- Updated: February 2, 2023
- By: Ivan Gordiyenko
You’ve heard of Waze before, right? Well it’s likely that you haven’t heard of the Escort Live Radar app. Depending on your curiosity about radar detectors, if you want to maximize protection against police radar, you not only need the best radar detector for where you live, but also a way to see where other peoples detectors have been going off.
In theory this sounds like a dream come true. “A network of detectors that notify each other via an app”. There’s no way police can get you now, right?
Well, not everything works exactly as its theorized. Keep reading to get the “full scoop” of what this application is and whether its worth it or not.
What is the Escort Live Radar app?
Escort is arguably the biggest and most popular company that sells radar detectors. They have been around for over 20 years and over time, they have built-up a reputation that is of decent quality and proper radar detection potency.
As far as I’m aware, they were the first to release Escort Live Radar app on both iOS and Play Store over 10 years ago. Their radar detectors when paired with bluetooth modules worked together with the application and as a result, alerts were automatically uploaded to the app to be shown publicly to anyone else using the application.
Since then, the Escort Live app has gotten much better and on top of all that, they are somewhat comparable to Waze in terms of functionality.
Escort Live Radar utilizes Cloud Tech
Just like everything else nowadays that is on your phone and computer, the “cloud” in a nutshell, is just someone else’s computer.
When it comes to Escort Live Radar, all the alerts and notifications get exchanged back and fourth between the phone and the separate database where everything gets sent to.
When your contribution from the app gets sent to the external server (cloud), others will be able to see it on their app as a result, keeping the main function of this application alive.
While nowhere as potent as Waze, the Escort Live Radar application has a fairly large community of users behind it. Especially around more populated areas, there’s a decent amount of activity from other users.
Where can you download the application?
Whether you are an apple, or an Android user, you can download either one from their play stores. It’s not a heavy file, so expect a download within 10-15 seconds.
Despite the app being free to download, if you want the full benefits of this application, it will cost you money. Below, I’ve broken down what you get the Escort Live Radar app on both FREE and PAID versions.
What the BASIC account gets you
Once you download the app for your device, signing up is easy and takes less than 1 minute to do. You enter your name, password, email, and then you confirm the account from your email address to complete the login process.
The application is somewhat like Waze in terms of looks, however the user interface could look better.
Right off the bat, I saw a few alerts in the area such as “Air Patrol“, “Stationary Police“, “Red Light Camera“, and alerts to certain traffic patterns.
The interface from the map shows you your GPS speed, volume, traffic details, and the ability to tag an alert to the spot you are passing.
If you don’t want to see the map, you can tap on the “Dashboard” tab up top and see a digital, analog speedometer that shows the posted speed limit, your speed, and a compass.
What the PREMIUM account gets you
The premium version of this app costs $4.99/month or $49.95/year. When you buy a compatible Escort radar detector, you can get the premium version free for 1 to 12 months (depending on what is being offered at that time).
Right off the bat, you won’t notice that much of a difference between basic and premium, until you pair a radar detector to the application. Once you do, your detector will automatically send alerts to the cloud and populate the screen on your phone on how you can address the given alert.
In a nutshell, with the premium version, there’s a bit more automation included when you have the whole setup.
The only question here is, is it worth it?
How's their customer service?
Escort is a large company, so their customer service number is posted on their site. With that being said, when it comes to getting support for the application, it’s on-par with most other big corporations.
The toll-free number (1-800-964-3138) works great to get problems addressed within a reasonable time frame, however like most customer service call centers, they are open during normal business hours.
The one place you can get help 24/7 is their online chat area where you can ask questions and get support relatively quickly.
Overall, no complaints in the customer service realm of things.
Bottom Line. Worth it?
In conclusion, if you run an Escort radar detector and you want more features beyond what your detector and Waze can do, I don’t see why not. Especially if you just recently bought your compatible radar detector and it comes with the a few months FREE of Escort Live, definitely consider connecting the devices together when you take any medium to long drives.
With that being said, is Escort Live Radar worth the premium dollars? I’d say not yet, there are other apps that are of better value.
The concept of this radar detector app is exceptional, however, there’s simply not enough users.
That’s the main thing it comes down to.
Since Cedar Electronics acquired both Escort and Cobra brands, they have been working hard at integrating the Escort Live feature into not just their detectors, but also their dash cameras and police scanners.
We will stick to Waze, but that will be subject to change as Escort brings in more users (hopefully).
If the Escort Live app doesn’t float your boat, consider taking a look at the JBV1 app for Android. Imagine if you took Escort Live, added Waze, and combined it with the Valentine One, a match made in heaven.
