Legend Or Equinox 600

[Jeff McClendon]

I have almost 100 hours using the Legend mostly on coin and jewelry turf sites. All I can say is I am very impressed with the Legend as far as its ability to detect at a high level, its outstanding features, its SMF technology and its ergonomics/build quality. That doesn't mean my experience has been all positive and blissful. Definitely not. I have been using my Equinox 800 for the past three days since my Legend control unit is over the Atlantic Ocean right about now headed to Istanbul and a replacement is on its way to me. More on that in the future.

So, I have not used my Equinox 800 since I got the Legend except for two hunts where I ran them side by side. All I can say is: the Equinox 800 is an amazing detector. Putting the Legend in the same sentence as the Equinox 800 is paying both of them a big compliment.

I bought a Legend because I was a bit "detector bored", it was my birthday, I was helping my mother recover from surgery and I thought I might get a couple of hours of testing/hunting in dirt that is not nearly as nasty as where I often detect. The main reason however was that I wanted a freshwater detector that could run at high enough frequencies to gold prospect in streams, that I could trust for submerged coin/jewelry/relic detecting, that wouldn't need an antenna (I would be using it in fast moving boulder strewn water), it has a vibration feature that eliminates the need for headphones when submerged or near noisy water, no need for extra elaborate waterproofing of components and it very likely wouldn't leak and since both of my Equinox 800s were out of warranty. For my budget ($600) that meant a choice between the Legend and the Equinox 600. The choice on paper and from the Equinox leak history and lack of a vibration feature for target alerting was obvious. 

So after almost 100 hours, I believe I made the right choice between the Legend and the Equinox 600.

[mh9162013]

Great post, thanks for sharing.

Hypothetical question for you: If the Equinox 600 had vibration and waterproofness that equaled what the Legend offered, would you still choose the Legend over the 600?

[Jeff McClendon]

Yep. Legend has a lot more other features than the Equinox 600.

It has been easy for me to switch from Legend to Equinox and back. They are really similar in so many ways.

These are just my opinions. I am not recommending anyone else make the same choice I did.

[abenson]

If you want a machine that has the ability to do some gold prospecting, then the Legend is the obvious choice. Legend is better built too. I've used one for a few hours and decided not to get it. But that's only because I already have an Equinox 800. For the money it's easily the best detector in it's price range.

[phrunt]

I'm so torn on the Legend thing, I'd like to try out a Legend for a day, just so I know how it'd do for me as I'd be easily able to make a decision by the end of that day.  I've been thinking about one but I'm really not in need of another VLF when I mostly just look for gold these days, the more I use my GPZ the more I see I would be wasting my time using a VLF for prospecting.  When I'm finding down to 0.02 of a gram with more depth than a VLF would give me anyway with the GPZ anything smaller than that is a fun thing to find for sure but it really adds nothing to your tally at the end of the day.

I hear people worried about their out of warranty Equinox drowning, but after talking to Minelab and them saying if my Nox was to drown outside of warranty I could send it's control pod in to the service agent and they'd sell a replacement control pod, and for a very reasonable price then I'm fine with that, I'm not concerned about it drowning after knowing that although I'm not overly worried about it drowning anyway, just imagine how many Nox's are out there that haven't drowned, yes some do, usually the heavy duty water hunters who are possibly on occasion exceeding it's depth rating or just spending so much time in the water their chances are higher than most.  Some people are unlucky and theirs drowns the first time it hits the water, mine I know won't do that as it's spent 3 days at the bottom of my spa being tested 🙂

I think the thing that'd push me over the edge to get a Legend would be coils, if it gets coils I want that'd be enough to do it.

The other thing I use a detector for is deep silvers, and I'm about as well equipped I could be for that in my soil with the Nox and CTX.

I am very happy Nokta and XP have both gained ground on Minelab though, there are really no clear winners in the VLF's anymore, if only the same could happen to high gold prospecting detectors where competition is desperately needed.

I completely understand your logic for the Legend though Jeff, in that position of buying an Equinox 600 when you already have an 800 would be pointless, better off to try something new and the Legend was a fine choice for that.  The big unknown with the Legend is how much better it'll get with firmware updates, they're obviously actively working on improving it, so I doubt we've seen the final product yet, that is a big bonus for buyers. 

[Jeff McClendon]

Simon, I can’t think I of a single reason why you need a Legend other than you just want one. It is not going to significantly outperform your Equinox 800 at this time or at least until its iron bias settings are added.

It is not going to hit deeper silver coins than your CTX 3030 in your hunting conditions either with the Legend’s 11” coil.