This looks great and everything, but an air test like that isn't going to tell the full story.
When the nox came out everyone was on about it finding chains like this that the excal couldn't see, but you know what, we aren't all fighting off gold chains like tin foil. That's because the real test is how it see's the chain a few inches in wet black sand, it's the great equaliser, in practice the nox is only very marginally better at the small stuff in the water.
Show me the deus 2 in black sand hitting a chain 6 inches down, and I'll be handing over my money!
Good post ! Because the moment you go to tune out the effects of wet-salt (with even MODERATE beach-sand minerals), is when you can kiss earring studs and tinsel thin chains goodbye.
As for normal chains (a bit heavier than "tinsel thin"), you're also right : the nox has an edge of the Excal, Sov, Explorer, etc.... No argument there. But you're right that it's only a slight margin. And these type signals/targets represent only a small percentage of the type gold you could expect in target ratios anyhow, anywhere. What I mean is: The guys with the Nox's are not "filling their pockets with gold chains" every time they go to the beach either . So it's not as if EITHER of them is "missing a bunch of gold". Eh ?
Now for dry sand (or parks or whatever) : Yes, the Nox can be set up to find insanely small earring studs and tinsel thin chains ALL DAY LONG with ease. Because, go figure, it was made to be a nugget cross-over machine.
HOWEVER : The "devil is in the details" : If you to go any heavily trodden dry-sand beach area, or park, and attempt to go into nugget-mode, you will go bonkers.
I tried the Nox on a certain millionaire's beach near me, in a dry sand area that used to give up a lot of silver coins. And since it's been worked by a myriad of *normal* machines (that can't hear earring studs or tinsel thin chains), I figured that the Nox would make child's play to find all these, eh ?
And sure enough, I began to find INSANELY SMALL tin-foil turds. You know, like the bit of foil that gets under your finger-nail when you go to remove the foil from the top of a wine bottle. So I thought: WOOHOO ! The chains and earrings will soon fill my apron ! But after an hour, and 50 teeennnssyyy foil turd-type cr#p, I began to subconsciously ignore and pass the insanely small stuff. Ie.: *do I really put that much value in an earring stud or tinsel thin chain, if the truth is, that it probably has all of $5 melt value ?" *
I mean, a single gold ring will have the weight of 50 earring studs or 50 tinsel thin chains.
The only exception would be beefier gold chains. Yes those can have a net weight of gold that's commendable. And yes they present a difficult signal, despite their composite weight.