AlgoForce E1500

[Jeff McClendon]

16 hours ago, afaitken said:

Hey Jeff, looks like you did well price-wise on the Axiom. The Axiom retails here in Australia at $7,385 or on sale at $7,185 which is not only way overpriced, but unfair that Garrett charges international buyers such a premium. It's the same for coils - so at $3kUSD you got a fantastic bargain! Also, there is a growing amount of us that are having endless problems with the Axioms not to mention faulty coils. I went out and got another Minelab GPZ 7000 yesterday as the Axiom has been nothing short of disappointing for the last 6 months, and useless for 90% of your prospecting day. We have collectively sent back our detectors "again" to Garrett Australia for testing. I personally wont ever use it again. The GPX 6000's are known for poor EMI shielding, but aftermarket modifications to fix the shielding and earthing removes those issues from the 6000. Also, more after market coils for the 6000 have been released and keep coming. Minelab applied a conductive coating to the inside of the GPX 6000 box but "forgot" to earth it back to the PCB properly amongst other things. One thing for sure, the Minelab range really is without competition. They were built and designed by people who live and breath gold prospecting, especially in the Australian environment. My plan is to strip back the 7000 and Frankenstein it into a lighter body and lighter battery. My research says it can be done, especially running the lighter X-coils....If the Axiom worked anywhere near as good as my wife's GPX 6000, I'd probably would never had got another GPZ 7000 - but they are such a good detector, you can't loose!

Around $5500 AUD would be a fair price for the Axiom.

That's twice as much as the E1500 and I am starting to wonder if the Axiom is twice as good.

One day the Axiom impresses me and the next day I take it to near the same location but add in some soil moisture and things get weird.

GPX 6000 costs $9,970 AUD here in the USA. I doubt the GPX 6000 is three to four times better than an E1500.

I had similar weird occurrences with the GPX 6000. My GPX 6000 got the EMI/speaker system "fix" by Minelab USA Repair and it helped.

I like and very often need to use a DD coil for EMI and ground conditions.

You said   "Also, more after market coils for the 6000 have been released and keep coming."   So far, all of those have been Mono coils. Which super intelligent group of people created a detector with 2 soil timings normal/difficult, three modes to use them- one mode for Mono coils and two modes Salt and Cancel for DD coils then only planned to release one 14" DD coil? So two thirds of the detector’s operating modes are basically useless due to that one ridiculous DD coil which Minelab says "is not recommended for general detecting" in its own "Coil Selection" GPX 6000 video......WHAT???? 

Basically, I feel ripped off by these two giants of the metal detecting industry more often than not.

I appreciate AlgoForce releasing a PI that will satisfy a lot of people's PI needs without it costing as much as a decent used car.

 

[phrunt]

I think everything else is now extremely overpriced.  

[abenson]

Yea the new price for the GPX 6000 at $6499 is almost laughable, at least to me. I had a hard time justifying what I paid for it almost 2 years ago. But it does find the gold. Once the Algoforce hits the US market priced at under $1800, it will most likely require some companies to lower their price or lose market share. I'm not a full time gold prospector, in fact I only gold hunt for probably 20 or less days a year. Luckily I'm well enough off I can afford to spend 6k on a metal detector just for the fun factor. But I'd rather spend the money and be able to go out and find some gold every time I go rather than settle for second best and get frustrated. I know a lot of people that hunt gold nuggets way more days a year than I do and would never spend even $2500 on a new GPX 4500 to compliment their VLF. The VLF finds them plenty of small stuff. From the sound of it, the Algoforce won't find as small of gold as a good VLF but will to allow us to find small gold a VLF won't find at greater depths in mineralized ground. So I foresee a good portion of those VLF users jumping up to an Algoforce who wouldn't buy a SDC2300 or Axiom.

[EL NINO77]

Very good insights Jeff, Simon and Andrew...
The Force 1500 may not be the best PI in the world... but it can be the best PI Detector in terms of Price / Performance..
In my opinion, there are more people who would like to buy a powerful PI detector, but they are always deterred by the high price of such PI detectors, which are 3000 to 7000 dollars/euros... -
Here the PI Force1500 with a price range of 1500-1800 dollars appears as a detector that is already affordable for them.. because it is that in the prices of powerful VLF detectors /Manticore or Deus 2/...

I myself once bought a second-hand PI  Garrett ATX for 1300 euros, so it was an affordable investment in a powerful PI detector.

