Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 - Absolutely Positively Perfect?!

If you read up on the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450, the radar detector looks absolutely amazing on paper. It seems to do just about everything you can expect a top-end radar detector to do, or at least what Rocky Mountain claims it to be. Then you've got Rocky Mountain's scrambler system integrated into this system (Which sets it apart from the RMR-D550) and boosts the MSRP up by $50 compared to the cheaper RMR-D550. The scrambler is supposed to jam X, K, Ka, and laser bands. Wow! The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 seems to be absolutely perfect! But when I witnessed one in action in a 1995 Camaro Z28, how did it stack up in the real world?

-Price-
*The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 has a fairly steep $350 MSRP. It can be purchased for less over the internet. But once again, the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 delivers exactly what you'd expect from Rocky Mountain Radar. The device offers lackluster performance. It doesn't do anything when it comes to jamming police radar, and it certainly doesn't do a good job in actually detecting it. It's a joke to pay around $300 for this radar detector... Heck, it's even a joke to pay over $100 for this thing! When placed in the $300+ range, it comes into competition with the Escort Passport X50, Valentine One, and Beltronics Vector 995 or Bel Pro RX65. When compared to any of those detectors, the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 is clearly blown straight out of the water! Even though it's a popular detector via eBay power sellers, it should be popular with cops since they know you'll be an easy target.

-Performance-
*Daaaaaannnnggggg! The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 looks to be absolutely gorgeous on paper. Rocky Mountain Radar claims that it has lots of great capabilities alongside scrambling of all police bands! Theoretically speaking, this would smoke the Valentine One or even a remote system... But there is paper, and then reality. Here is how the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 stacked up in real-world situations.

Unfortunately, he didn't let me mount my Valentine One or any other detector alongside this detector. So all tests were done based on the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 itself.

X-Band
*X-Band is just about never used in this area. It's used by the Chicago Police Department, but none of the testing was done in the Chicago city limits. So therefore, we were only limited to very strong X-Band emitting sources. We took the good ol' Camaro up on IL-60 where there is the trusty X-Band emitter which brings any detector up to full strength. The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 gave a fair amount of warning. A higher-end detector would've given substantially longer warning time, but the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 gave enough time to slow down and avoid a speeding ticket. If you live in an area where X-Band is heavily used, the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 might be somewhat useful. But when there are other bands present, the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 fails miserably.

K-Band
*K-Band is the most heavily used police radar band. Our K-Band bogey was encountered on Lake Cook road, where it was a busy six lane straight road. The cop was sitting in the median. At the time, there was moderate traffic. The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 provided poor K-Band detection. It was only enough time to slightly adjust your speed, but if you're doing 15mph+ over the speed limit, you're good as gone. Overall, the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 will detect K-Band efficiently enough if you're doing under 10mph above the posted limit (or the speed at which they pull you over). If you drive a lot faster, you would want to have a better detector. Since K-Band is so widely used, it's your best bet.

Ka-Band
*Ka-Band is the newer but less widely used radar band. It's significantly wider than X and K bands which make it harder to detect. This is what sets apart the cheap radar detectors from the real deal. It's also what separates you from driving happily versus having the government take money out of your pocket. When it came to Ka-Band, we encountered a cop monitoring traffic in Northbrook, Illinois. The cop was sitting using steady stream Ka-Band on IL-68. The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 gave almost no warning to the cop. It began to sound the alerts when you could already see the front of the cruiser. This was absolutely pathetic. If you're driving fast, you'll be clocked before the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 starts going off. If you live in an area which widely uses Ka-Band, you're screwed.

Laser
*Laser is the most feared tool of traffic enforcement since once you're hit, you're already clocked. Also, once your radar detector goes off, you're already clocked. So there's no difference whether you're using a Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 or Valentine One... Well... For most part. If the cop misses or you have a defracting license plate cover, you might still have a chance to survive if your detector warns you. Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 claims that has ALT (Adaptive Laser Tracking) which improves laser performance. This is rather strange since laser is just light, and it's always instant-on. The only thing that would matter is if the radar detector has a larger field-of-view. I saw 904nm laser performance on the RMR-D550, and that proved to be crappy despite the ALT that Rocky Mountain Radar claims to be great. So you can only figure that the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 will also prove to be incompetent.

