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The Mark II version of the Escort 360 begs the question: how do you choose between this and the Max 360c?
The reasons why you should own and use a radar detector have been pretty well fleshed out by this point, but in case you need a refresher, here’s the TL;DR: between the cost of a speeding ticket and the commensurate rise in your insurance rates, a radar detector basically pays for itself if it saves you from a single moving violation. And with modern traffic seemingly moving faster than ever, you’re potentially courting a court date simply by keeping up with the Joneses. Sure, you can hope that just because the left lane is full of other cars doing 80 in a 55 you’ll have safety in numbers … but that’s what every zebra thinks until the lions single them out.
Deciding between all the options, though, can be a little confusing. Even within a single radar detector company, the different devices can seem all too similar. Take, for example, Escort, one of the biggest names in the space. Earlier in 2023, it rolled out the new Escort Max 360 MKII, which is exactly what it sounds like: an upgrade to the popular Max 360. The refresh brought with it a new look, a boost in detection range and a few other upgrades meant to woo existing owners into an upgrade and new owners into Escort’s arms.
The new upgrade is potent enough to beg the question: is it even worth spending extra on a pricier detector? To find out, I pitted the new Max 360C MKII against what, arguably, is its closest competitor: its sibling, the Escort Max 360c MKII.
Both of these radar detectors excel at helping attentive drivers avoid being nabbed for speeding; they’re sensitive almost to a fault, capable of a high degree of fine-tuning and customization, attach magnetically to a suction cup mount for easy removal and sync with your phone and Escort’s Drive Smarter app. Apart from their coloration, they’re almost impossible to tell apart.
The biggest — indeed, practically the sole differentiating point of value between them — is the 360c’s ability to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi, giving it the ability to seamlessly perform over-the-air updates and sync up with Escort’s crowd-sharing data app without interfacing with your phone. That’s probably not worth the $100 price gap between them … but constant widely available discounts that significantly close the gap make it a much more appealing proposition. The contest goes to the Max 360c – but only by a hair.
In their previous generations — call them the MKI models — the 360 and 360c each boasted a slightly different design. Not anymore: for 2023, the 360 moves, hermit crab-like, into the 360c’s shell. The buttons are slightly different shapes (on the outside, at least — I’d imagine the contacts below are in the same spots), but the screen and the sensor windows and just about everything else is identical.
The easiest way to tell them apart at a glance is color; the 360 is a rich dark blue, the 360c a stealth fighter gray. Not that anyone is buying a radar detector based on aesthetics, but to my eyes, the 360 is a better-looking product. I wouldn’t mind having that blue as a paint color on a car.
Generally speaking, there are two schools of thought when it comes to how sensitive a radar detector should be. Some folks want to hear it beep for every possible bogey to make absolutely sure they don’t get nabbed, even if that means they spend much of their drive being chirped at due to false alarms; other people are more willing to risk being nabbed if it means more peace and quiet and fewer false positives. Personally, I’m in the former camp, so I generally leave my detectors set close to a hair trigger.
Radar is everywhere on the roadways nowadays, what with practically every new car equipped with an active accident avoidance system and many also packing blind spot warning technology — both of which often spray radar waves everywhere. Luckily, both 360 and 360c are set up to filter out the riffraff frequencies and concentrate on the ones used by law enforcement. There are still a fair amount of beeps and chirps that seemingly belong to nothing, but sometimes those can be learning opportunities. It’s only through years of mysterious beeps that I learned many electronic road construction signs pack radar broadcasters, even if they’re not telling you your speed.
In my testing, both detectors were capable of picking up on Johnny Law with ample notice to slow down — in some cases, even a full mile or more before I reached the cop. The 360c seemed ever so slightly more acute in my tests, but that may be anecdotal; given the fact that most cars only have one 12-volt port, it’s hard to test two radar detectors at the same time. Both also suffer from a slight lag in terms of their arrows telling you the moment a radar source passes you, but ultimately that shouldn’t be a tactical concern; by that point, you’ve already slowed down. Regardless — either one of these will keep you informed about the radar around you.
Judge the two radar detectors solely on their official prices, and the $100 delta between the two feels like a heavy load to carry. That said, odds are good you’ll never actually pay the full freight $700 for the Max 360c MKII.
Hop on Escort’s website — or on Amazon, or on Best Buy — and you’ll see the 360c MKII listed at $640, just as it has been for some time now. At a difference of $40, the 360c doesn’t seem like a stretch — especially if you’re already paying for an on-board Wi-Fi subscription in your ride. It’s always nice to have the extra feature, in my book.
That said, while the Wi-Fi is certainly a nice addition for cars that have it (or even for people who park close enough to their home router to install updates when parked), I’d be lying if I said it was a must-have. I’ve been using Max 360c detectors for around a decade now … and I’ve yet to sync it up to the Internet. Do with that info what you will.
