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Product Spotlight: Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12

Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12

Picking a subwoofer system for your car or SUV should be easy, right? If you’re looking at products from Rockford Fosgate, the answer is yes. With three series of amplifiers, subwoofers and enclosures to choose from, they have a solution for every budget and performance level. In this spotlight, we check out the Punch Series P1-1X12 12-inch single-voice-coil vented enclosure.

Design Elements of the Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12

The P1-1X12 is a bass reflex (vented) subwoofer enclosure loaded with a single 12-inch P1S4-12 four-ohm subwoofer. The woofer and rectangular vent face forward on the enclosure, so you don’t have to worry about the proximity of vehicle trim panels changing the tuning frequency. This is an issue that enclosures with vents on the sides can suffer from.

Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12
The wedge design of the P1-1X12 makes the best use of the available space in your car or SUV.

Rockford Fosgate includes a trim panel for the enclosure’s front panel that serves three purposes. First, it features a mesh grille over the vent, which prevents your friends from putting candy wrappers in there. In our experience, it also keeps kids from putting their Hot Wheels cars in. Second, the trim piece’s tapered shape works as a radius at the vent opening to reduce wind chuffing and distortion. Finally, the trim piece’s matte finish and Diamond-R logo look cool.

The enclosure is finished in a durable, high-density black “trunk liner”-style carpet that blends with most vehicle interiors.

Rockford Fosgate offers the P1G-12 mesh grille as an upgrade. Adding the grille is a wise choice if you carry cargo in the trunk. The woofer cone slapping into your groceries or sports equipment is a surefire way to cause damage.

P1-1X12 Subwoofer Enclosure Specifications

The Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12 enclosure measures 19.125 inches wide, 15.125 inches tall and 15.75 inches deep at the bottom. Its angled back panel fits tight against the seatbacks in your car or SUV. Wedge-style enclosures can save you several inches of storage space compared to enclosures with vertical back panels. This type of enclosure is more complicated to design and manufacture, but it’s a worthwhile investment in maximizing the usable space in your vehicle.

Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12
Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12 Dimensions.

The enclosure is constructed from 5/8-inch MDF to balance weight and panel rigidity. Speaking of weight, the enclosure comes in at just under 40 pounds.

The P1S4-12 subwoofer has a single four-ohm voice coil rated for 250 watts continuous or 500 watts maximum. This makes the enclosure ideal for use with two- and four-channel amps in a bridged configuration. A solution like the P400X4 would be perfect, as it produces up to 200 watts from a pair of bridged channels. You can use the other pair of channels to power a set of component speakers in the front of the vehicle.

Electrical connections are handled by a custom-tooled terminal cup on the left side of the enclosure. The cup accepts 10-AWG speaker wire and features spring-loaded terminals to ensure a solid connection.

Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12
The design of the P1-1X12 balances extension and output to deliver great bass.

Punch Loaded Subwoofer Enclosure Family

Rockford Fosgate offers a complete line of subwoofer enclosures in the Punch family. There’s a single 10-inch version of this enclosure called the P1-1X10 and larger models with dual 12- and 10-inch subwoofers called the P1-2X12 and P1-2X10. If you want a solution that will play louder, then the P3-1X12 with a Punch P3 subwoofer rated at 600 watts continuous is an option. There are also P2- and P3-level dual subwoofer enclosures available. Your dealer can help you choose a model that fits your vehicle, performance goals and budget.

Upgrade Your Car Audio System with Rockford Fosgate Today!

We’ve said it dozens of times, but it bears repeating. The first and best upgrade you can make to your car stereo system is to add an aftermarket subwoofer. This applies even to higher-end factory-installed systems, as few will dedicate enough space to getting that deep, impactful bass that car audio fanatics expect.

When it’s time to bring your car audio system to life, visit a local authorized Rockford Fosgate retailer and ask about Punch Series loaded subwoofer enclosure solutions like this P1-1X12 and its counterparts. You can find an authorized retailer by visiting their website and using the locator tool. Be sure to check out Rockford Fosgate on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to stay up to date with their latest product releases and the events they attend.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: RESOURCE LIBRARY, ARTICLES, Car Audio, PRODUCTS Tagged With: Rockford Fosgate

Understanding Light Color and Illumination

Headlight Color

We took our first look at measuring light sources a while back as our first step toward understanding the differences in automotive headlight options. In this article, we’ll provide a practical demonstration of why it’s crucial for the lighting on your car, truck, motorcycle, ATV or side-by-side to emit light that covers the entire color spectrum evenly.

