Tony,
I have to agree with Mark on this, the reviews don't tell the whole story. For whatever reason they are biased by something, most likely $$$. I have owned or currently own the Escort, K40 and the V1 and the V1 is my hands down choice when it comes to detectors. The K40 (which was already installed in a car I purchased) was the worst one when detecting radar, missed it or found it too late in more cases than I care to hit the brakes for. The Escort (my wife bought it for me for x-mas, and now it's in her car) was good at detection but leaves you with a neckache looking for the coppers. Not to mention, it was the king of false alarms while driving around town. It was so bad that most of the time I drove around with it turned off, and that's not very helpfull. The V1 pulls in radar early enough to give you ample time to do something, plus tells you where it is (this is a very nice feature no matter what anyone else says). It's often super helpful to have the most info about the radar your trying to dodge to make your efforts more effective, the V1's directional reminder makes it easy to fully examine the "danger" you're in. For me, the V1's ergos are fine. I haven't found it hard to use at all. To address something you mentioned in your post, the V1 is not "chatty". When used in "logic" mode the V1 eliminates 99% of bogus warnings. I run mine in "logic" mode all of the time and never change it. The mute feature is helpful too if your worried about the "chatty" V1.

On a recent trip from So.Cal. to Northern Utah, I was able to AVERAGE 87mph over a 696 mile trip, due mostly to my confidence in the V1 (the 75 gallon gas tank in my truck didn't hurt either). While blasting up the 15, the V1 "saved" me at least 8 times that I would have definately gone "downtown" and probably more. With a minimun of those annoying false alarms.