UI-wise, there’s a few tweaks I’d like to see for choosing your settings. For example, here’s some adjustment options for creating a custom K Block.

For most options (left) you can scroll through the available options and choose what you want, but you have to hit the blue “SET” text to choose it. If you scroll through and choose your option and then move onto the next setting without hitting “SET,” it won’t select that option. I’d like to see the “SET” option removed and letting us simply scroll to select.

Similarly in order to set frequency cutoffs (right), you use a slider. For some it might be a bit tricky to get it exactly where you want, so I’d also like the option to type in numbers manually.

Also it’s worth noting that you will need to run newer firmware in order to be able to adjust settings.

On the R8 and R9, for example, if you’re running firmware 1.28, the app won’t recognize your detector’s settings or allow you to adjust them. However, if you update either detector to firmware 1.35, everything will work properly.

On the R4, the current firmware is 1.30, but the app can’t adjust settings with that version and there isn’t a newer version of the firmware available yet at the time of publishing.

You can download the latest firmware updates from Uniden’s website.

Firmware Updates

Speaking of firmware updates, the app has the ability to go out and check for newer firmware versions and indicate if one is available. When there’s an update available, you’ll see a new icon at the top of the screen, the one with the detector and the red arrow to the left of the bluetooth icon.

This’ll bring you to the firmware update page where you can get more information. On the left is an R8 running firmware 1.28, and it’s telling me the latest version is 1.35. On the right is an R8 running 1.35 which is the latest firmware.

Unfortunately though, unlike other detectors like the V1 Gen2 and Radenso DS1 that offer apps (V1connection for iOS and Android and Radenso Nexus for Android, respectively) that allow us to update our detectors over Bluetooth, the Uniden app doesn’t let us update our detectors over Bluetooth. It simply shows us when an update is available.

You’ll still need to download Uniden’s update software for your computer and update the traditional way.

WiFi Controls

If you’re running a newer detector with WiFi including the R4w, R8w, or R9w, on the other hand, you’ll be able to get firmware and GPS database updates wirelessly over the air. Given how problematic the update process can be using your computer, I like the fact that there’s now an alternate option to update the firmware.

I have an R4w and R8w on the way and once they arrive, I’ll share more regarding the pairing process and update experience.

Features I’d Like to See

This is the first version of the app and I think it’s off to a good start, but there’s several features I’d like to see added in future releases:

• Firmware Updates over Bluetooth like the V1 Gen2, Radenso DS1, TMG, and ALP: This is the biggest one for me personally. Transferring files over Bluetooth may be slower than WiFi, but the convenience of OTA updates is excellent, especially considering the long standing difficulties people encounter with Uniden’s computer update software. I’d also like to see a more obvious notification pop up when an update is available, especially when you’re running the app backgrounded.
• Audio Alerts: Option to duplicate radar detector alerts via the phone. Helpful for motorcycle riders who can’t easily hear the detector, but can connect their headsets to the phone and listen to radar detector alerts that way.
• Alert Logging: Save a history of previously encountered radar and laser alerts for future reference and analysis.
• CarPlay Integration: I’ve seen a lot of requests for this, but after using Escort’s Drive Smarter app with CarPlay, I don’t find it to be that necessary to duplicate the radar detector’s alerts on my car’s display. It can be nice as a marketing checkbox though.

Compared to Third Party Apps

There are already several third party apps available for both Android and iOS, and honestly I think those are all more useful than Uniden’s native app.

Uniden’s app is (currently?) the only app that lets us set up our Wi-Fi connectivity on newer detectors. It also let’s you change all of the detector’s settings, something you can also do on Highway Radar for Android, but there’s more limited controls on apps the Radar Companion apps and especially V1Driver on iOS.

When driving though, I think the third party apps are better because they add features like additional false alert filtering capabilities and alert logging.

It’s similar to the V1 Gen2 where we use Valentine’s native app mostly for firmware updates and then the more fully featured third party apps while driving. With the Uniden app, I think it’s best just for initial Wi-Fi setup and maybe some settings changes, and then we also use the third party apps while driving.

This may change over time if Uniden adds some additional functionality, but these are my thoughts here at launch.

You can download R/TACH on the app stores for iOS and Android (coming soon).