[phrunt]

On 1/26/2024 at 2:55 PM, phrunt said:

Even better is this from their manual.

Bug Report and Feature Request AlgoForce highly values customer feedback as a crucial means of enhancing our products. To ensure a seamless feedback process, we encourage you to reach out to us directly via email at admin@algoforce.com.au. If you come across any bugs or have ideas for new features that could enhance your metal detecting experience, please send us an email with a detailed description of the issue or requested feature. Kindly include the hardware serial number and firmware version of your detector (located in the Miscellaneous setting) in your email. Our dedicated team of developers will promptly review your feedback and respond to you accordingly. We appreciate your contribution and look forward to working together to improve our products.

Further to this information from the manual, on the 8th of February I contacted Algoforce with a suggestion of an improvement, The pinpoint volume I thought was unnecessarily loud, it's nice to have the general audio volume quite high when using the speaker or the Avantree Torus neck speaker which really made the pinpoint mode roar, in fact I have the volume maxed out most of the time, however the pinpoint volume in that instance was extremely loud, so I suggested an independent pinpoint volume control setting to adjust pinpoint's volume and leave the general volume the same.   I am guessing headphone users would have found the pinpoint volume rather loud too.

It is now the 13th of February and to my surprise this morning I woke up to an email from Algoforce with a new firmware update to try out, now incorporating independent volume for the pinpoint function.

The new firmware release notes: 

Release Notes for AlgoForce E1500 Software v1.0.8:

1. The activation time for a long key press function has been reduced from 1.5 seconds to 0.7 seconds. For example, the time duration between pressing and holding the ground balance key and the commencement of actual ground balancing is now 0.7 seconds, as opposed to 1.5 seconds. Other functions requiring a long key press are similarly affected, including vibration adjustment and auto frequency scan.

2. In version 1.0.7, Pinpoint mode and the main detection mode shared the same volume and vibration controls. With the introduction of v1.0.8, Pinpoint mode now features independent volume and vibration controls separate from the main detection mode. Users can customize their preferred volume and vibration settings in either mode. Furthermore, the volume and vibration settings in both modes are saved during power down for convenience.

I'm now testing this firmware out, I must say the upgrade process was simple and quick, I'll record some video soon of the volume control function, and soon they will have the firmware available for download.  

Very happy with their quick response, especially when at the moment they're super busy.  It doesn't get better than contacting a manufacturer and being able to talk directly to the engineer behind the detector.

This is how easy it is to upgrade the firmware, no issues at all.  I'm on Windows 11.

At the point where it says it was successful you can just unplug the detector and off you go.

[Whatsthetime]

On 2/3/2024 at 6:55 AM, phrunt said:

Mines landed in Christchurch now, if I could I'd be driving there now to pick it up, I hate when weekends arrive right as a parcel is about to be delivered delaying it another 2 days.  

I'll gradually work out ways to deal with pellets, the scrape method usually gets rid of a many, the 6000 you do a scrape not even half an inch off the surface and a soft mellow gold sounding target becomes a screamer with a pellet, the 6000 goes from next to no response on a buried pellet to screaming on it with such a little amount of soil removed its frustrating, it really doesn't have much depth on pellets unless they're bigger ones or not the older lead ones.

The GPZ with 8" is a different story going far deeper on them and makes it a bit harder but at least it does the double blip on the surface ones and the deeper ones the 6000's missing anyway.

The Algoforce might have some way to try work them out, there is usually some tell tales signs, never 100% accurate or even close but in a field of pellets anything helps.

The reason I sold my 6000 was I got sick of digging foot deep holes for a pellet. my back is not the best anymore....The gold I found with the 6000 was mostly 1 to 6 inches deep, from 0.01 to 2 grams in the Triangle, Hill End and up North Queensland. i hope this E1500 will also find that gold at little depth. Next week I will be going to flogged areas where I found a lot with my 4500 and when that finished I found the little left over ones with the 6000. Hope the E1500 will do well.

[phrunt]

I hope you like it; my first impressions are things like hot rocks it excels over the 6000, it handles every type of ground and hot rock I've thrown at it so far while maintaining good sensitivity to small targets.

While I don't think it's quite as deep as the 6000 on the tiny stuff, I'm yet unsure as the gold gets bigger, in some situations it might outperform the 6000, in many others the 6000 will likely win.