Minelab Manticore vs Equinox 900 - Which to Buy?

yeah I think it's time that I answer a question a question that I get asked every day if it's not a phone call or a text message from a buddy or somebody asking me on Facebook or Instagram or even on my YouTube channel in the comments it's the same question over and over again and that is is it really worth 500 more dollars to get the Manticore over the Equinox 900. so I have a lot of friends that have used the 800 I know there are a lot of you out there that love and use the Equinox 800 and you're wondering which of these two should you upgrade to or should you upgrade at all the first easy answer is yes you should upgrade so these are that much better than the 800 you should pick one of these two and we have to figure out what is the difference in value then what's what's 500 worth of value from one machine compared to the other I'm going to start by saying that it's not in the field it's not head to head in a park or out looking for relics or at the beach or anything like that look I had this machine I think I had the third Manticore in the USA and I think I was the first YouTuber or content creator to help put in my hands so I had it for several days before anybody else that went out there and tested it I didn't have the 900 for at least a week after I had the Manticore it took a while to get the 900 but I've had both of these machines together longer than probably anybody else especially anybody on YouTube and I've compared them early on head to head and I couldn't find enough differences in the two in performance to make a video about it so instead of looking at that let's look at some other things let's get some stats up I'm going to throw a graph up on the screen here in a minute and we're going to look at some stats we're going to compare the Manticore to the 900 and see what's really going on here and we're going to talk about why I think that the Manticore is worth 500 more dollars and then we're going to help you make a decision at the end as to which one you should buy now I got a graph up on the screen for you guys right now you can see anything that I put in red I saw as a detriment compared to Green where I put that as a benefit starting right there with just the weight you can see that the Equinox 900 on the right is 2.8 pounds compared to the 2.9 pounds overall weight and I think that might have something to do with the size of the control head and the thickness of it and the build quality of the control head I'll bet you every bit of the 1.6 what is that 1.6 ounces difference it's probably something to do with the control head also you look at the length and the collapse length the collapse length is a little bit shorter by two centimeters on the 900 and we could skip past the shaft and waterproof battery and all that because that's all the same get down to the headphones and they're quite different the ml 105s are a very high quality headphone in fact it's the best quality headphone I've ever seen on any my lab product so you get a much better headphone they're both low latency so I don't have to worry about that and that's an imperceivable low latency so there's no issue with that probably but I will say that on the Equinox 800 we used to be able to use third-party headphones can't do that anymore the language that they're using now the Bluetooth algorithm is proprietary and it only locks up to the headphones that come with the machine and you right now as of today January 2023 you have no other option except to go with their wireless headphone or you could use any wired headphones you want look at the display there I should have put green on the mylab manicore color because I think that a color display is better than a monochrome but you can see the size difference there is a slight size difference in both screens then you have the back light on the display on the manticorp you have nine levels of backlighting then you also have one that's just an automatic dim so you put that in Auto and it has a light sensor looking at the outward light of the environment and it will suggest the best backlight for you depending on how dark or light it is outside the backlight on the Equinox 900 is tactical red color which I really like for night detecting the back line on the Manta core does not have the red option so there's three levels on the 900 uh the button back lights on the myeline Mater core are fantastic to be able to look down there at night and see those buttons lit up 900 does not have that feature the flashlight aims down the shaft into the coil under the ground is a little bit brighter and better on the mylab Manta core it has three levels of adjustability whereas the Equinox 900 is on and off they both have the hand grip vibration which I really like a lot and here's a huge Factor so this is like we talked about earlier this is a huge Factor right here the coil is available for the mylab manacore as of January 2023 are just the one it comes with 11 inch and that's it and you can see that it's the M11 it's a special coil made for the Manta core that is not compatible with the Equinox 900 The Equinox 900 has an 11 inch coil called the eqx11 they're different so the coils available right now for the Equinox 900 when you buy it it comes with the six inch and the 11 inch in the box but there is a 15 inch available also so let's go ahead and take a look at the next graph here on the screen that covers this one here all right got the next graph up here you can see the frequencies there's one extra frequency on the 900 down there at four and uh when you're looking at frequencies the lower the number generally speaking the better they are on deep silver or high