Golf may be the way to ruin a good walk, but with the Minelab Equinox 800 metal detector, you’re getting paid to exercise.
Travelling around Australia, you get to visit some amazing country. Whether it’s the vast interior with its red soil and ancient ranges, or the endless coastline of white sands and deep blue seas, Australia is a treasure chest of wonder for the eyes and soul. Lying beneath this beauty is a treasure of a more economic nature. Gold, money, jewellery, and valuable fragments of human history lie just beneath the surface, and it’s all out there for you to find. You just need one thing to find it – a metal detector.
But which metal detector should you get? I mean, it’s all just metal, right? Why did we get the Minelab Equinox 800? What’s the difference between one that costs $100 and one that costs $3,000?
Here’s the short answer. Essentially, there are two types of metal detectors. Those that are designed to find coins and other metal relics, and those specifically designed to find gold nuggets. The reason for this and the tech behind it can fill a book, but generally, those designed to find gold nuggets are extremely expensive.
The problem for us, was that we didn’t want to exclude gold nugget prospecting completely. We wanted a metal detector that could do both, and we didn’t want to spend thousands doing it. This seemed impossible until we got our hands on the Minelab Equinox 800.
Coming in at just over $1000 from Anaconda, the Minelab Equinox 800 is as close to the ultimate metal detector for the travelling enthusiast as you can find. It’s extremely easy to use and will find coins, relics and, most importantly, gold nuggets.
How easy is the Minelab Equinox 800 to use?
Using the Minelab Equinox 800 is dead easy. Switch it on, perform a simple noise cancellation, select the environment you’re in and start detecting. You will find stuff immediately. Most of it will be junk. Aluminium cans, ring pulls, and bottle tops are everywhere, and constantly digging up this rubbish can quickly put you off the hobby. But you will soon learn to read the display of the Equinox 800 and be able to identify various targets without having to dig them up.
On our first outing on a nearby beach, we found a few coins and an old pendant. The next time, we went to a small park after New Year’s celebrations, and in less than an hour, found more than $10 in gold coins. Just about every time we’ve gone out with the Equinox 800, we’ve found money and jewellery.
What about finding gold?
We haven’t had much experience using the Minelab Equinox 800 out in a gold field location yet, but from what we’ve read online from other owners, while it cannot match the performance of specialised gold detectors, it does a remarkably good job, given its price. The secret is the Gold Detecting Mode, which operates at higher frequencies of 20khz and 40khz to detect gold nuggets in highly mineralised soils.
What other modes are there?
- Park – great for recreational spaces often full of discarded metal rubbish.
- Field – tailored for searching in historic sites like old homesteads and farms.
- Beach – optimised for salty conditions, including wet and dry sand.
What else do we love about the Minelab Equinox 800?
The Minelab Equinox 800 is lightweight, waterproof to three metres and comes complete with a set of wireless headphones, a low latency Bluetooth interface and a very comprehensive book about treasure hunting with a metal detector. It’s powered by an internal lithium-ion battery that is USB rechargeable, and it will run for hours on a single charge. It also comes with a Minelab ProFind pin-pointer, which takes all the guesswork out of zeroing in on your targets.
We could go on all day about how good the Minelab Equinox 800 is and how it can be tailored to suit your individual needs and the conditions you’re detecting in. Suffice it to say that this is the first, near-professional-grade metal detector that a complete novice can use to find valuable stuff straight out of the box.
After doing some research, reading the manual and learning more about its features, you’ll be finding more good stuff and less rubbish You’ll also have a detector that can find gold nuggets on the goldfields as well.
At just over $1000, the Minelab Equinox 800 definitely isn’t a toy. But when you consider many people buy a cheap metal detector and soon find out it cannot do what they want and end up buying another more expensive one, you’ll probably end up spending this sort of money in the long run.
In any case, buying a good metal detector should be considered an investment that makes the metal detecting hobby a rewarding experience. The Minelab Equinox 800 will do just that.
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