Going With The 900

[Bob38]

After the struggling with the decision of which detector to buy between the Manticore or the Nox 900, Ive decided to go with the 900. I was on a waiting list for several weeks for the Manticore. My reasons was the Nox 800 is a proven machine and with the expanded VDI range I thought this will help out a bunch. Secondly, I love the 10x6 eliptical coiltek which is a killer for my detecting style (heavy iron). Third, is the faster chip set. Four, is the build quality. Although I had no problems with coil ears, wobbly shaft, and broken arm cuff, I always thought that the 800 was a serious hunter. The light and vibrating handle was no factor in my decision making. I thought the 2D screen may be way too distracting on the Manticore due to the concentrations of iron I have to contend with, but I do like the audio themes. An finally, I REALLY didn't like the way Minelab had decided to short-sheet the smaller dealers who has served me and others so well in the past and favored Bass Pro and Cabelas. Nothing against those two stores they are great, but the smaller dealers know their stuff. So I woke up this morning and decided to get off the stupid waiting list and go forward with the 900. High Plains Prospectors was very understanding and was very happy with my decision. I also told them that when/if the time comes I will deal when them on the Manticore.   

I will wait a year to see what develops on the Manticore. I do believe the Manticore is/will be a knock-out machine and the day will come when I may have one, but it will not be soon. The 800 and Deus I and II have found me alot of great things. Knowing that the 900 will be here on Monday gives assurance that my Deus II and Nox 900 will continue to be a one-two punch. 

Call this a celebration vent

    

[Mark Gillespie]

I think you made a good decision.  Since I use the 800 and can say it's enough for me at this point in time.

The expanded numbers will allow more information on targets.  If you will narrow down your pin pointing you can get a good idea if the target is roundish or elongated. 

[phrunt]

The only losers in this are Minelab, with the detectors costing similar to make they end up losing their profit difference between the two detectors which is quite significant.

I'm sure you're not alone doing this.  Can't loose either way, both are good detectors.

[Chesroy]

2 hours ago, phrunt said:

The only losers in this are Minelab, with the detectors costing similar to make they end up losing their profit difference between the two detectors which is quite significant.

I'm sure you're not alone doing this.  Can't loose either way, both are good detectors.

Hi Simon can I ask you now that you have had Time with the Manticore are you impressed or slightly disappointed with it ? I ask as I will have chance to buy one from my dealer when the next batch arrives which I am told will be in 2 to 3 weeks. I am still teetering on the fence and can't quite convince myself that it's $$$$$ better than the 900. Appreciate anything you can say on the matter. Thx

[phrunt]

9 hours ago, Chesroy said:

Hi Simon can I ask you now that you have had Time with the Manticore are you impressed or slightly disappointed with it ?

I've almost had mine 4 months now, it's had quite a bit of use in that time mainly for looking for silver coins, it's had 1 prospecting trip and found me one single small nugget that was 0.06 of a gram, it performed reasonably good finding it considering I was using an 11" coil,, and if I was using the Nox with it's 11" coil I'd expect similar results, the jury is out until a smaller coil arrives there, so far everything is fine for that, the ever so slightest edge to the Nox 800 on the very smallest bits of gold,

As for coins, hands down happy with the Manticore for a few reasons, I hunt in very mild soils and don't have a lot of trash so my opinion on mineralized soil or high trash areas would be worthless, however for my conditions its proving to be a great detector, it's better than the Nox 800 for EMI, I would say very noticeably better there, and the long EMI press actually works, and works very well. and I believe that's missing off the 900?

Keep in mind I have no idea about the 900 so all I'm comparing to is the 800.

The 2D target trace I find is a valuable tool, that's coming from soneone that liked the Target Trace on the CTX so I'm more familiar with using it and find it very helpful, the more information I can get about digging targets the better as I do dig in places I prefer not to dig many holes. 