conductors so I saw that as an advantage to have an extra Choice there so you have multi-frequency which is MF and then you have 4 5 10 15 20 and 40 on the 900. that's a good uh good range and a good choice of frequencies there I gave noise cancel green on the Manticore because it has a continuous feature where you just hold it in and it continuously looks at the ground and multiple times over and over and over until you finally see the same number kind of popping up all the time then you could let go and I found that to be something that was able to get me to be able to get the machine to calm down enough to be ran at full sensitivity a full 35 under wires on a telephone pole which was crazy you talk about Emi but I got this thing so calmed down by doing that that it uh it was so stable that I could run it at full sensitivity at 35 no issues ground balance the same we'll skip down till we still until we see green and red so down at the volume profiles there are some really neat profiles that come with the Manta core simple medium and Rich whereas there are no volume profiles with the 900. so it's just something that gives you a spatial difference in the stereo field in your ears but just a sweetness of the tones it's hard to describe what's happening there but whatever they're doing in the Manticore they do not have those features in the 900 what you're getting in the 900 is a lot like the sounds and tones and the 800 whereas the Mana core is a lot like some of the old Minelab Explorer and even e-track kind of stuff that was going on for tones they're more Flutie and more musical sounding more ear pleasing and again with the rich audio and the enhanced audio theme all that stuff adds for a much better audio experience on the Manta core and I'll give a huge benefit to the banacore for audio The Equinox 900 just doesn't give you the options that the Mana core does and here's another huge Factor this is just as huge as the coil issue but in this time it's in the favor of the Manta core and what are you paying 500 extra dollars for with the Manticore let's just start with this feature right here this is the one feature that I think is the big big difference the elephant in the room the 2D Target Trace so that's the XY plot that you see on the screen that kind of shows you the very detailed information off of that plot about what's happening in the ground where you can see two different targets at the same time literally on a screen so that is to me the biggest 500 difference right there between these two machines you can see the sensitivity goes up to 35. when you get to 30 so 1 to 29 the sensitivity is normal looking on the screen there but when you get to 30 to 35 it changes to a red color and it shows you that it's in a kind of boosted sensitivity mode by being red like that and they do say that the Manticore has 50 percent more power to the coil cell or into the ground that's another big difference and we do see that difference at the beach where we're seeing about an inch or 1.5 inches maybe at most benefit in depth over the 900 head to head at the beach can't really say that it's like that in soil yet it probably is but I just can't say that and look hey there like I said earlier there's a lot of good videos out there for you guys to go check out where these two machines are going head-to-head in the hands of somebody at the beach or in the field all right let's skip down to Ferris volume Ferris pitch so you can see that the Equinox 900 doesn't have a big section regarding being able to adjust the volume or the pitch of the ferris whereas the Manticore does you can take a look at my video that I did on all the details about the ferris volume pitch and the ferris limits you go to my channel and take a look at the mylab manicore users guide that I did and we covered all that you can see that the ferrous limits are quite different on the two different machines the limits on the Manta core come in two different sections you have the upper and the lower and these are bars that drop down on the 2D graph from the top and up from the bottom and kind of close off that 2D graph this way where on the since you don't have the 2D graph on the 900 it's simply just a negative 19 up to zero is the limits in there so it's quite different in the way that it works and then you have the threshold level pitch recovery speeds a little different you have zero to eight instead of one to eight on the Manta core and then bias there's no iron bias on the Manticore where it doesn't have that feature and there's no Fe anymore on the 900 and again that is of January 2023 so by the time you watch this down the road a little bit there could be updates and things could be different depth indicator has five levels two inches for each level so it can indicate up to a 10 inch depth and my lab has a reputation for not being able to give you an accurate depth on something really small like a small high conductor gonna be a lot more shallow than it shows on the screen that's a my lab thing and we're all used to it they both have pinpoint so that kind of covers the two charts here and then we'll go ahead and take a look at some of the physical differences when you're looking at the machine which are very few but there are a few things I want to show you so let's go ahead and Skip to that part real quick and move on hey I want to take a second before I make my final remarks to correct myself on something so earlier in this video I said that the only coil available for this machine for the Manticore was the 11 inch coil and I just got off the phone with somebody who told me that that's not true that they're currently right now manufacturing an 8 by 5.5 inch