Affiliate Disclosure: As an Amazon Affiliate, Automoblog earns from qualifying purchases, together with the objects featured beneath. Cobra Electronics, an affiliate accomplice, provided the Street Scout seen right here. Automoblog is a member of the Radar Detector and Countermeasures Discussion board to make sure reality and accountability when masking radar detectors.
Radar detector or a touch digicam? How about each built-in into one unit? That’s the thought behind the Cobra Street Scout, a two-in-one driving companion with a 1080p HD sprint digicam and a radar detector. With the radar detector portion of the Street Scout, you possibly can modify the sensitivity of the X and Ok bands, mute false alerts, and mark areas like pace traps and pink gentle cameras. In the meantime, the sprint digicam provides a g-sensor and an emergency recording function.
We just lately spent three weeks driving round metro Detroit with the Cobra Street Scout. Sadly, my general opinion of this two-in-one combo is blended at finest. Having a touch digicam and a radar detector in a single unit is a horny proposition, however so far as the Street Scout is anxious, it’s a wonderful thought with below-average execution. On this evaluation, I’ll run by means of the Street Scout’s “spec sheet” and elaborate on my expertise with the unit a bit additional.
Why Purchase a Radar Detector/Sprint Cam Combo?
Insurance coverage suppliers and cable corporations are all the time speaking about the advantages of “bundling” your companies. And in so many phrases, Cobra Electronics has accomplished the identical factor with the Street Scout. Choosing one thing just like the Street Scout has three foremost advantages.
Buy Worth
Relying on which radar detector and sprint digicam you’re contemplating, shopping for a “bundle” just like the Street Scout could prevent a bit cash. As an alternative of shopping for two separate items, you buy one and hopefully keep away from spending further money. As of this writing, the Street Scout retails for $400 on Cobra’s web site and thru Amazon for a similar worth.
Saves Area
With a two-in-one combo just like the Cobra Street Scout, you don’t have to mount each a radar detector and a touch digicam to your windshield.
Don’t Have To Resolve
After I take my twice-yearly 900-mile drive from Michigan to South Dakota to go to household, I could make a case for mounting a touch digicam to my windshield. Likewise, I may make a case for desirous to have the safety and options afforded by a high-quality radar detector. The Street Scout offers you two fascinating objects in a single package deal – a radar detector and a touch digicam – for an extended journey like this.
Cobra Street Scout In-Depth: What It Provides
The Street Scout comes with a suction cup windshield mount (referred to as the “EZ Magazine Mount”), a 12-volt SmartCord USB energy wire (so you possibly can nonetheless cost your telephone), and a 16GB SD card and micro USB cable for the sprint digicam. A useful journey case and a fast reference information are additionally included.
Set up is straightforward with the windshield mount and USB adaptor wire. As soon as the Street Scout has energy, each the radar detector and sprint digicam are energetic. Regardless of having twin performance, the unit is surprisingly light-weight at simply eight ounces. The included mount simply secures the Street Scout to the windshield. It stayed put the complete time throughout my three-week drive.
The Street Scout is appropriate with Cobra’s iRadar app. With the app, you possibly can both report or obtain real-time alerts generated by a complete community of customers. iRadar alerts embrace pink gentle and pace digicam areas, pace traps, air patrols, photo-enforced areas, and different warning areas. Along with the iRadar app, the Street Scout can hook up with an in-vehicle Wi-Fi hotspot for software program and database updates.
Radar Detector
The Cobra Street Scout will provide you with a warning to X, Ok, and Ka radar bands and laser (LiDAR) weapons from the entrance and the rear.
Sensitivity Modes
Urgent the SEN button will will let you modify between three completely different sensitivity modes: Low, Excessive, and Auto. Throughout our three-week drive, we stayed in Auto more often than not, which is pace adjusted. As described by Cobra within the proprietor’s handbook, at 50 mph and above, X and Ok bands default to the utmost vary whereas the Ka-band detection vary is all the time at its most, whatever the sensitivity setting. That’s doubtless as a result of Ka is the commonest band legislation enforcement makes use of immediately.
Cobra’s precise verbiage right here could seem unusual utilizing the phrase vary, however we consider they imply sensitivity primarily based on their descriptions of different radar detectors of their product lineup.
In different phrases, the Low and Excessive settings on the Street Scout are much like Metropolis and Freeway on different radar detectors. Usually talking, you utilize Metropolis mode (extra filtering) to cut back the sensitivity of X and Ok bands to mitigate false alerts, whereas Freeway will increase the sensitivity (much less filtering) to every radar band to provide the most response time on the open highway. Auto is the speed-dependant mode that mechanically switches between Metropolis and Freeway, or Low and Excessive within the Street Scout’s case.
