Minelab Equinox 900, Is It Worth The Upgrade Over The Equinox 800? Long Read

[dsb]

Thanks Jeff,  Any differences in sensitivity/EMI reaction?  

[Jeff McClendon]

Again, 

18 minutes ago, dsb said:

Thanks Jeff,  Any differences in sensitivity/EMI reaction?  

Again, this is very hard to judge and its very subtle. Like Andy said, he couldn't hear a difference.

Plus, indoor testing of EMI is a joke. All I can say is that for example, if the sensitivity level 20 on the 800 and the 900 are equal, sometimes I get slightly less EMI on the 900 at 20 than I do on the 800 at 20 using the same settings and sometimes I don't notice a difference.

Due to the bad weather, I have only been able to detect outside three times comparing the 800 and 900 for EMI and I got similar inconclusive results. I will say that I have not yet encountered a situation where the 800 was handling EMI better than the 900 using the exact same settings.

Thanks Andy for letting me post in your topic. 

[abenson]

39 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I have 18 targets glued to thick plastic strips that are the size and thickness of medical wooden tongue depressors. There are forged and modern nails, steel, tin, 0.25 gram gold, lead, aluminum pull tabs/can slaw, brass shell casings, and US clad coins among the targets. When I turn them over I have no clue what they are.

I put each one in order under that 4" of mineralized dirt three times.  Nox 900 and Nox 800 were setup identically in Park 1 multi 5 tones using the 6" coil. I also used the Nox 900 in Park 1 multi using DP tones. All three tests were done with all target IDs accepted.

The Nox 800 and I in 5 tones scored 9 correct, 2 partially correct and 7 failures to at least get the conductivity right.

The Nox 900 and I in 5 tones scored 10 correct, 3 partially correct and 5 failures to at least get the conductivity right.

The Nox 900 and I in DP tones scored 12 correct, 1 partially correct and 5 failures to at least get the conductivity right.

The dirt is nasty, hard to ground balance and gives spurious iron responses around most lower conductive targets.

I have thousands of hours on the Equinox 800 in 5 tones and these are my target strips that I made and I tested the 800 last. I thought for sure the 800 would win easily.

The reason it didn't win and the same goes for the Nox 900 in 5 tones is solely chalked up to DP tones. The 800 and 900 in Park 1 multi, 5 tones simply could not detect two of the targets. The Nox 900 in DP tones detected them and gave the correct audio and target IDs. Those two targets were a half inch roughly square piece of rusted tin and the 0.25 gram gold nugget.

I am well aware that using Park 1 multi to detect small tin pieces and small nuggets is not optimal due to its frequency weighting. That is not the point. The point is even using Park 1 multi, the 900 using DP tones easily hit those two ferrous/non ferrous borderline targets.

For you Manticore folks, I believe something similar to DP tones lives in the Deep audio and Continuous Tones settings along with Prospecting audio. That is all a bit murky for me so I could be wrong.

So, the performance differences are subtle, but they are clearly there even with me having about 15 hours of using the Nox 900 and less than an hour using DP tones.....

Thanks Jeff for your info on DP tones as that is something I have not experimented with yet. The results speak for themselves I will definitely be trying DP tones the next time I'm able.

[Chesroy]

I would be interested in the 900's unmasking ability compared to the 800 with comingled targets. 

[Compass]

Another plus for the vibration feature is hunting in windy conditions. On Monday I hunted a beach with 30 mph gusts using my Beach Hunter and there were times when I could barely hear anything but the loudest signals.

My friend recently bought a 900, his first detector, and we hunted a beach together yesterday. He called me over to check several targets with my PI and I was surprised at the depth that he was getting, especially as a novice detectorist, and he wasn't even using DP tones yet. He did struggle a bit with bouncing TIDs and chatter but I think he'll get better with more time on the machine. He did get a 14K white gold ring and 18K earring so he must be doing something right. The black sand seemed to bother him a bit but that was an issue with the 800 as well.