Light Sources and the Human Body

Light waves work similarly to sound waves in that both our eyes and ears are sensitive to a specific range of frequencies. For sound, most adults can hear from 20 Hz to around 15 kHz and see light in the range of 400 to 790 THz (terahertz). Sounds above 15 or 20 kHz are imperceivable as our ears don’t detect those signals and send the information to our brain. Likewise, energy below 400 THz (which is infrared) isn’t seen by our eyes but can be felt as heat on our skin. Frequencies above 790 THz, which is ultraviolet light, are also invisible to our eyes but can cause skin damage in the form of sunburn. Butterflies, some birds, reindeer and sockeye salmon can see ultraviolet light. At the other end of the spectrum, some snakes, fish and frogs can see infrared light.

How Our Eyes Perceive Objects

If you shine a white light at an object, that object reflects specific colors to our eyes. Those reflected colors match the color of the object. So, if you shine white light on a blue car, then blue light wavelengths are reflected to your eyes. The same goes for the yellow lane markings on the road and green grass on the boulevard or median.

Headlight Color
We see objects as being a specific color because only specific light rays from a source are reflected to our eyes.

Let’s put this concept into a set of simple rules. First, we’ll consider the sun on a cloudless day as a near-perfect light source. The sun emits light energy that’s very evenly distributed through the color spectrum.

Headlight Color
Light from the sun on a clear day contains relatively even energy across the color spectrum.

If you look at the spectrographic analysis of the light from the sun shown above, you can see that from light blue through to light red, the spectral density is fairly similar.

What if Color Is Missing from a Light Source?

We’ll set up a demonstration to show what happens when a specific color of light is missing from a light source and how that affects the way we perceive objects. We have a set of RGB LED strip lights set 18 inches away from a selection of Hot Wheels cars for this demonstration. We can use the smartphone app to choose which of the LEDs are on. First, we’ll take pictures of the cars with the camera flash, then with just the red, then the green, then the blue LEDs on so you can see which cars light up and which don’t.

Headlight Color
Our collection of Hot Wheels is illuminated by the white camera flash.
Headlight Color
Our collection of Hot Wheels is illuminated by only red LEDs.
Headlight Color
Our collection of Hot Wheels is illuminated by only green LEDs.
Headlight Color
Our collection of Hot Wheels is illuminated by only blue LEDs.

If you compare the photo of the cars illuminated with the flash to those with only single colors of lights, we can see that some vehicles are quite dark. In the image with the red LEDs, the green and blue cars remain dark. In the image with the green lighting, the red and blue cars are dark. It should now come as no surprise that the red and green cars look dark in the image with the blue lighting.

Going back to our rules concept, if our light source doesn’t offer light energy that matches the color of an object, we won’t perceive that object as being illuminated.

Just for references, we’ll include spectrographic analysis of the red, green and blue LEDs so you can see how narrowly focussed their light output is.

Headlight Color
Spectrographic analysis of our red LEDs.
Headlight Color
Spectrographic analysis of our green LEDs.
Headlight Color
Spectrographic analysis of our blue LEDs.

We are getting close to a point where we have enough information and understanding of how light works to analyze and understand the color content of different headlight bulb options. So please don’t fret; we’ll get to that information soon! In the meantime, if your headlights aren’t bright enough, drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer and ask them about options to upgrade the lighting system on your car or truck.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: RESOURCE LIBRARY, ARTICLES, Lighting, PRODUCTS

Product Spotlight: Rockford Fosgate R165X3

Rockford Fosgate R165X3

Whether you enjoy background music while commuting to work or are serious about your car audio system offering studio-quality or concert-level performance, Rockford Fosgate has speakers, amplifiers, and subwoofer solutions for every application. The Prime series products are the most affordable offerings and include trickle-down tech from their industry-leading Punch and Power series. In this spotlight, we are going to look at the Prime Series replacement speakers, particularly the R165X3 6.5-inch set.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3 Design

The R165X3 is a three-way coaxial speaker with a vacuum-formed polypropylene woofer cone and a rubber surround. Rubber surrounds last much longer than foam and are usually not found on speakers at this price point, so you can expect many years of enjoyment from the set. Each driver features a silk-dome midrange and a silk-dome tweeter, whereas most speakers use polyetherimide (PEI) plastic dome tweeters at this price point. The mass of the textile domes typically allows the drivers to play lower, so the R165X3 will be less directional in the upper midrange while still offering excellent coverage thanks to the compact tweeter.

