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This just happened to me a few hours ago so I decided I’d better type it up while it is still fresh in my mind. I got a rare but pleasant surprise this morning while testing a new metal detector. I’ll be honest, when Garrett said they wanted to send me a Vortex VX9 to try out I was not chomping at the bit. I am mostly a gold nugget hunter and while I enjoy other types of detecting, the fact is when I have time the nuggets always seem to win out. That being the case I kind of have to make myself go use coin detectors and I was not sure I would really be that helpful. I don't like to work at this stuff like I used to. I do have some very tough ground around Reno though and I thought I could at least help make sure it worked well in it, so I agreed to give the Vortex a spin. I specifically did not agree however to say anything about it publicly. I’m getting tired of the online drama around new metal detector models and was not looking to get drawn into any of that. It took longer getting to me for various reasons and is still undergoing last minute tweaking, the very reason for me giving it a go. I was given no specific agenda other than to just “go do my thing” and after a little thought I decided for my first use I’d go do a little coin detecting at a nearby park. I gave the Quick Start Guide a cursory glance but frankly there is nothing complicated here, clear menu with easily interpreted icons and options. I charged the detector and MS-3 headphones up overnight and headed to the park. This is the same location where several years ago I tested another new multifrequency model by another brand and hit a small bonanza of silver coins. The coins were not at crazy depths so much as hidden by the tough soil mineralization here, and the new generation of multifrequency detectors got just that little extra depth needed to find these coins. The soil in some places is sod type turf, not too bad, but in other places is basically grass on granitic derived sands and gravel laden with magnetite. Six inch dime and eight inch quarter type of stuff. Needless to say, I have been back to this little place numerous times as a sort of past honey hole, hoping with each new detector I get that maybe I will eke out another good find or two. It has been some time though since I found anything good here, though that is partly because my nugget detecting keeps taking me to other places. Still, it’s close by and so was an obvious place to give the Vortex my first try. I had low expectations, and in fact was really just going to see how the detector ground balanced and how the tones sounded, real basic stuff. Garrett Vortex VX9 Default Settings (subject to change) I started with default settings and made these adjustments. Multifrequency (default), Zero Disc Mode (default is Standard Mode), Iron Audio On (default is off), Iron Volume 1 (default is 4), set EMI Channel for 6 (default is 4), and Wireless on (default is off). I left Recovery Speed at the slowest setting of 1 but went ahead and cranked the Sensitivity from default 6 to max 8 and although the Vortex got more reactive to the ground it seemed to handle it. This park has a lot of EMI issues and so first happy finding was no real problem there. Finally, I set the Volume at 2 because with the MS-3 headphones the targets were quite loud, and then used the headphone volume to reduce everything further. I run wide open listening to everything and do not like subjecting my ears to a barrage of loud sounds. It’s a salt and pepper find the best taste thing, but Main Volume 2, Iron Volume 1, and headphone volume reduced gave me a pleasant audio stream to listen to. I threw a nickel, zinc penny and dime on the ground and noted the readings. Time to remind people the machine is still being tweaked so I’m not going to mention the specifics as they might change. Even the defaults I mentioned earlier are subject to change. Then I started hunting. Wide open settings so a constant low-level puttering of ferrous and ground responses, which at the low volume level I set is the way I prefer to hunt. I like to hear everything. In short order I got what seemed like a solid nickel reading, but it was a folded over older square pull tab. I decided then and there I did not have the patience to deal with aluminum today, so concentrated on just wandering around and listening to responses plus watching the numbers and meter responses. I am a hunt by ear type of guy so have to force myself to watch meters and this Garrett does have a new three level meter setup I needed to get used to. I’m wandering around then, trying to stick to the shade, when I get a faint high tone smear, quarter indications, but also the type of audio that says maybe a deep rusty nail faking me out. Yet no low tones just these whispery high tones. The three level meter was only showing responses on the non-ferrous bar, though they were a bit jumpy. I decided to dig it as that’s what testing is all about but was half thinking nail – guess I’m getting pessimistic these days after digging too many of these fringe type targets hoping for the best, and getting a nail. The ground was hard and I was in a little nest of roots so had to saw through those. Finally got a reading with my pinpointer but it was in the back of the hole, and I’m figuring, yeah, it’s a nail, and shove my digger back there to lever it out. Out pops this large bronze looking disc, like a quarter but copper colors, and my mind is not translating that into a coin. Large bronze washer? It’s old but fairly clean and I look and see Lady Liberty looking at me – well I’ll be darned, my first large cent! 1852 braided hair variant. It looks like it has good detail and might clean up well. My sloppy digging did also reward me with just the tiniest of scrapes below Liberty’s ear, but not really noticeable and will probably disappear once I clean the coin, if I do. The find is remarkable for a couple reasons. First, it’s the oldest coin I personally ever found in the United States. I have hunted in the U.K. quite a few times so have found many much older coins, but having lived in Alaska most of my life any U.S. coins from the 1800’s are few and far between in my collection. Second, Reno, NV was founded in 1868, so this coin had to be an older one in somebodies pocket dropped at a later date, or so I surmise. There were people in the area earlier than 1868 but I find it doubtful it was actually lost in the 1850s. Most remarkable of all to me though is this was the second target I ever dug with a Vortex. That’s kind of crazy and if you all think I’m making it up I can’t really blame you as I hardly believe it myself. I’ve never claimed to be the best detectorist in the world, far from it. I just do a lot of it in good locations and get lucky now and then, and today my luck was off the charts. That’s about it for the story. I decided to call it a day, get some photos, and come home to type this up. I can’t really answer any questions about the Vortex yet as I am about 99 hours of use away from having anything intelligent to say about it. I’m certainly not making any claims it is better than this or that or nothing else could find the coin, amazing find from hunted out park….. blah, blah, blah, we’ve all heard too much of that before and I’m not doing any of that now. All I’m doing is telling a true story of what happened to me this morning, make of that what you will. I will say that the Vortex goes beep, it can find stuff, and it’s hard not to like a detector that surprises me like this one just did.