The Target ID's are more bouncy than the Nox 800, I suspect mostly due to having the bigger ID range and also the higher sensitivity settings available on the Manticore, so if I keep my sensitivity lower I can get my Target Id's to perform on par with the Nox for the most part, even with having the bigger target ID range.  Keeping lower sensitivity seems a good tip for the Manticore, if you're chasing depth it really doesn't even matter if you lower it, the Manticore is very deep even in lower sensitivity so if you have to stabalize the machine by running lower sensitivity you don't have to be worried you're losing depth.

I at first didn't like the bigger ID range as it does cause more movement in Target Id's but the more I used it the more I found the benefits of it, prime examples were my common pull tabs, on the Nox they show up 16/17 sometimes flicking to 15 and on the Manticore they're coming up 42 to 44.  The NZ silver threepence comes up  15/16 on the Nox but comes up 36 to 40 so with the Nox the silver and pull tab was coming up the same numbers, the Manticore has moved the Silvers slightly below the Pull tabs in the numbers so I can dig more silvers with less pull tabs.    This obviously doesn't help with coins on edge but it sure helps dig less holes and less pull tabs than with the Nox.  With the Nox I used the depth meter to try dig less pull tabs and more silvers, and the silvers were often deeper having been there longer.  Now I have more ID information along with the depth meter so more information helping me dig less.  Digging less is important to me as I don't like digging in the areas I detect as I want to annoy people as little as possible to retain access.

The build quality is a lot better, I have no fear of breaking my ears and if I do its a lower shaft not a new coil so that's much better, everything about it seems better quality.  It's got some messy adhesive around the seal area on the control pod, but looking at it closely it's not going to affect the waterproofing, it's cosmetic, the glue is doing it's job just fine.  It appears they applied the glue, fixed the pod together and when dry trimmed off the excess glue that was protruding so it makes it look quite messy.  It's more comfortable to swing than the Nox, perhaps the new raised arm cuff and different handle design.

I've only had it at the beach for 5 days when I was staying near a beach area, it performed very well, unfortunately didn't find me much as my beaches in that area are very desolate of targets, so few people doesn't make for good detecting but I got a good feel for how it works in the salt and I was impressed, depth was great as was stability, the coil moved through the water just fine too.  I wasn't concerned at all about drowning it which was a nice feeling not having that in the back of my mind all the time.

So yes, I'm very happy, glad I purchased it and I suspect I'll be even happier when the other coils arrive.  Is it worth the price difference between the 900? That's one only the buyer can answer as the value difference means more to some than others, for me it made little difference as it's just like buying another coil or something and the difference between the two detectors for me personally is well worth paying for.  I'd have a lot more trouble justifying buying the 900 than I did the Manticore as an upgrade to the 800.

[Chesroy]

Thx Simon appreciate the in depth response and the time it took to write it. Glad your happy with your purchase I have decided now that I will buy the Manticore and have fun learning how to master it, I will keep my 800 as a back up. Thx again

[Jason-NEK]

On 4/1/2023 at 12:53 PM, phrunt said:

As for coins, hands down happy with the Manticore for a few reasons, I hunt in very mild soils and don't have a lot of trash so my opinion on mineralized soil or high trash areas would be worthless, however for my conditions its proving to be a great detector, it's better than the Nox 800 for EMI, I would say very noticeably better there, and the long EMI press actually works, and works very well. and I believe that's missing off the 900?

Phrunt,  I would assume that the upgrade in the chip technology for the Nox 900 over the 800, would be just as good as the Manitcore's when it comes to detecting around high EMI areas?  Maybe I should hold off on purchasing the 900 and lean more towards the Manticore?  Have any of you that use the Nox 900 experienced a significant change in dealing with higher than normal EMI transmission spots?

[phrunt]

3 minutes ago, Jason-NEK said:

Phrunt,  I would assume that the upgrade in the chip technology for the Nox 900 over the 800, would be just as good as the Manitcore's when it comes to detecting around high EMI areas? 

I'm not so sure, they say this on the website for the Manticore, no mention of boosted EMI immunity for the Nox 900

Part of the EMI improvements for the Manticore are its new quick and long noise cancel methods.

The Continuous noise cancel works very well and I wish they'd figured that out before releasing the GPX 6000, a far more expensive detector with a worse noise cancel released not too long before the Manticore.