JAMMING RADAR
*The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 claims to jam X, K, Ka radar bands... This is a godsend for anyone who is lead footed and can't afford to get pulled over. But how well does it work? I had the time of my life when we were driving on the North Shore. We began to receive an X-Band alert and up ahead I saw a very old speed post. It was using X-Band and posting the drivers speed! Since X-Band is the oldest radar band, I'm sure that this "scrambler" in the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 could easily take care of that anctient old radar gun! I kept my eye on the posted speed, it was there... The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 wasn't effective at all at jamming that very old device. Since it can't jam an old X-Band speed post, what makes you think that it can jam higher tech K and Ka band guns that now use DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technology?! Hahaha. Just when you think it jams radar guns and you feel like speeding past a cop thinking you're invincible, you should just pull over to the shoulder because the cop will be right behind you.

JAMMING LASER
*When it comes to jamming laser, you don't need to try it out in the real world to see if it works. All you need to do is look into a college physics textbook and do a little research on Rocky Mountain Radar on the internet. Rocky Mountain Radar claims that these scramblers are capable of jamming laser by emitting some kind of light "forcefield" in front of the vehicle. This is supposely done by LED diodes on front of the unit. Sounds neat? Not really.

But wait a minute? When a light wave passes through another light wave, don't they interfere? Yes. They interfere with each other until they are no longer in contact with each other. This means that if the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 was actually high quality enough to offer high powered diodes to jam the 904nm light wave, the cop's light would pass into the field, interfere, leave the field being unchanged, ultimately clocking the car with absolutely no problems. Also, Rocky Mountain Radar doesn't take into account that the windshield can refract, defract, or stop the light from passing all together.

Today's laser jammers have LED diodes implanted into the grilles or license plates of the vehicle. They are also much more expensive than the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450. They use diode materials such as gallium arsenide and others which are much more powerful than the cheap crap you'd find on the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450. These jammers also aren't always 100% effective. So what makes you think that a detector that doesn't make any physical sense would effectively jam a lidar gun?

*Overall, the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 is a very weak performer and doesn't jam any police radar or laser guns whatsoever! You'll get better performance from a cheap Bel Express... And when it comes to other detectors in this price range, they will clearly blow the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 away!

-Ease of Use & Features-
*The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 is a piece of junk so what would you expect? There's not much to it, it's a very easy radar detector to use. First it has the icon display. Of course, what detector manufacturer in their right mind would ever put a text display on a detector that costs less than $300? Of course you'll never find that! Haha. I hope you saw that as being sarcasm. The competitors from Beltronics and Escort offer great text displays which give you a lot of information about the bogey and what not. The Valentine One offers a unique interface which gives you also a lot of information with its arrows and bogey counter. The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 offers a display that you can find on $50 or less radar detectors! It doesn't tell you very much! The display isn't even that great for an icon display, I've seen better from Whistler. One cool thing that the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 has is bilingual voice alerts which allow you to hear them in English or Spanish. This feature can also be found in much cheaper and better performing PNI radar detectors. The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 has SWS warning which will alert you of hazards and what not. This is yet another feature you can find on much cheaper radar detectors.

When it comes to the interface, it's pretty to use. There are three main buttons on top of the detector which allow you to control its primary functions. These are to dim the display, mute threats, and go between city and highway modes. Volume is controlled by the prehistoric turn wheel located on the side of the detector. It's very easy to use, and this gives you a sense of how lacking it is compared to detectors in the same price range.

-The Verdict-
*The Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 is a horrible detector. It's expensive, poor quality, works poorly, and doesn't jam anything at all! You'd be better off with a cheap Whistler or paying a lot of money for a high performance detector such as an Escort Passport 8500 X50, Bel Pro RX65, or Valentine One. After explaining all of this to my friend, he told me that after he dropped me off he was headed to Best Buy to pick up an Escort. Avoid the Rocky Mountain RMR-C450 at all costs, enough said.