Stereo & Electronics - Radar bands / frequencies

I finally got around to putting in my radar detector after having it for months :) It's a Cobra XRS 9965 with touch screen, and picks up "all 15 bands".

I have never used a radar detector before and don't know which bands to use, or what they all mean. Could someone break it down for me or send me a link so I can learn what each band is for? I currently have them all enabled, which obviously gives a lot of false alarms lol.. I know some may not be needed.


Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance :)

There are only three bands of radar and one lidar (laser) used in the US. They are X band (10.5-10.55 GHz), K band (24.05-24.25 GHz) and Ka band including "wide" and "superwide" (33.4-36.0 GHz). Lidar uses infrared light at a wavelength of 904 nanometers. There is a fourth band used in Europe called Ku band (13.45 GHz) - it has been FCC approved for use in the US but I have not heard of any agencies using it.

All the other "bands" are merely Cobra marketing hype. They count six different manufacturers of lidar guns as different bands but they all use the same wavelength (by law). They count radar detector detector technology such as VG-2 as bands when in fact they are receivers used by police to detect microwave emissions from poorly designed radar detectors in passing cars. They also count the two types of SWS (Safety Warning System) signals as bands although they are actually encoded signals in the K band. And they count POP mode which is just an extremely short, weak Ka signal designed to be undetectable by cheap detectors.

You can generally turn off X band because it is seldom used by police anymore and it causes lots of false alarms from door openers and similar devices.