First Hunt With The Ace Apex

[abenson]

2 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

The Apex is NOT faster than the Equinox with the Equinox set at high recovery speed settings.

Correct the Apex is not as fast as the Equinox even with the Equinox wearing an 11" coil.

[palzynski]

2 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

The Apex is NOT faster than the Equinox with the Equinox set at high recovery speed settings.

I was comparing the detectors ruuning at their factory settings. So yes the Equinox could be a fast as the Apex with recovery settings set to high . I do not have the Equinox any more so I cannot check this in the field at the moment ... Concerning the Vanquish for sure the Apex is faster , but the Apex is not accurate enough to my opinion , this with unstable VDIs   ...  ( for me )

One positive thing however, it is very easy to pinpoint the targets with the Apex and the 11 X 6 coil is excellent for this. It is very easy to find the targets with the Apex compared to other detectors using bigger coils.

 

[Chase Goldman]

37 minutes ago, palzynski said:

I was comparing the detectors ruuning at their factory settings. So yes the Equinox could be a fast as the Apex with recovery settings set to high .

Actually, as abenson noted above, even at factory settings, depending on mode selected, the Equinox is faster than Apex (and by definition Vanquish).  The key with Equinox is that you have direct control over recovery speed unlike Apex or Vanquish (though Vanquish does have slight recovery speed variability depending on which of the modes you select).

[Jeff McClendon]

13 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Of the three (Apex, Vanquish, Simplex) if I had to go with one as my value-based backup machine - it would probably be Simplex at this point.

 

I got to see and hear another APEX in action recently and compared signal response accuracy with an Equinox. I know I have mentioned this and I am a user and not an engineer, but why on earth does Garrett have such slow responding audio which lasts forever in its discrimination modes? Does Garrett want to have some kind of signature audio sound that is not based on performance? I personally have never liked the tone audio on any ACE or AT series detector. I just thought that was my own personal problem.

Anyway, having owned and used a Simplex, all three Vanquish models and both Equinox models, I agree with Chase.......the Simplex is by far the best deal out there for someone who just wants a fairly easy to use, all terrain, wireless, built in battery, with decent audio, good mode choices, excellent target ID accuracy for a single frequency detector, surprisingly fast recovery speed, is updatable by the user and is ridiculously affordable. It is a great choice for a grab and go or backup detector. 

Not slighting the Vanquish here, it is deeper and more stable with better target ID accuracy than the Simplex but that ground balance thing is super annoying and on deep targets with no discrimination it is impossible for me to tell if a non ferrous target is iron or not due to the ground noise/hot rock iron range responses.

If a person was just starting out, they could buy a Vanquish 340 or 440 and a Simplex for almost the same price as one APEX and have all of their beginner level detector needs covered for a long time.

For the price of the full APEX, there are a lot of great First Texas and Nokta Makro detectors that I would prefer to use because they would easily out perform the APEX that I experienced this past weekend.

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

OK, since this turned into another comparison thread I've moved it to the proper forum.

[Chase Goldman]

1 minute ago, Steve Herschbach said:

OK, since this turned into another comparison thread I've moved it to the proper forum.

This is why we can't have nice things.  

[Steve Herschbach]

An Apex ended up on my doorstep a while back. Unlike people expecting Garrett to blow away twenty years of Minelab technology advances overnight, I have a different perspective on all this. But I'm taking my time putting my thoughts together, so it may be a bit before I comment. Let's just say for now that I applaud Garrett's effort.

[Chase Goldman]

9 minutes ago, phrunt said:

You post was good Jeff except there should be a disclaimer on it that you have unusually hot soils 🙂 , only some people need the ground balance feature so for someone like me that doesn't the Vanquish is perfect.  I've never used my Vanquish and thought Damn! I wish I could balance this thing.  I find it's fixed balance very forgiving for the places I detect, works well, never had ground noise.

Happy for you Simon, but still doesn't excuse not providing what should be a standard entry level detector feature at this point.  ML stands out as the only recent entry level detector without this feature.  Doesn't keep the big box stores from selling this detector in regions like mine where neutral ground is the exception not the rule.  So the newbie detectorist gets to roll the dice and find out whether he can actually use the AM button where he lives?  Does that seem right?

[palzynski]

42 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

....

Anyway, having owned and used a Simplex, all three Vanquish models and both Equinox models, I agree with Chase.......the Simplex is by far the best deal out there for someone who just wants a fairly easy to use, all terrain, wireless, built in battery, with decent audio, good mode choices, excellent target ID accuracy for a single frequency detector, surprisingly fast recovery speed, is updatable by the user and is ridiculously affordable. It is a great choice for a grab and go or backup detector. 

....

 

Yes but the Simplex has an important drawbac:k  ; it is an heavy machine with its 11 stock coil . At around 1,4kg it is largely above the average , its 11coil / 480 grams is front heavy compared to the 360grams of the Vanquish 340and 440. I would not recommend the Simplex for young people and women for example ..

[Chase Goldman]

7 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Yup, I understand people in hotter soil regions get screwed over if they buy a Vanquish, and if I was a person in a hot soil region and I bought a Vanquish I'd be contacting service@minelab.com.au and complaining.  The squeaky wheel gets the oil, if enough people complain about it I wouldn't be surprised if it was added in a firmware update, I'm sure it's not a difficult feature for them to add.

Agreed.  That's why its a head scratcher they didn't include it in the first place.  The good news is that we now have verification that ML will support Vanquish with FW updates which holds a lot of promise for expanding the capabilities of the Vanquish line.  User firmware updates is a feature notably and inexplicably missing with Apex.