Ever been caught by a sneaky speed camera that you were unaware of? Chances are, the majority of us can say yes to that.
What about getting stuck in traffic due to an accident that your sat nav didn’t pick up on? We’ve got just the thing for you.
What is it?
The Saphe One+ is a speed camera detector and traffic alarm; it will notify you of mobile, average, fixed and traffic light cameras. It can also alert you to dangers on the road ahead, a car on the hard shoulder or if there’s been an accident.
How does the Saphe One+ work?
Well, the unit itself is just the physical hardware; think of it as a Bluetooth alarm and button. So the heavy lifting is being done by the Saphe Link app on your phone.
While that keeps prices of the units down as they don’t have to have complicated GPS chips, radar and laser scanners as some bespoke speed camera devices do, you’ll notice how much phone battery you’re getting through. More on that later though.
The unit itself measures in at just 6.5cm x 3.5 x 1.4, it’s made of black plastic, and there’s 3M double-sided tape on the reverse. The look and feel of it are very OEM, you could easily install it in most cars, and it wouldn’t look out of place.
If you don’t fancy sticking it directly to your centre console, dash or windscreen, there’s also an air vent mount.
To get set up, all you have to do is pull the clear battery toggle out of the side; this will fire it into life. Then, download the Saphe Link app and pair it. That’s it.
What’s it like?
Set up couldn’t be simpler; build quality is great, and it’s easy to record a speed camera location with just a single button press of the ‘camera’ logo button on the right.
The device switches on automatically when it senses motion, so usually, getting into your car is enough to wake it up, or closing your door will do it.
If you aren’t going to be using the Saphe One+ for a while, you can hold down the left (red) button; this will fully switch it off. You’ll have to hold it back down again to turn it on when you want to use it.
You can also change the alarm tones, they’re all a shrill alarm clock kind of noise, but the default one is like a small siren…going around the M25 with that on can make you want to pull your hair out!
Thankfully you can pick from eight different tones, with the notification ones toward the bottom being the least obtrusive.
In terms of alerts on the One+, you get a flashing LED of different colours; blue is speed cameras, red is for an accident or danger ahead, while yellow flashes if there’s congestion or an accident.
You can change the time before you’re alerted on the accident and congestion alerts, but the speed camera ones remain fixed.
For the fixed speed camera alerts, the Saphe One+ didn’t miss a beat; it’s picked up every single fixed camera over three months of driving roughly 500 miles across all different parts of the country.
It doesn’t pick up the mobile cameras, though; a few times, I’ve driven past a local spot where a camera van regularly crops up, and it doesn’t go off. This purely has to be down to the number of people in the UK that currently have a Saphe device; the more people, the more reporting that goes on.
So while it’s a minor omission at this stage, I feel the mobile camera alerts will get better if the Saphe devices become popular in the UK.
As I mentioned earlier, I have noticed battery usage increase while using the Saphe devices; on my most recent two-hour drive around the edges of London to Sussex, the Saphe Link app used roughly an extra 20% battery, I left home with 100% and got to my destination with around 70%.
The phone wasn’t doing anything else, no music streaming, wasn’t being used for maps; it was just sitting in the central armrest.
I wouldn’t expect my phone to lose such a large amount of battery when sitting relatively idle if it wasn’t using Saphe Link. However, it’s by no means a deal-breaker; just be aware if you have a long drive, then expect to heavily use your phone for the rest of the day.
It can’t be helped as your phone is the one doing the monitoring of your location and sending the alerts through to the Saphe One+.
You can also use the Saphe Link to show you your progress, like Google Maps, or show upcoming warnings. Which I don’t really get, as if you buy the Saphe One+, you’ll be alerted, so why do you also need to see the cameras on your phone?
The likelihood is that you’ll be using your phone for Google Maps or music or simply using your cars in-built sat-nav, so your phone will just be sitting idle.
I never used the Saphe Link app to give me on-screen phone alerts, so I can’t vouch for how well it works.
How do you replace the Saphe One+ battery?
The battery inside is one of the chunkiest coin cells I’ve ever seen, a CR2450. It is user-replaceable, but the manual doesn’t allude to this. You need to gently prise apart the top and bottom sections of the One+; you can then slide the battery out.
Apparently the battery will last around two years, and with the CR2450 being cheap enough to replace, you should have the One+ for several years.
Saphe One+ Conclusion
Since driving with the Saphe One+, I’ve felt more aware of my speed and that my licence is safer due to the fixed camera alerts. For the price, I think they’re well worth the money as most speed camera detectors have an ongoing cost associated with them.
I would like to know more about what Saphe does with the tracking data that the app is seemingly always connecting. There’s no mention of this on their website, but no doubt it’s being collected and sold on.
Saphe One+ Manual
If you’ve lost your manual, or want to take a look at how it works before you purchase one, here’s a link to the Saphe One+ manual.
Where can I get one?
As with everything these days, you can purchase a Saphe One+ from Amazon or direct from Saphe.de.
We’ve also negotiated a 15% off discount code with Saphe; just use: carwitter15 at the checkout to secure your money off.
