Bounty Hunter Discovery 3300 At Costco

[GB_Amateur]

18 hours ago, cudamark said:

I've never been a fan of the entry level detectors for newbies wanting to get into the hobby. They're fine for someone who just lost their wedding ring in their back yard, but, for someone trying to compete with veteran detectorists in the local park or beach, they're an exercise in frustration.

There's a tradeoff here.  First, a complicated detector with lots of settings is going to frustrate a beginner right out of the box.  Imagine putting a 16-year-old trying to learn to drive in a Corvette ZR1.  Secondly, if you read the highlights on this detector which Steve listed in the initiating  post you'll see that it has quite a few features (e.g. ground balance adjustment) that the best detectors have.

Competing with the veteran detectorists is more about location and skill than detector, IMO.  As long as you're not fighting variable mineralized ground and nasty EMI, the low end detectors can hold their own for 80-90%% (obviously rough estimate) of targets in typical parks and schools.  Culpeper, VA?  OK, nope.  😁

Will they get the deepest or highly masked targets?  No, but neither will a top-of-the-line detector in inexperienced hands.

I agree that there are detectors for sale (especially some of the old models) on Ebay that are so crappy that no one would or should have to put up with them.  But the established manufacturers today put out pretty decent entry level products.  I've never used this BH 3300 but on paper it looks good (enough).