First Hunt With The Ace Apex

[palzynski]

11 hours ago, abenson said:

I was hoping for some multi frequency competition from Garrett. But as it stands right now they aren't even close to what Minelab has. I honestly can't tell much of a difference in performance between multi and single frequency on the Apex. Yes its stable in MS on the beach but the Vanquish is still a better machine for less money. IMO Garrett should have waited until they had something better, instead of rushing a multi frequency to market just to say they had one. The thing that disappoints me is that it doesn't even give the Vanquish a run for the money. The Apex is a bit better at separation in iron if you have it setup right than the Vanquish but not by much. On the other hand the Vanquish is deeper and more stable. Maybe they will surprise us all with an AT Apex that will really shine. In the mean time I'm waiting for the Equinox 1000. 

Yes I agree with you Abenson the Apex is faster than the Vanquish and the Equinox but approximative in the audio signals  with jumpy IDs  when the targets are a little deep. I largely prefer the little slower MLs which give very accurate/reliable audio and VDIs informations this even at depth . I have compared the Apex with a Vanquish 540 up to now , but I am sure that the 340 / 240euros will be much better than the Apex / 520euros from the audio/VDI accuracy standpoint. Knowing that the audio is the most important thing for a detector ..

[Chase Goldman]

4 hours ago, palzynski said:

Yes I agree with you Abenson the Apex is faster than the Vanquish and the Equinox

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

[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.