The drivers feature Rockford Fosgate’s Integrated Concealed Crossover (ICC) design. This design choice mounts the crossover parts to the stamped steel basket to save time during installation.

The R165X3 set includes a set of metal mesh grilles for applications where you are surface-mounting the speakers.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3
The R165X3 set includes a pair of 6.5-inch speakers, grilles and mounting hardware.

Mounting Options

One of the challenges of upgrading speakers is finding a driver that fits your application. The R165X3 speakers require only 2.15 inches of mounting depth. The tweeter post protrudes from the driver’s front side, but this keeps the factory grille away from the woofer surround. The total protrusion from the mounting surface is 0.44 inches.

Rockford Fosgate also provided every common screw pattern in the mounting flange. There are 22 holes, which sets a record for any 6.5-inch speaker we’ve come across.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3
Each R165X3 speaker includes 22 mounting holes to ensure installation in your vehicle is efficient and reliable.

Driver Specifications

The R165X3 set is rated to handle 45 watts of power continuously with a maximum power rating of 90 watts. Sensitivity is rated at an impressive 91 dB when measured with one watt of power at a distance of one meter. The frequency response is 52 hertz to 20 kHz. All the driver specifications comply with the ANSI/CTA-2031 standard for car audio speakers. The woofer Xmax is 1.9 millimeters in each direction. Rockford Fosgate typically uses an Xmax specification where the driver reaches 10% total harmonic distortion. So, while the number might seem lower than competing products, these are raw laboratory measurements that reflect real-world performance.

The woofer features a one-inch diameter voice coil and a winding with a nominal impedance of four ohms. Regarding Thiele and Small electromechanical parameters, the woofer has a resonant frequency (Fs) of 69 Hz, an equivalent compliance of 12.9 liters, and a Qts of 0.75. These numbers indicate the driver is designed for an infinite baffle application like you’d find in a typical car door or the rear parcel shelf of a sedan.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3
Rockford Fosgate R165X3 dimensions.

Prime Series Speaker Family

The R165X3 is just one of seven speakers in the Prime coaxial family. The solutions include 4-inch, 5.25-inch, and 6.75-inch two-way coaxial speakers, two-way 5×7 and 6×9 speakers, and a three-way 6×9 speaker.

All are designed to offer great efficiency and power handling. This makes them ideal for use with aftermarket radios or basic factory-installed units that produce roughly 20 watts per channel. You can also extract even more performance and enjoyment by using the drivers with an external power amplifier.

Upgrade Your Speakers Today!

If you want an affordable 6.5-inch car audio speaker with great efficiency and clarity, drop into a local authorized Rockford Fosgate retailer and ask to audition the R165X3 set. We think you’ll be impressed. You can find an authorized retailer by visiting their website and using the locator tool.

Be sure to check out their Facebook, Instagram and YouTube feeds and channel to stay up to date with their latest product releases.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: RESOURCE LIBRARY, ARTICLES, Car Audio, PRODUCTS Tagged With: Rockford Fosgate

Understanding the Science Behind Automotive Headlight Bulb Colors

Headlight Color

When it comes to lighting the road in front of your car or truck at night, most enthusiasts focus on light intensity instead of headlight bulb color. It’s straightforward to see the difference between yellowish light produced by incandescent halogen bulbs and the white/blue output of HID or LED bulbs. The science behind these light sources is interestingly similar to what professional car audio technicians measure to calibrate a digital signal processor in your mobile audio system. If you’re intrigued, read on, and we’ll explain in detail.

How Light Works

There have been many detailed scientific dissertations on how light works. These papers explain the electron and sub-electron concepts that allow us to see objects. In short, light is made of photons. Photons are packets of electrons that have been released from atoms. These packets of photons have energy and momentum but have no mass. This means you can shine a light at an object to illuminate it, but the energy from the light source doesn’t make the object heavier.