I was intending to spend a bit of time this morning messing around with my Vortex and working out the Target ID's for all the common coins I find in the area and make a little cheat sheet like I normally do with a new detector but ran out of time with a busy morning of stuff going on that I wasn't expecting so I figured why not just take it out and dig whatever sounds good. I normally prefer to hunt grassed areas for coins but I've done many of the local spots to death and the one I was intending to go to had too many people around when I got there so figured I'd try something a bit different and do some detecting at the river, people swim there a bit over summer and plenty of fly fishers from all over the world come to the river to catch trout and salmon so I had my hopes up, I've done a few days detecting there but never really a lot as the grassed areas have been keeping me busy. The first thing I noticed about the Vortex is how incredibly stable it runs, maximum sensitivity is no problem, its configured in a way that's very family friendly, I could pass it over to my wife or daughter who very rarely ever touch a detector and they'd be comfortable using it due to its stable operation, not a peep out of it unless a target is under the coil, this is a bit of a point of difference to many detectors that now the manufacturers tend to push to the limits of stability where they run a bit ratty especially in higher sensitivity with the aim of getting the best results for the very experienced detector operator, some have quite poor stability with their ID's too whereas the Vortex at least for me was really good. Some experienced people will think there is more left in the tank seeing it runs so stable, whereas the masses of users would just appreciate its smooth running. It really feels like a detector made for anyone to use yet the performance was there for me, depth was great as was ID stability. One thing I worked out during the hunt was coins ID better when in the ground in their natural state, if you dig the coin out, drop it back in the hole and air test the coin the ID's will often be up averaged, put the coin back in the soil and the ID's correct themselves, this is by no means a problem as you don't find coins in the air 🙂 I am certainly a beginner on the detector, only a few hours behind the wheel but found it very easy to use, I had no idea of the ID's of coins so just dug stuff that sounded good, only trash I got was a rusty nail and a couple of bottle caps to experiment before I had confidence in how well the bottle cap reject works, didn't dig another one. My first target was a 71 ID and is a stainless steel and wooden pocket knife, it wasn't buried just in a bush. Probably pretty old. I recorded a bit of a video of the action, more so than taking photos as I know plenty of people would rather see it working than just see photos. I was learning as I was going and getting to know the detector. I'm not much of a Youtuber, I don't edit my videos, I just stitched the clips together as I prefer Raw video, no editing and chopping out bits that I don't want people to see, what you see is what you get with me, I'm not one to test detectors on nails and do comparison videos showing one an do better in a nail bed than another, to me none of that matters, all I care about is if a detector finds stuff, and for me the Vortex does, and it's so easy to use which I'm sure many will appreciate. You'll note the first coin I'm showing I was a bit surprised the ID was different out of the ground than when in the hole, had I of known I could have put the soil back in the hole with the coin and the ID would have corrected itself and it ID'd the coin correctly. I was a bit puzzled at the time because the ID changed with the air gap in the hole. My best find for the afternoon was a small UK silver threepence from 1919, back then New Zealand ran off UK currency, these are 97% silver I believe . I'm going to have to watch out, I think my wife and daughter will be wanting to use this detector and steal it off me, it's just so easy to use and stable that they'll even find it a breeze and an enjoyable experience. So far, so good, I don't know what all the fuss is about, it finds stuff, and works well for me.