Show Indicators
The sensitivity mode seems on the underside center portion of the Street Scout’s show. The colourful show has a number of necessary “indicators” (as Cobra calls them). These indicators embrace GPS, sign band and energy, digicam and microphone, a scanning bar, and pace alerts (when linked to the iRadar app). You may change the frequency show function on through the settings menu should you like. In that case, the GHz measurement will seem beneath the sign band and energy indicator.
To entry the menu, maintain the SEN and BRT buttons concurrently. BRT is brief for brightness, of which there are a number of settings.
Detection Vary
One potential (if not important) downside is the Street Scout’s detection vary and response time. I acquired Ka alerts on two events solely to search out the patrol automobiles almost on prime of us. The primary was a Michigan State Police automotive on M-10 by means of Southfield close to Telegraph Street and the 696 interchange. The Street Scout picked up the officer’s Ka band from the rear, however just a few automotive lengths again. The second alert was from a Wayne County Sheriff deputy on Telegraph Street (additionally a Ka band). It was an analogous scenario: the deputy’s Chevy Tahoe was solely a brief distance away. In each situations, the Cobra Street Scout got here late to the get together.
It’s potential each officers have been doing what is called “instant-on” radar, a well-liked tactic legislation enforcement makes use of to beat radar detectors. Nevertheless, we have now pushed these areas right here in Detroit many occasions earlier than, particularly whereas evaluating and reviewing radar detectors. Extra just lately, we drove the identical areas with our Escort MAXcam 360c, one other two-in-one radar detector and sprint digicam combo. Against this, the MAXcam alerted a lot sooner and with a higher detection vary.
Sadly, the Street Scout leaves rather a lot on the desk concerning long-range detection. We surmise that is partly due to the value vary of the Street Scout ($400) versus one thing just like the MAXcam, which is double the value.
False Alert & IVT Filtering
Though detection vary is a matter, the Cobra Street Scout makes up for it by providing a strong false alert filtering system. The IVT Filter (or in-vehicle expertise filter) prevents any potential false alerts that could possibly be triggered by the superior security options on different autos round you. This contains radar-sensor-dependant programs like adaptive cruise management and blind-spot monitoring. Even in heavy Detroit visitors, the IVT filter works flawlessly.
Most spectacular was how the Street Scout is impervious to malls, purchasing plazas, grocery shops, and different comparable mounted location false alerts. In case you obtain a false alert, you possibly can silence it through the MUTE button on both the USB energy wire or the unit itself.
GPS Lockouts
This function by no means totally labored for me, and it turned one of the irritating issues concerning the Cobra Street Scout throughout my three-week drive round Detroit.
Within the proprietor’s handbook, underneath the “GPS Filter” part on web page 11, Cobra says the function lets you retailer mounted location false alerts to the Street Scout’s reminiscence. To retailer a false alert location, press MUTE thrice throughout stated alert, both on the unit itself or the USB energy wire. If you’re linked to the iRadar app, you may as well lock out these false alerts through your smartphone. Subsequent alerts to this sign will probably be muted and displayed in grey.
As of late, I’ve been making a day by day journey to the Grosse Pointe space of Detroit. On my means, I encounter a pocket of ongoing highway building on I-94 with digital pace restrict warning signage (the Street Scout flags it as a Ok band alert). Regardless of what number of occasions I lock that false alert out, it by no means works. I’ve hit the MUTE button (thrice, because the proprietor’s handbook says) on the USB wire and the unit itself. I additionally tried locking it out with my telephone by means of the iRadar app. No luck.
The false alert turned grey, simply as Cobra says within the proprietor’s handbook. Nevertheless, after I drove by means of the highway building zone once more, the Street Scout alerts as regular as if nothing modified. For no matter purpose, the lockouts don’t stick.
Primarily based on my expertise, the Cobra Street Scout struggles with digital signage. The gallery beneath contains three pictures of the John C. Lodge Service Drive in Detroit, a one-way road that runs north and south above the faster-moving M-10. The primary picture is an aerial shot from Google Maps, with the pink arrows representing the place two completely different digital pace restrict indicators are positioned (roughly). The opposite two pictures, additionally from Google Maps, present the indicators up shut.
