Product Review, GPS Angel Red Light/Speed Camera Warning System

Photo speed measurement was invented in the Netherlands in the 1950’s to measure speeds of race cars. It didn’t take long for the Dutch police to see the value of these devices as a traffic enforcement tool and in the 1960s Gatsos photo radar was introduced.

Gatso fever spread throughout Europe as governments and police agencies found an easy way to have motorists pour money into their treasury under the guise of traffic enforcement.

In the mid 80’s the first case Photo Radar Fever hit the US! Paradise Valley, a small affluent town wedged between Phoenix and Scottsdale, began using photo radar. Not long after the Photo Radar Bug infected the neighboring cities of Scottsdale, Mesa and Peoria.

Today the photo enforcement epidemic has spread worldwide and several devices have emerged to fight back.

Photo radar covers first, a thin piece of plastic film placed over the license plate that distorts the view of your plate. An effective way to beat the cameras; however these “ticket magnets” soon became outlawed.

Then photo blocking sprays advertised as a way to make your plate invisible to the cameras. In my testing and review, all these sprays are TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE and their advertising claims bogus.

Then the VF2 flash back device came out. Also ineffective and to make matters worse reported damage to electrical systems and even fire!

Finally an effective counter measure device utilizing GPS technology emerged in 2004.

These stand alone GPS devices have been retailing for around $245.00. But at this year’s CES show GPS Angel introduced their money saving alternative, retailing for less than $100.00 the V4e.

Is it worth it, I took it the V4e for a 200 mile spin around the Phoenix Metro area to find out.

My first impression was positive. A circular device measuring 2.5 inches round sits on your dash and plugs into your lighter. It looks nothing like a radar detector and has a series of LED’s that flash red when the device alerts.

A business card was attached to the package with a note indicating that the unit was recently updated with their latest database, so I plugged the unit in and headed out.

The red flashing LED lights of the V4e captured my attention as I approached my first fixed camera on I-10. However the faint V4e chirps was barley audible over the anchormans news report on my CNN XM radio.

This first group of cameras was installed earlier this year by the Arizona Department of Public Safety and I was pleased that the unit was alerting. However, unlike the Cheetah device which is programmed to ignore cameras opposite your direction of driving, the GPS Angel was alerting, along with other red light cameras on the surface streets in my general location.

I then headed north on I-17. In the vicinity of I-17 and Bethany Home Road there are two speed cameras that were also installed around the same period of the I-10 cameras, the GPS Angel was silent.

I then headed east on the 101 into Scottsdale. The city of Scottsdale agreed to remove their cameras set up along this route last fall. However the GPS Angel still had these six locations programmed into its database and alerted.

I then headed off to Peoria to check the red light cameras that would be along my route home. As I drove through the red light camera intersections of 83rd Avenue and Union Hills and 99th Avenue and Bell the GPS Angel was again dead silent.

During my 200 mile drive with the GPS Angel I logged the following:

• Proper alerts to fixed camera locations: 10
• Alerts to fixed camera locations no longer active: 6
• No alerts at active fixed camera locations: 4
• False alerts, no cameras within one mile: 3

The brain of any GPS photo enforcement device is their database and it is my opinion that the GPS Angel needs a brain transplant!

GPS Angel’s website does offers the ability for users to notify the company of new locations, however it’s been my experience that users often enter erroneous locations because they see something they think is a photo radar device, or competitors enter bad information to corrupt the data. So I assume that GPS Angel has a method in place to keep this “garbage” out of their database.

I have not inquired to as where GPS Angel obtains its database, but their device is labeled as being manufactured in China and is similar in appearance to the other devices that Tommy Chen of Rayee Technologies was hawking on the floor of CES.

During my interview with Tommy I asked where he was obtaining his photo enforcement database and he related that they program their own. I later learned from contacts that I have the industry that many of these overseas manufactures obtain their information from the Driving University’s website where users enter locations of speed traps. “Garbage in Garbage Out”, in reviewing their fixed camera data it contained massive amounts of inaccurate and dated information.

So you may ask, do I recommend the GPS Angel?

Well yes and no.

Currently it is the cheapest device out there retailing for around $100.00. However Cheetah is currently developing a new device that will also retail for around $100.00 and it is expected to retail later this spring.

So if you have a $100.00 bill burning in your pocket that you need to spend now, go for the GPS Angel and hope they fix their database. Or wait three more months for the début of Cheetah’s new unit which will utilize the Trinity database, the same database licensed to Beltronics and Escort who use it in their GPS equipped radar detectors.

UPDATE: The manufacture has commented to this post, to view please press the comments button