Are you being serious or being facetious? I ask b/c I have 2 Garrett Carrots...
Detector Ben is being serious at least from the standpoint of what he experienced and showed in his videos. I know another YouTuber who feels the same. Not bashing the APEX one bit here just being realistic.
The issues with simultaneous multi frequency detectors from ALL of the manufacturers up until the Equinox (the issues still exists with the Vanquish somewhat) are weight (tons of heavy batteries in the previous Minelab and Whites models and heavy designs to support the weight) overall depth versus recovery speed/target separation, EMI stability, sensitivity to tiny targets, iron handling, high mineralization poor handling, and ground balance issues. It is always a trade off with SMF.
The Equinox had to add iron bias updates in order for it to do better on shallow iron targets meaning: not false all over the target ID scale instead of calling most shallow iron based targets iron. Just the way the Multi IQ processes the return signal makes detecting iron accuracy much harder for the Equinox but makes most non-ferrous targets super accurate even at the edge of detection.. Minelab "fixed" or at least greatly improved recovery speed and target separation on the Equinox compared to earlier Minelab FBS. EMI is still a big issue with the Equinox. It handles all types of mineralization great however and is outstanding on tiny targets.
Garrett and Minelab did very well on reducing the weight/batteries to power their current SMF technologies. Some of that weight reduction has been perceived as substandard build quality especially for the Equinox.
The Vanquish is still running through batteries very quickly, is not very sensitive to tiny targets like the Equinox is, is much better at handling EMI, but it won't ground balance in my really bad dirt, has slower recovery speed and multiple target masking at times.
Garrett has already done some updates to improve target ID and overall stability along with replacing some bad Viper coils.
So there is plenty of room for improvement both to the Equinox, and definitely to the next Garrett AT series detector based on their current beginner level APEX tech. I can easily see Nokta Makro coming out with something better than the APEX. I sure hope it can compete with the Equinox but that is a really high bar technology and patent wise for a first time SMF product from Nokta Makro.
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