I’ve had a Labradar in use since shortly after they came out. They’ve ignored the people who supported them, and from what I’ve seen have poor customer service to boot. Basically nothing has changed with the firmware or app since they came out. It’s big, and clunky to use, but I’ve gotten good use out of it.
Now there’s several new players in the game. I think there’s one called AndiScan, and there’s Bulletseeker, now there’s Garmin. This is good for the market, and will force improvements.
I jumped on the Garmin bandwagon as soon as I found one. I’ve also tried to get information on the ability to track down range velocity. Actually, I got flamed pretty hard for even mentioning it. The consensus was it does no good to get down range velocity because it’s not an accurate way to calculate BC. When I argued the point, I was told that according to the all knowing Litz, you need a super powerful Doppler unit like he has access to in order to get a true and accurate BC.
So, I did a little digging and came up with output power of the units.
(Information came from a thread I found on a forum) “Compared to the LabRadar’s transmit output power of 4.84 dBm (U.S. version), and the AndiScan’s 11 dBm, the Xero bumps that transmit power level considerably, to 18.68 dBm. For context, 0 dBm is 1 milliwatt. The typical cell phone transmits at around 23 dBm. And a portable 5-watt ham radio transceiver is putting out 37 dBm.”
The Labradar has the ability to give down range velocity to 100 yards. That’s enough to get a good starting BC in my opinion. I’m pretty sure given the nearly 4x power of the Garmin over the Labradar, it is possible to get velocity readings down range, it just needs to be programmed to do so.
Hopefully the guys at Garmin will improve the Xero, and add features like this. I think they will, they’re pretty well known for putting out good products, and improving them based on consumer feedback.