If we excite a group of atoms, the negatively charged electrons that orbit the nucleus absorb that energy. As more energy is added to an atom, the electrons circle faster and farther away from the center. When the energy source (electricity or heat) is removed, the electrons snap back to their original orbit path but release that added energy in the form of photons. Under specific conditions, the photons that are released produce visible light. If you studied electrical theory in high school, you’d recognize this pattern as similar to how electricity works. The only difference is that electricity involves electrons jumping from one atom to another to transfer energy.

When the light photons escape from an atom, they can have varying energy levels depending on the electron’s position when it leaves the atom. You can think of this as the photons having a specific resonant frequency. As a result, different types of atoms release photons of different wavelengths. The result is differently colored light sources.

Light and Color

We know that light sources have different colors. An incandescent bulb gives off a very different kind of light than a fluorescent bulb, a gas-discharge arc lamp (high-intensity discharge or HID) or a light-emitting diode (LED). Some light sources appear yellow, while others are white or blue. How these light sources illuminate objects can make them look very different.

Let’s take a giant step sideways. You’ve seen plenty of rainbows, but do you know what turns the supposedly white light from the sun into a color pattern that shifts from violet through to blue, green, yellow, orange and red? Water molecules refract the light from the sun. Because white light is made up of many different wavelengths, and each is reflected at a different angle as it passes through the water molecules, the light is divided into its primary components. Sorry, I know. We got all technical again.

Headlight Color
Our friend Jeremy Lambertson from Driven SS in Marquette, Michigan, and his wife, Carrie, snapped this photo of a rainbow after a Cars and Coffee event.

An expensive-for-its-size electronic device called a spectral illuminance analyzer or a spectrometer can analyze the frequency content of a light source. The spectrometer works precisely the same way that a real-time audio analyzer (RTA) looks at the amplitude of the different sound frequencies produced by an audio source. As you may have guessed, we’ve added one to the BestCarAudio.com lab.

Headlight Color
An audio analyzer like the venerable AudioControl SA-3052 will show a user the relative loudness of each 1/3-octave band of frequencies across the range of human hearing.
Headlight Color
Our spectrometer shows us how much energy is contained at the different wavelengths from a light source.
Headlight Color
The view when we took the light measurement posted above.
Headlight Color
Spectrographic analysis on a bright sunny day with the sun almost at its highest point in the sky.
Headlight Color
The view during our measurement of a bright sunny day with very few clouds in the sky.

If you compare the two spectrographic measurements, you can see that the water vapor in the clouds is blocking increasing amounts of green, yellow, orange and red light. Unsurprisingly, we are left with a light source that makes everything look dull. This is because the water vapor in the air has quite literally filtered out the light energy that makes colors pop.

The software scales the measurement window to make it easy to see energy levels at different wavelengths. This is similar to the way our eyes or the iris and shutter on a camera work together to deliver a similar level of perceived brightness for a given lighting condition. The chart below shows both measurements overlaid, one on top of the other. You can see that the overall brightness level on a cloudy day is significantly lower.

The measured light level was 106,252 lux on a sunny day, whereas the cloudy day was only 9,069 lux. Converted to candlepower, the numbers are 9,874 and 843.

Headlight Color
A comparison of energy levels between a sunny and a cloudy day in Southern Ontario.

Headlight Bulb Color

When it comes to the headlights on your car or truck, bulbs come in various colors for a variety of reasons. At the incandescent end of the spectrum, most have a yellowish look. With that said, halogen bulbs (which use iodine and bromine gas) have less yellow and produce more light output than old bulbs that use argon. Here’s the spectrographic analysis of a relatively simple halogen light bulb.

Headlight Color
Spectrographic analysis of a Wagner 1156 turn signal bulb.

As you can see, there is a lot of energy in the red portion of the light spectrum produced by this bulb. To be clear, it’s not an amber bulb, though; we should find one of those and test it as well.

Headlight Color
Our Wagner 1157 is a classic incandescent bulb that produces warm yellow light.

OK, we’re back from the hardware store with a pair of Sylvania 3057AK amber turn signal bulbs. The graph below shows their spectral energy.

Headlight Color
A Sylvania 3057AK has a dark amber coating. The amount of blue light passed from the filament is dramatically reduced.

How we perceive the color of a light source is dependent on the frequency content of the energy coming from the bulb. Warm light will have more red energy, where a cool bulb will be bluer.

