In honor of our old friend Brock Yates, the impresario of the legendary Cannonball Run, we use a system of one to five cannonballs to rank the detectors.

* * * ½   3.5 Cannonballs
 

Escort Solo S2

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Pros:  This is a battery powered detector, and therefore needs no power cord at all.  If you move frequently from car to car, the added convenience of cordless operation can be a real plus. Also, of course, ideal for motorcycle use. Essentially a sister unit to the Escort 8500 X50, it has most of the same capabilities.  More importantly, it has vastly greater range than any other cordless detector on the market.  Apples-to-apples, there’s nothing even close.  Lots of nifty features like a low battery warning and a really clever motion sensor that will turn off the detector automatically if you forget to when exiting the car, thereby conserving your batteries. Receives the new POP mode radar guns and incorporates invisibility to the VG-2 Interceptor radar-detector detector.  For whatever it’s worth, picks up the Safety Warning System transmitters, too. With the optional power cord, this unit can be plugged in just like its sister unit, the Escort 8500 X50.  If you want the most flexibility in operating scenarios, this is the detector to consider.

Cons: Although this is absolutely the strongest, longest range cordless unit on the market, any battery powered unit is inherently less strong than a comparable detector that plugs into your cigarette plug.  How come?  A top performer like an Escort 9500i or Bel Pro RX-65 would run a couple of AA batteries dead in just a couple of hours.  No one would find that appealing.  The geeks at Escort have done a brilliant job of reducing power consumption on this unit so that battery duration is a very respectable 50 to 60 hours.  In the process, however, those same engineering decisions take away some of the “horsepower”, so to speak.  Imagine a 505 horsepower Z06 that had to be reengineered to get 50 miles per gallon.  Inevitably, some horsepower would be lost.  Having said all that, this unit has about 80% of the same detection range of top performers like the Escort 8500 X50 and Bel Pro RX-65.  Since those units have roughly double the detection range of most units, the Solo S2 will still have longer range than most other plug-in detectors on the market. Does not have voice alert or a multiple threat/bogey counter.

Bottom Line:  If a battery powered detector suits your needs, this is absolutely the strongest unit in the cordless category.