Garrett has done a great job improving charger compatibility with the new 2.05 update. My Vortex arrived today, I started charging before midday on the pre-installed 2.04 firmware, after over 6 hours and trying two chargers that exceed requirements during that time it had only just reached the second bar flashing, it arrived almost flat with the first bar flashing when plugged in although not down to 5% where the first bar flashes when turned on. The flash tool has a minimum requirement of 2 bars to update the firmware, and if you try prior to that it refuses to flash, wise move on Garrett's part, you don't want to brick a detector by it going flat during the update. So, as soon as it reached two solid bars, I decided it was time to flash, my reasoning was these lines in the changelog of the new 2.05 firmware. Improved compatibility with a wider variety of charging sources. Improved battery status indicator. It worked a treat, quick simple easy process to flash, took about a minute, gives you a scare as at 99% you hear the USB disconnect noise, this was just the detector rebooting 🙂 then it comes up as complete. After doing so, the detector went from taking 6 hours to move up a single bar to completing the charge in under 2 hours from about 50% so I would guess 4 hours total charge time as the manual specifies. I'm sure all new ones leaving the factory now since the firmware has been released will be preinstalled with 2.05 so this charging issue won't exist for the newer detectors. They most certainly widened charger support on the new firmware, too late for me to take it out today but I'll be giving it a shot tomorrow weather permitting, well regardless I just won't last as long if it's raining. I like the build quality of it, nice on the arm, the big screen is awesome, a brief mess around indoors and the thing is so easy to use and understand. I'll have to test out the target IDs on our commonly found coins prior to taking it. The EU has rules all gadgets that charge with USB must be USB-C like the Vortex and not include a charger, the idea is people get a pile of chargers all different for all sorts of stuff, lots of waste, I like the idea of USB-C charging with a standard setup like the Vortex has. Looking forward to using it tomorrow to try to find some coins and get accustomed to using it, although with its simplicity of navigation and easy to understand settings I doubt that will be too hard. The handle is the most comfortable handle on a detector I've ever used.

When I get a new detector the first thing I do is wonder about aftermarket coil opportunities, in the case of the Vortex Garrett tends to make great quality coils themselves, I've got a number of Garrett machines and never had a coil problem, no broken ears, no undue noise, they just work however, what the aftermarket brings is a large range of coil sizes and types. So yesterday, I emailed my two favourite aftermarket manufacturers of coils to see what they thought, to my surprise both replied near immediately. First, we have Nel, I was really surprised to get a quick reply from them, although I've had good communication with Olelsii in the past, with the war going on and the troubles they're having I figured I would be lucky to get a reply at all. So, I may end up with a Tornado and Snake for my Vortex, that'd be great. And secondly, Detech Sounds very positive, I would like to get the Detech Ultimate 13" for the Vortex, and perhaps the 18x4" Arrow also.

Andrew Benson ( @abenson ) made a comment in the thread linked below about the new Garrett Vortex performing differently for Morgan Dollars compared to Peace Dollars for a certain combination of settings (and, yes, he did include an 'out' that this was the case for the individual coins he tested). As I didn't want to sidetrack the thread -- which is specifically about problems seen in the Vortex by detectorprospector.com members -- I've chosen to start a new thread to call attention to this and open it for discussion. (Andrew's post is the second in the above thread.) Here is what my 2022 Redbook says about the specs of both Morgan Dollar and Peace Dollar: weight 26.73 grams; composition .900 silver, .100 copper (net weight .77344 oz. pure silver); diameter 38.1 mm; reeded edge You may have noticed there is no thickness spec. However, the identical composition leads to a consistent density, so knowing the diameter (as specked above, for both) leads to the same *average* thickness (which can be calculated), with only minor variations due to the relief, that is details of the respective obverse and reverse depictions and characters. I've noticed when comparing digital Target ID's for either Indian or Lincoln cents (which I've previously reported on this site) of the same year that corrosion can result in (small but measurable) variations of those ID's. Andrew mentions finding silver dollars in the salt water impregnated beaches of northern Utah. Could this be leading to the difference in performance (Morgan vs. Peace)?