Color Temperature and Color Space

If you’ve ever shopped for HID headlight bulbs, you know their color is often described by a specific Kelvin value. For example, a yellow fog light bulb might be rated at 3,000 K, where a factory-installed HID or LED bulb might be a very pure white rated at 6,000 K. Those bulbs with a very blue tint are often up in the 8,000-10,000 K range.

Most people think these values are somewhat arbitrary, but the reality is, the light color can be measured with impressive accuracy using the right equipment. Our spectrometer can do this quickly and easily. The software will also plot the measurement on what’s called a color space chart. The chart outlines the level of red, green and blue in the light source and uses X and Y coordinates to describe the location on a chart. For our testing, we’ll use the CIE 1931 color space chart. The image below shows us where our measurement of the Wagner bulb falls.

Headlight Color
Our Wagner bulb measurement yielded an X value of 0.4246 and a Y value of 0.3985.
Headlight Color
The Sylvania bulb measured at 0.5590 for an X-value and 0.4305 for a Y-value.

The software tells us the Wagner light source has a correlated color temperature of 3,174 kelvins. As mentioned, that’s considered a warm yellowish light. The amber Sylvania bulb has a color temperature of 1,857 and falls into the orange and red portion of the light spectrum.

White Light Isn’t Always Made Up Of All Frequencies

The last item we’ll touch on in this article is a bit of a tease toward some future content we are working on. If you’re reading this, then you’re likely looking at a computer or smartphone screen. The light created by that screen is made up of tiny red, green and blue pixels. The colors you see depend on the intensity of each of those pixels. If the screen is to be blue, then only the blue pixels will be illuminated. For violet, the red and blue will be turned on. Yellow is produced by red and green. You can easily see this pattern by looking at the CIE 1931 color space images above.

What might be surprising to some is that the perception of white can be made up of specific amounts of red, green and blue light. The chart below shows a measurement of the light produced by the laptop screen on which this article was created.

Headlight Color
The spectrographic content of our laptop screen with an all-white image.

Behold! Our Dell XPS 13 laptop screen is perceived as white, yet it’s primarily red, very light green and mostly blue light. Here’s how the white light it produces measures on the CIE 1931 chart.

Headlight Color
The white light produced by our laptop screen was measured with an X value of 0.3095 and a Y value of 0.3310.

Our screen has a correlated color temperature of 6,662 K. If we were scoring it on even whiteness, that’d be an excellent result. But does this score mean it’s a perfect source of white light? Absolutely not! We’ll leave you to ponder that thought as we prepare the next few articles.

Lead-in Image: Thanks to Josh Matthews for sharing this photo of an Acura RSX equipped with decidedly blue headlights.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: RESOURCE LIBRARY, ARTICLES, Car Audio

Let’s Talk About Remote Starter and Security System Range

Remote Range

Range is the critical factor in the quality and performance of a remote car starter or security system. That’s the distance between you and your vehicle when you’re sending a lock, unlock or remote start command, or are hoping to receive a security notification. If you aren’t close enough, or the convenience system doesn’t have enough power, signals may not reach the vehicle or the remote.

Remote Starter and Security System Key Fobs

The handheld remote that comes with your vehicle or an aftermarket starter uses radio frequency communication to transmit commands. These work in a similar fashion to a radio station in that they broadcast in a circular pattern from the remote. If your vehicle is close enough and the signal is strong enough, the receiver in the car or truck will relay the command to the control module and execute the function.

Let’s look at two-way remote controls. A two-way remote sends a command such as “unlock” to the vehicle when you press the button. When the command has been received and the doors are unlocked, the transceiver in the car sends a command back to your remote to let you know the request was executed. The benefit of this two-way communication is that you always know the status of your car or truck. There’s no need to guess whether the doors are locked or the engine is running.

Remote Range
Two-way remotes like the new Compustar R5 allow security warnings from the car or truck to alert you when something is wrong.

How Do Remote Car Starter Companies Define Range?

No matter which brand of convenience or security system you’ve chosen, they all try to describe the distance between the vehicle and the remote in a measurable range. The simplest aftermarket remotes usually offer about 1,000 feet (about 300 meters) of range under ideal conditions. The step-up systems provide solutions that work at ¼ mile, 3,000 feet (914 meters) or 1 mile (1.61 kilometers). Some companies offer ultra-long-range radio frequency remotes that can deliver 2 or even 3 miles of range.

