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Just How Popular Are Metal Detector Brands With The General Public?


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There has been a lot of discussion on metal detectors vs each other lately, and brands being discussed in less than positive ways.  I wanted to get a gauge of just how popular certain brands really are in the big wide world with the general public not just hard core enthusiasts that tend to use forums, so the best way I could come up with that is not an "opinion" was to check out how many people like each particular brand on Facebook as an indication of how popular brands are, and how large their official users groups are.  I know quite a few of the people here don't use Facebook so may find this information informative as it's something they may not see otherwise.

To make it simple I just searched for the brand name, and am basing it on the search results which gives the Official group along with the first three private groups that show up under it on the search results.

Starting with Garrett, one of the older players in the game.

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Garrett seems to be doing pretty well there, 39,000 people like their business and the non-official group second in the search with 27,000 members.  Hardly small fry.

Next up is Minelab and a result there surprised me, I'm not sure what Facebook uses to order the groups, be it the last one to get a post or who knows, but that's not overly the point, the point is the popularity of the actual companies in question and if something looked odd I searched for the product individually to make sure it wasn't missing anything important, the main point is the company popularity overall anyway, not individual models from each company.

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Minelab didn't show the Equinox in the search results so to keep it complete I've added that in from pressing the see all to show it up, I know it's something people would have some interest in seeing how it compares. There are many Equinox groups, but this seemed to be the top one.

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As you can see, 335,000 people like Minelab, the groups that show up surprised me with the CTX being there but not the Equinox, again I have no idea how Facebook chooses the order of the groups under the official group it displays.  Interestingly with Minelab the VLF groups overall in numbers combined are far more popular overall than the PI/GPZ gold groups, it might be why Minelab stated in their annual report they were now trying to greatly increase their market share in the coin/jewellery type detectors over the coming years with new releases, a big market where they can gain numbers quickly.

Next up, XP.  I had to edit this one as the new Deus 2 group didn't show up in the search listing so I just found it manually and added it on the bottom to be more fair seeing it's their new hit product.

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Although XP overall only has 19,000 likes for the official company page the interesting thing is how quickly the XP Deus 2 Group gained numbers, 11k already, that's great going for a small amount of time, obviously a lot of interest in it.

Next up is First Texas, this was a challenge as they go by so many sub-brands so I had to search for brands individually too.

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You'll note there are no private groups showing up for First Texas, just the main group with 1600 members and 8 posts a month.  Quite a quiet group.

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Next was a direct search for Teknetics, very small numbers, the Eurotek Pro more popular than the T2 for members but only 10 posts a year vs 2 posts a week on the T2.

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The search for Fisher was a surprise, I expected to see some Gold Bug in there, and the F75 but zip, nada, nothing! The Fisher family whoever they are seem to almost be as popular as the detectors.  The Impulse has rather large numbers considering it's very limited awkward release.

And last but not least was Bounty Hunter, I guess no surprise they're their most popular brand being the cheapest and likely best selling detectors in their lineup.

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That's more like it, 3100 members and 4 posts a week, people are out there using Bounty Hunters.

Getting to the less mainstream brands, my search for Rutus came up a disappointment, I really thought it would be more popular in the European region.  Unfortunately for them Garrett takes the first position on their search, with Minelab coming third when I used "Rutus metal detectors" for the search term, with "Rutus" alone I found nothing to do with metal detectors.

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The Aussie QED has quite a good following, far more people following it than actual QED's exist.

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Now for Nokta Makro, I'm not sure why their official page doesn't say how many people like it, rather odd, maybe a setting they can disable?

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As I was so surprised not to see the Simplex mentioned I clicked the see it all to see what else pops up

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The numbers once again were far lower than I expected.  I honestly though the Legend would be far higher than 2500 in one group and 1000 in another, when people from one group are likely to also be in the other, but even combined only approximately 3500 members compared to the XP Deus at 11,000.  I honestly expected the other way around with the XP being far more expensive and what I assumed was a less popular brand, I was clearly wrong.

Tesoro has quite the following with approx 2000 likes.  According to their Facebook page they still exist as a business. 🙂

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If it wasn't for Bounty Hunter Tesoro are more popular than First Texas detectors.

And last but not least another dead company Whites, I was surprised how popular they are/were as I'm a relatively new comer to detecting and didn't know much about their models.

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Garrett takes their top search position being the new owner I guess.

I'll end it there, sorry if I forgot any brand someones interested in, I just did the main ones I could think of.  I hope someone finds this interesting, I sure did.

Based on these rudimentary results the list of popularity with Facebook users goes

Minelab by a country mile.
Garrett a distant second a few laps behind
XP a lap or two behind Garrett
Whites on XP's tail being carted around the track on a gurney by Garrett.
Nokta and First Texas crossing the line near each other
Tesoro a lap behind the First Texas designs but doing well seeing it died during the race.
QED doing quite well for its market share but stumbling across the line second last
Rutus at the back of the pack, hopefully picking up the pace on the next race.

This is by no means a performance ranking, more of a general public brand name popularity ranking based upon Facebook searches.

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The FB groups of members of the Rutus detectors ... are more oriented at the level of individual states .. ,, where the FB group Rutus Atrex has 2.5 thousand members and some Rutus groups of the FB group have 7.5 thousand members ...

I am in the FB group Rutus ATREX which has 2.5 thousand members ..  

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8 hours ago, EL NINO77 said:

The FB groups of members of the Rutus detectors ... are more oriented at the level of individual states .. ,, where the FB group Rutus Atrex has 2.5 thousand members and some Rutus groups of the FB group have 7.5 thousand members ...

I am in the FB group Rutus ATREX which has 2.5 thousand members ..  

Thanks El Nino, are the groups you speak of in English, I can't for the life of me find any other Rutus groups than the one I've found.

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  I'm on the Polish group Rutus Atrex ... https://www.facebook.com/groups/692660611667948....

But he also found a site in * Russia..and it has 7300 members ..https://www.facebook.com/groups/692660611667948/user/100061917495887/?

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Thanks, facebook must not show foreign language groups in it's search results, good to see the Rutus is far more popular than it seemed.

So the race results need adjusted 🙂

Minelab by a country mile.
Garrett a distant second a few laps behind
XP a lap or two behind Garrett
Whites on XP's tail being carted around the track on a gurney by Garrett.
Rutus well supported by the home crowd, cheering from afar
Nokta and First Texas crossing the line near each other
Tesoro a lap behind the First Texas designs but doing well seeing it died during the race.
QED at the back of the pack

I'm quite impressed by Garrett, people often call them irrelevant, but in reality they're the second most popular brand in the world from what I can see.

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