elliptical coil for this machine and they're also currently right now manufacturing a 15 by 12 inch elliptical coil for this machine and that they will be out soon so I'm having heard that you know I it was too late to put in the video so I'm just telling you right now I hope that some of you made it to this part of the video so you could hear that but anyway there are three coils available it's not going to be a six inch round so I was correct about that but that little eight by five point five sounds pretty cool so if that was something you were thinking about then maybe you need to rethink that so as far as head to head with these two machines a 900 and the Manticore like I said there's several YouTubers and I could name a few right now Calabash digger um iffy signals and detecting NY I think we're three guys that have both of these machines and went out and compared them and so did I I went out and made videos for you guys comparing both machines and then I got home and I realized I don't even have a video here there's no difference guys I'm telling you right now it's a negligible comparable difference between these two machines they're you're just pulling hairs man when it comes to detecting at the beach I'm going to tell you right now if you're going to the beach and you're a serious Beach detectorist and you're looking at both these machines you're coming from the 800 maybe you got to try to get spend the extra 500 and get the Manticore that's just a done deal it's deeper at the beach you saw calabash's video a couple days ago where he dug an open hoop a gold earring and a gold fine gold chain in the sand and the man of course sounded like a million bucks on those things so if you're a beach person find that 500 and get the Manticore you're done okay so for everybody else how important is it for you to have that 2D display now for me to have that 2D Trace that's kind of where I think the big value of the 500 difference is is in that having that display now for me coming from a CTX I know that X Y plot and I'm used to it and I look at it and I use it as a tool a visual tool some detectorists that I detect with don't ever look at their screen they just go by all sound and I understand that and so do I kind of but I'm looking at my screen sometimes if I have it I'm going to look at it but if you if you're the type of person that doesn't even look at the screen and you probably never will okay then you're dismissed you're going with the 900 you're going to save 500. um I want to say one other thing real quick when there's two other factors besides the 2D display that you have to figure out that besides the target Trace these are minor things maybe to you but to me they're big deals so I'll start with the least of the two and that is with the Equinox 900 when you have the backlight on it's red only you get red or nothing and it's a little annoying to me to have only a red screen especially during daylight you know on a foggy overcast day or something and you look down and you're looking for a nice bright light and all you get is red and now at night to have tactical red is an advantage because it saves your night vision it preserves your night vision that's why police fire and everybody else uses a military uses red to preserve their night vision but during the day I want to be able to see the thing so that irks me a little bit so that's one thing I think about another thing I think about is I'm a musician I'm an audio engineer and I love music and I know that if it wasn't if this didn't have a Target trace on it a 2d Target trace and that wasn't even an option and these machines were the same in every way except for the differences in audio that they are all the great audio on this machine compared to the Equinox 900 I would spend me Mark Dayton I would spend 500 more dollars just to get the Manticore because the audio to me is that much better so there's two things to think about also again getting back to that 2D Target Trace that's kind of where the value is at guys so go watch those videos from Calabash and iffy signals and detecting NY and you could see them head to head in the field if if you can find something in there that makes you want one or the other you know maybe it's just a tone you hear or something then use those videos to make your decision other than that you know look at the stuff that I showed you today and and make a good educated decision based on what you think their value is and you know it like I said 500 worth of value in that 2D Target Trace I don't know it's up to you to me yeah I'm gonna pay the extra 500 I'm going to find a way to make that happen and I love both machines I'll keep both machines I'll use both machines the build quality fantastic you can't go wrong with either one of them and I hope I made that as clear as mud for you so anyway I hope that you guys uh go down below in the comments and tell me which one you picked or which one you're thinking about ask me any questions down there and we'll catch up with you on the next video take care foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: Brass Medic

Views: 39,316

Keywords: minelab metal detector, manticore minelab, minelab manticore metal detector, new minelab detector, new minelab manticore, manticore metal detector, minelab manticore unboxing, minelab manticore review, minelab manticore assembly, minelab manticore menus, minelab equinox 800, xp deus metal detector, metal detector review, metal detector settings, treasure hunting, metal detecting, minelab manticore, minelab manticore detector, minelab equinox 900, makro legend

Id: 9pwFXhUaDyU

Length: 17min 18sec (1038 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023