All manufacturers of remote start systems calculate these distances based on ideal controlled conditions. With trees, houses or buildings between you and the vehicle, the maximum functional range will decrease dramatically. If you’re inside a building (apartment, office tower, factory, hospital, etc.), that will decrease the effective range. A lot of electrical interference from communication systems will also reduce the usable range. We’ve seen cases where a specific remote solution worked great in one city but barely worked at all in another because a nearby military base was broadcasting something in the same frequency range.

To compare remotes, consider their power levels. The simplest 1,000-foot models could be your distance benchmark. A remote that offers 3,000 feet of range isn’t just three times more powerful; it’s closer to eight times as powerful. Because the signal radiates in a circular pattern, the power level needs to be about four times stronger to double the distance. That would mean a transmitter needs to be 16 times stronger to quadruple the effective distance. So, a remote that offers 1 mile of range is just over 25 times more powerful than one that only provides 1,000 feet of functionality. The 2-mile remotes are 100 times more powerful than the 1,000-foot models, and 3-mile units are an amazing 223 times more powerful.

Manufacturers of remote start and security systems work to increase range in other ways. The first is to switch from amplitude modulation (AM) signal to frequency modulation (FM). As you may have noticed on your car radio, FM offers better noise rejection than AM. The second method to improve range is to use what’s known as frequency-hopping or spread-spectrum communication. A simple way to understand this is to think of spread-spectrum systems as a group of people yelling a command rather than a single person. If there is noise interfering with one person yelling, the message from one of the other people is still likely to get through.

Remote Range
AM, FM and digital spread spectrum (DSS) communication technologies vary in their ability to send a command to the brain of your starter or security system.

Why Is Remote Range Important?

If you park your car in the driveway of your house and want to start it before work, you don’t need much range. A 1,000-foot system will likely be more than adequate. If you’re in an apartment on the fourth or fifth floor and the car is parked below you, the same applies. However, if you live on the other side of that apartment building, you’ll need to send a much stronger signal.

Think, too, about where you work. Do you work in a small office where your car is parked outside the window? If so, 1,000 feet is lots of transmitting strength. What if you work in a hospital, a distribution warehouse or a manufacturing facility and your car is 1,500 to 2,000 feet away? There may also be mechanical and electronic equipment along with the metal structure of the building between you and the vehicle. You may need 20 or 50 times as strong of a signal to let you start the car.

Logically and not incorrectly, you could wait until you were at the door to the parking lot to start your car and let the air conditioning run in the summer or get the heater working in the winter. However, if it’s the latter, the car won’t warm up much in the two or three minutes it takes to walk across the parking lot. The whole purpose of a convenience system is to make the vehicle more comfortable when it’s time to drive away.

If you have a security system or security features tied into a remote starter, you can receive warnings from the alarm portion of the system on some premium two-way remotes. If you’ve parked your car or truck at a big shopping mall, it’s not unreasonable that you’d be more than a quarter-mile away. With that said, the ¼-mile system isn’t going to work with concrete and steel walls, dozens of stores and hundreds of people on their cell phones between you and your vehicle. Transmitter power is fundamental here – both from the remote and from the transceiver in the vehicle.

A Quick Test of Remote Starter Range

To quantify some of the range claims, we headed to a local light-industrial area to test how far away we could be and still receive a reliable confirmation that a command from our remote worked. The first system featured a two-way remote control with a color display that’s marketed as offering 1 mile of range. We used the infamous remote-to-chin trick (which turns your head into an antenna) to maximize performance, and we were able to get the system to function at a distance of 2,000 feet (615 meters).

The second system features a one-button remote with LED confirmation. It’s listed as providing up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of range. We managed an impressive 1.11 miles (1.78 kilometers) in our urban test scenario. Just as a note, the battery in this remote was a year old, so there is a slight chance we could have bettered that number.

Nevertheless, the real-world numbers in this test came in at 38% and 55% of the maximum the companies use in their marketing. Given the caveats of interference, these aren’t surprising. If we were in a remote part of Texas or Saskatchewan with flat terrain with no trees, cell service, radio stations or buildings, we’d have no problem believing that these systems would deliver every inch of their ratings.

