When I bought my CTX3030 a good friend saw the finds I was making with it an also bought a CTX. He had some pretty decent finds with it considering he does not take a lot of time to learn his machines. I could tell he was a little miffed that I was still finding more than him.
Fast forward to this season and we find a spot that is giving up some deep silvers, this guys brother comes down with an AT Pro with a HUGE coil and starts pulling out Barber and Seated dimes at 12" - 16". My friend is plenty torqued that his $2500 machine is getting "beat" by a $500 machine so what does he do? He buys a AT Pro with a big coil and leaves the CTX3030 sitting at home! Does he start finding more? Nope. Why? because he is not taking the time to master the AT Pro either.
In this world of instant gratification people want results NOW!
I must admit though that my CTX3030 was having a hard time finding these deep targets in THIS spot. The 17" coil did help some but yes, I was also getting "Beat" by the AT Pro.
I then tried some other units in this spot.
The Deus with the 11" X 13" coil did the trick for me hitting multiple different silvers at depths I had only imagined 5 years ago.
The AKA Sorex Pro also gave me some great results hitting silvers at 12" deep and also handing me a couple older gold rings from this spot.
And finally the Nokta Impact followed suit with a some good deep coins in this spot.
Now I did not get all riled up that my most expensive unit was not finding what the others were because this was just one spot. I knew from experience that in other areas my CTX3030 hit very decent depth, ID'd the targets better (even the trash) and gave me very good performance.
Like many others I still get caught up in trying to find the machine that does it best. I have spent a TON of money on detectors in the last few years but also know that you really need to spend the time with each unit to truly know what its limits and benefits are. I am at the point where I use a different detector for certain areas where I know that unit will excel in but sometimes just grab a random one and head out cause you just never know what you are going to find. That is after all why we do this right