So the Equinox 600 and 800 are trickling in, and I am going to cover the differences AND ATTEMPT TO HELP those of you on the fence. And those who have ordered with what settings do what and how to use them!
The equinox 600 and 800 share lots of the same features what that means is one does not have more power than the other, However the 800 does carry more features than the 600 and I will cover those first!
BLATEN DIFFERENCES
Gold Detecting Mode (800)
Advanced Settings (800)
Bluetooth & WM08 (800) but can be added to the 600
>Gold Mode: This in a nutshell is an All Metal Mode that will only run 3 frequencies 20 kHz, 40 khz and Multi.. And again is only available on the 800, prospectors will love this as well as those who hunt jewelry, I am blown away by the small (tiny) gold this machine can hit ( it has no problem hitting a diamond stud earring which makes small ring and bracelets or chains an easy feat) This alone is worth the extra 259$ to me for the 800..
As you can see in the attached photo
I have marked with green arrows the minelab instruction book the things the 800 will do that the 600 can’t, so lets discuss the advanced settings of the 800.
I am going to work top to bottom left to right in the manual touching briefly on each,
**BACKLIGHT/ The 800 has 4 settings on the back light low, med, high and off the 600 has 2 on and off. Is this huge I don’t think so but you have the option to save a little battery life in low backlight with the 800.
** DETECT MODES/ So this is your basic setting you can choose from the 600 has 3 Park, Field and Beach the 800 has one more which is Gold. Each of these setting has 2 customizable profiles for you to choose from.
**NOISE CANCEL/ Now both machines will automatically noise cancel when the option has been selected and thats wonderful but what if your in a spot with lots of under or above ground lines or your hunting with your buddies who run a GPZ or a deus and your getting interference with the 800 you have the option to choose the manual override and adjust it to your liking you do not get that feature with the 600.
**TONES/ Both machines have tone options 1,2,5 and 50 tones and they both allow you to adjust ferrous tone volume, Most low and mid range machines have the same target volume across the board but the equinox’s are different you can adjust the ferrous (iron) volume to be lower. On the XP DEUS for example this is the iron volume setting and can make it a lot easier to distinguish targets especially in a civil war encampment full of iron and you know how to adjust your machine. The 800 actually takes it a step further in the advanced settings and allows you to adjust the non ferrous volume as well and I have found it very useful in two tones which is what I hunt in with the XP and the equinox, its great because if you have bad hearing or simply trouble hearing say high tones you can adjust the volume higher on that specific tone. I also tried this advanced feature in 5 tones and it was awesome, I was able to adjust my high tone volume higher and low tone volume lower and mid tone i left alone but had the option to raise or lower. This would be great for park hunters. **ADVANCED SETTINGS make the 800 shine, THRESHOLD PITCH, TONE PITCH! To me this is the best option next to being able to adjust the recovery speed, for years there have been relic hunters who couldn’t use a minelab due to the flutey tones they simply couldn’t get use to it so for them the learning curve was just to much.. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? It means with the 800 you can set the tone and the way you hear and process it allows you to run a minelab without the flutey tones and with just a simple tone like say the f75 or Deus. So the 800 allows you to customize ferrous and non ferrous tones completely to your liking in sound and volume, And again with the 800 everything kind of marrys together because next is the option to set those breakpoints like the XP deus (this means you can set where the tone comes in and goes out and where the next one begins and ends so on and so forth to your liking. This is gonna be most useful in 5 tones 50 tones does not allow the break point option as its already done for you hence the 50 different tones. So you can actually choose 5 tones and essentially make a 3 or 4 tone program like the XP deus. **FREQUENCY/ The 600 will only run 5,10 and 15 where as the 800 will run those plus 20 & 40 kHz. Both machines run multi as I stated before.
**RECOVERY SPEED/ As all of us who are deus users know the XP deus revolutionized metal detectors when they gave (US) the user the ability to adjust the recovery speed (processor) of the metal detector, Its a very important feature to have when in trashy or high iron areas because yes we all love to get as deep as possible but when heavy iron comes into play that goes out the window and a good day instead of a bad day comes down to separation, and the equinox 600 and 800 both have this new found ability as well as Iron Bias but the 600 is only 0 to 3 the 800 takes it a step farther .... because they were listening to customer input at minelab this go round, and when it comes to the Deus a huge complaint is wrap around iron, it can get pretty frustrating if you haven’t learned the machine. So the engineers at minelab have incorporated Iron Bias in the advanced settings of recovery speed. Sounds great right but what is it you say? The 800 will adjust from 0 to 9 and gives you the ability to really fine tune this advanced setting to knock out that wrap around iron, with that said don’t jack it all the way to 9 you want to slowly adjust this until you get rid of most of the iron falling as with anything else you can put to much on it and start to lose recovery speed and good targets.
I truly hopes this helps you choose which machine is best for you, In my opinion the added features of the 800 is a no Brainer but for the new fella whos simply on a budget and wants a machine that will perform the 600 is it, but for 250$ the 800 is a solid solid solid machine thats at a very good price point. And I will be testing this against the XP DEUS and the AT MAX extensively in the coming weeks, and will be posting my thoughts and findings, one of the sites im visiting is a sheet of iron and the only machine to perform there has been the deus due to its speed, we will see how the 800 holds up, I am feeling wonderful about it because of the multi frequency option. Happy Hunting folks as always call Vance so you know you got the best deal!!!
502-262-0356