Remote Range
How far away from our cars did the remotes work in the city’s light commercial area?

We took the long-range system to a local shopping mall for a second test and parked at the very southwestern corner of the parking lot. We parked facing the door and in line with the long center hallway in the mall. This positioning would provide a best-case scenario in terms of range.

The first test was to check out the factory keyless entry system. As we walked through the parking lot, we pressed the lock button. At a distance of 195 feet (60 meters), we had to turn around and face the car for it to respond. This continued to work right up to the door of the mall at 290 feet (88 meters). The vehicle continued to react once we were through the first set of doors but not after the second. So, we’ll call that about 300 feet (100 meters) of range.

We switched to the one-button two-way LED remote that’s marketed as offering 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of range. We continued in a straight line down the mall’s main corridor into the large department store at the end. Just as we passed the perfume section a quarter of the way through that store, we ran out of range. That’s a total of 1,400 feet (427 meters).

Given the line-of-sight benefit, we decided to stray off down a few of the side corridors. A little to the north, with a few dozen more stores in the way, the range was down to 920 feet (280 meters). Farther west of that, with even more stores between us and the car, the range was down to 740 feet (225 meters).

At no time were we disappointed with the test. It was amazing to see just how far we could get and the types of interference that reduced the effective range. On the other hand, it was no surprise to see how poorly the factory remote fob worked.

Remote Range
Being in a building dramatically reduces the range of your remote car starter or security system remote.

What Do You Need To Know About Remote Range?

Just as with some of the overzealous power ratings on speakers and amplifiers we see, using the longest range possible in marketing information is just a part of reality when it comes to the performance of remote starter, security and convenience systems.

When buying a remote car starter or security system for your car or truck, think about the worst-case scenario in terms of how much transmitting power you’ll need. We’ve heard of people starting their vehicles from a monorail when more than a station away from their stop or while flying into a small airport in a small commuter plane.

If you want your vehicle to be comfortable and ready to go when you are, extra power from the car starter or security system remote will give you more warm-up/cool-down time. Drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer today to find out about the security and convenience solutions available for your vehicle.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: RESOURCE LIBRARY, ARTICLES, Remote Car Starters

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Recent Articles

A motorcycle audio amplifier

What to Look for in a Motorcycle Amplifier Upgrade

June 22, 2025 

It should come as no surprise that it takes a moderate amount of amplifier power to reproduce music on a motorcycle that’s audible when on the freeway. So aside from great … [Read More...]

A purple car with tinted windows

Four Reasons to Have Your Car or Truck Windows Tinted

June 8, 2025 

A person might choose to have the windows on their car or truck tinted for a variety of reasons. No matter why you’re interested in window tint, the team here at BestCarAudio.com … [Read More...]

DroneMobile XC Connected Dashcam Security System

Product Spotlight: DroneMobile XC Connected Dashcam Security System

May 26, 2025 

Thieves frequently target vehicles from Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Lexus, RAM, Chevrolet, and Honda. These vehicles are often stolen for their parts or exported overseas. … [Read More...]

A man installing car window tint

Five Questions to Ask When Shopping for Automotive Window Tint

May 25, 2025 

Shopping for high-quality window tint for your car or truck isn’t much different from shopping for any other automotive accessory upgrade. There are high-performance tint films … [Read More...]

Compustar 2WG17 Remote Kit

Product Spotlight: Compustar 2WG17 Remote Kit

May 19, 2025 

Compustar was one of the first brands to allow consumers to choose a remote control package to accompany their remote start controller. Previously, we looked at flagship-level … [Read More...]

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Testimonials

Our customers can trust us with a job done right.

If you want to upgrade your vehicle with window tint, a new car audio system or a remote car starter, we invite you to visit the team here at Extreme Car Audio in Manteca.

Check back here for more testimonials soon!

Whether it’s a new radio, a remote car starter or new driving lights, we take the time to ensure that every connection is secure and the equipment is mounted safely. We do the job right the first time, every time.

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We take a great deal of pride in our window tint solutions. Call or stop by today to see what options we can offer to take your vehicle to the next level.

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Address

Extreme Car Audio, INC

197 S Union RD, Manteca, CA 95337
209-665-4150

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Services

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Hours

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday8:30 am – 6:00 pm

We are Closed on Sunday

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