Well lets answer that before we get into the usual features and performance review, the Bel Euro 550 has been made with Europe in mind, most speed trap detectors on the market (the kind that detect radar) are built for the American market not the UK. So what?

Well there are 3 different bands of radar in use the UK for speed detection K, Ka and KU band, most fixed Gatso's are K band and most mobile traps (police in vans) are Ku band or laser. The American police favour X band which is cheaper to build speed guns to detect and so all detectors come with the ability to detect X band, great but what is the one thing in the UK that uses X band? traffic lights!!

So if you get a detector with X band that cannot be switched off you will be warned of every set of traffic lights with a traffic detector on top and believe me there are a lot of them and soon you'll know them all intimately.

The Bel 550 euro allows each individual band to be switched off, for example if you setup to "UK" standard you just detect K and Ku the two most common bands.

So beware when measuring the 550 euro up to other detectors sometimes less is more! this unit is easy to configure just select the country and away you go, it needs to be window mounted but as they are not illegal to use that's not an issue. The unit has a red LCD display through which you can access the menus which allow you to select brightness of display, level of warning sounds (and it does go very loud) and the choice of city or motorway modes.

Motorway mode is effectively going to warn you of every bit of radar as soon as it gets a sniff and keep warning you about it until it is no longer in range, the city mode does not switch off detection just limits you to an initial beep and then will only beep again when the signal gets stronger!

Powered is derived from your cigarette lighter of other 12 volt source and that's about it for setup, simple quick and effective, so how does it perform!

Against speed guns of the radar variety its no contents you will know about the trap over a mile away, this relies on the old generation of speed guns in use in many forces being highly inaccurate and spraying radar around. Picking up Gatso's is a far more tricky affair as they only use a small targeted beam of K band radar which just to make matters more difficult is in the opposite direction as you approach a Gatso from behind.

The Bel 550 euro combats this with a heightened sensitivity on K band which will give a good 200 meter warning on rear facing Gatso's, which equates to a good 5 - 10 seconds at motorway speeds and much more at 30 mph. It even works well with the M25 gantry mounted speed traps!

Mobile speed traps are what this unit is all about and the only elements a GPS system can't tell you about, both K and Ku detection of these is excellent and gives you 20 seconds warning before you pass the trap, of course lots of these van mounted traps and some handheld are switching to laser.

Laser is bad news, sure the 550 euro can tell you you've been targeted but it only takes 1 second for the police to catch you with a laser device and you get no warning, the only answer to laser traps in a jammer which of course is illegal to own and use, sadly.

LP's Bel 550 Euro has been a great servant for the last 2 years and he swears by it much better than snoopers or some of the other American imports, sure it can't help with Specs speed traps or laser but maybe combining a Bel with some software like Trafcam as LP has done is the answer.

If you are in the market for a reliable radar detector this is the one for you.

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