I think the Vortex Update is now available for anyone lucky enough to have one Vortex VX9 Firmware Update 2.05 Release date 18.12.2024 Enhancements to Multi-Salt operation: Increased detection depth on high conductors. Improved Target ID on high conductors. Improved Target ID on ferrous items. Enhancements to Multi-Frequency operation: Improved Target ID on high conductors. Improved Iron Boundary/iron unmasking capabilities. Increased Target ID depth in all Frequencies and Channels. Resolution of unintended power cycling. Improved compatibility with a wider variety of charging sources. Improved battery status indicator. I'm keen to hear how you all go with it. Looks like a lot of positive changes in such a short amount of time.

Here's a video Garrett's done on the Vortex update process, very easy, so cool you can just do this to switch models if you grow out of your VX5 or VX7. For some reason they only put the video on Vimeo and not Youtube, rather odd, I would think Youtube would give them more exposure. At the end of the video they tell you that you can find out more about their updates and upgrades at garrett.com/store/updates-upgrades however this doesn't work, @Steve Herschbach might want to point this out to them, 404 error.

Hello team, I am new member from France.😁 The Garrett VX5, VX7 and VX9 vortex range is gradually arriving on our market, I would like to know if any of you have already tested the VX7 and VX9 and could tell me what the main differences in performance are. Thank you for your help and have a nice day Paul

Great news, the Vortex has now been approved by the FCC and the physical hardware must be ready for sale. You can see the full report here. Quite a long list of countries the test data accreditation applies for too. So pleased to see Nz/Au on the list, so it's right to go for us here too now. And some photos of the guts, you can see more on the FCC link, probably plenty of information in there for the techy types to try decipher how it works a little, but beyond my understanding 🙂 Some nice shielding there, might be party why it's so good with EMI compared to many other detectors. Won't be long now until we see this puppy hit the shelves!

Just curious how many are happy vs unhappy with the vortex release. It's to early to know the true performance, but initial thoughts? Will you buy one or pass for now?

No one saw this coming. Look at the market. Everybody throwing models at every nook and granny. Garrett came out of the blue, in blue, and covered the range at a competitive price, without playing the coil lockout game. Even if you don’t like it, they changed the game, and you will benefit from it. What are they going to do? They just put out countless different models, but now there’s a “jump” model the covers the range. Even knocks on the door of the Mighty Manticore without requiring a PhD. If you take the coil lockout game expense into consideration, it’s probably the best overall value. Do you want to keep buying different models, and maybe coils, or just jump. Got to give Garrett their props, this is a game changer. I don’t expect it to be the best at anything, but if it’s good at a lot of things, it ate the heart out of the watermelon.

Features/Price Comparison of the Garrett Vortex vs. Nokta Triple Score vs. Minelab X-Terra Elite Note the Minelab X-Terra Elite Price of $599 US I listed is based on a combo package that includes ML wireless phones and a 6" round coil. The detector/coil only price for X-terra Elite is $479 US.

I'm not brand loyal at all, I will swing whatever I feel like gives me the best advantage because I'm only given so many days in the field during this life. I had high hopes for Garrett I would love to support an American company. All three models of the vortex have the exact same hardware but the entry level is severely handicapped and features require a payment to unlock. Garrett is spinning this and calling it an upgrade but this is not a good thing for the metal detecting community. This is the beginning of microtransactions for each and every feature that you want. The base version doesn't even support wireless headphones so they are asking that the user pay to unlock that feature! The transmitter has to already be inside but they want you to pay to turn it on! I'm not bashing Garrett my first detector was a Garrett freedom 3 back in the 90s all I'm asking is that people read between the lines. the most advanced software for this detector has already been developed then features were intentionally removed and now they're expecting their customers to pay to unlock them.

Can you imagine buying a metal detector that is severely handicapped from the factory and then having to pay to unlock features like beach mode and even wireless headphones! Don't believe Garrett's spin. This could lead to microtransactions and is bad for the entire community.