The show turns grey when locking out a false alert. Nevertheless, I’ve but to get the lockouts to stay. A couple of days later, the Cobra Street Scout would situation an alert in its customary blue when driving by means of the identical space with the identical digital signage. It’s prefer it “forgets” manually imputed lockouts.
On this explicit space, you possibly can flip a perpetual circle on John C. Lodge should you drive as much as Forest Avenue, then again right down to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. By doing so, you’ll encounter each the digital pace restrict indicators within the picture gallery above.
I misplaced rely of what number of loops I did attempting to get the Cobra Street Scout to lock out each of those indicators. I consider it took about 4 or 5 passes to get the northbound signal to lockout and almost 10 to lastly lock out the southbound signal. Every time, the alert would flip grey as I locked it out. Nevertheless, it will return on the following go, lighting up in blue as if nothing occurred.
Ultimately, I used to be capable of lock out each of the digital indicators within the gallery above. For extra context, I made the loop I’m speaking about on a Friday afternoon. I waited till Monday to drive the realm once more to see if the lockouts caught. To my shock and disappointment, the Cobra Street Scout alerted me to each indicators, regardless of my locking them out the earlier Friday.
SD Card
The Cobra Street Scout comes with a 16GB SD card to retailer footage as you drive. Through the settings menu, you possibly can change the size of the recording loop between one, three, or 5 minutes (three is the default). Transferring video recordsdata from the Street Scout to your laptop computer is straightforward with the micro USB wire.
G-Sensor
The sprint digicam portion of the Cobra Street Scout features a g-sensor with three completely different sensitivity ranges (stage two is the default setting). Throughout an accident, the Street Scout makes use of the g-sensor to lock and retailer the recording mechanically. Holding the MARK button additionally initiates an Emergency Recording Mode.
App Connectivity
With the Drive HD app, you possibly can see what you’re recording in actual time in your telephone. In case you additionally wish to use the iRadar app, you possibly can change forwards and backwards between that and the Drive HD app. On the Street Scout, maintain BRT till both “CAMERA” or “iRADAR” seems. Nevertheless, it’s not essential to obtain the Drive HD app. Though you received’t see it in real-time, the Cobra Street Scout remains to be recording to the SD card so long as the unit is on.
Date/Time Stamp & Watermark
Because the Street Scout information, it is going to embrace a date and time stamp together with a Cobra emblem watermark. You may take away them through the settings menu.
Radar Band/Alert Integration
The sprint digicam portion of the Cobra Street Scout is really separate from the radar detector, that means it doesn’t file or log any alerts to the SD card. Admittedly, I want to see this performance on a future model of the Street Scout. It might be good to have the choice to show a function like this on by means of the settings menu. It might be neat to see the radar band, frequency, and sign energy displayed close to the date and time stamp on the video recording.
Ought to You Purchase The Cobra Street Scout?
That is the place my opinion and viewpoint on the Cobra Street Scout is blended. Primarily based on my expertise, my reply is between “probably, possibly” and a tough no. I don’t have a heavy proper foot, so the Street Scout’s detection vary, brief although it might be, might be sufficient for me. And I like how the sprint digicam is built-in into the unit for the two-in-one performance. Nonetheless, I’ve issue getting previous the dismal GPS lockout functionality of the Cobra Street Scout.
On the finish of my three-week drive, I consider the sprint digicam is greater than passable. Nevertheless, I’m not offered on the radar detector portion of the Cobra Street Scout. For a retail worth of almost $400, the restricted detection vary and lackluster GPS lockout efficiency depart me scratching my head. That’s some huge cash for a radar detector that doesn’t reduce the mustard.
In case you don’t want a touch digicam, then look elsewhere for a radar detector. Primarily based on my expertise, I’d not rely solely on the Street Scout for radar detection obligation. Different items in the marketplace do a greater job, and your cash is finest spent there. Having the sprint digicam is good, however not on the expense of a reliable radar detector. The Uniden R4 and Radenso DS1 are wonderful choices throughout the Street Scout’s worth vary, with higher detection vary and reliability.
Nevertheless, there are redeeming qualities to the Cobra Street Scout, particularly with its compact and light-weight, two-in-one design. If you’re offered on the Street Scout, you possibly can seize it on Cobra’s official web site for $400 or by means of Amazon for a similar worth.
Carl Anthony is the Managing Editor of Automoblog and the host of AutoVision Information Radio and AutoSens Insights. He’s a Midwest Automotive Media Affiliation member and on the board of administrators for the Ally Jolie Baldwin Basis. Like many Detroiters, Carl is holding out for a Lions Tremendous Bowl win.
