Telescopic

Feeling somewhat like a toy for a 00’ agent, due to its lightweight, black carbon fibre stem the Manticore reduces down to the size of a dumbbell. Gone are the days of worrying about detector length, and having to angle your machine into the boot of your car, or purchase telescopic aftermarket shafts, 

Then there’s another spy-like feature, it’s waterproof nature. The Equinox & CTX3030 series were waterproof to 3 metres, but this has been expanded to 5 metres. The 5-metre waterproof rating seems slightly un-impressive, but please take the time to appreciate that in metres, particularly depth, that 5 metres is a very significant amount.

New Scorpion Arm Rest

The new Scorpion Arm Rest which although named after something which we would be quite uncomfortable to encounter is actually one of our favourite things about the machine. It is so comfortable. When you hold the machine, it just hugs your arm in a way that no other detector does. This is probably mainly due to the more flexible material and inner cushion, but also due to the machine's previously mentioned lightweight and great balance.

Performance

Can it deliver where it counts? The short answer is yes!

2D ID Mapping

The CTX3030 from Minelab, is a highly-regarded coin and treasure detector, maintaining its status as a high-performance metal detector for 10 years now. And one of the features that made this machine so popular is its visual XY, 2D presentation of targets. The FeCo system, or Ferrous and Conductivity to the uninitiated visually plotted the two different attributes on display, allowing the detectorists to analyse and decide on what a target could be due to the plotting position of a target. Minelab has taken this system and made it even more sophisticated. It has a new 2D mapping system which has a horizontal line running through its centre. Targets which are plotted along this central line are non-ferrous and the further they stray from it above or below means they contain a higher iron content. It covers the target's position along the y-axis, and this leaves the left to right or x position which then covers conductivity, with low conductors on the left and high conductors on the right.

But here’s where it reaches the next level, the shape of the indicator on the map is also related to the target. A solid, concise object, like a coin, will most likely be represented as a nice, clean dot on the screen, whereas a more erratic object will be represented as a more irregular shape. For example; a silver coin would show up along the centre line, as a tight dot, and towards the right side of the screen (due to its high conductivity), whereas a small iron nail would show up far from the centre line, as an irregular shape, and further towards the left of the screen (due to its lower conductivity). 

Depth

The Term, 50% more power than Equinox has been flying around since the machine’s announcement and the sceptics, rightly proclaimed immediately, this does not equate to 50% more depth, and they are right! 50% more power. The energy within the electromagnetic field emitted from the search coil of a detector dissipates fairly quickly, tapering into a peak in the soil or sand. The ratio of dissipation is not relative to the power utilised and this is the reason that 50% more power isn’t 50% more depth. But, there is more depth! How much deeper is the Manticore than the Equinox? Moisture, target composition, target position/angle, mineralisation and a heap of other things can affect the depth of a machine, but we would expect another 10-15% of depth on some target types.

It’s much deeper than the Minelab Equinox and is equal to the previous elite Minelab coin and treasure detector, the CTX3030 in terms of depth. Minelab happily describes the Manticore as a hybrid between the CTX3030 and the Equinox range and also note that is beats the Equinox in all areas of performance and equals or beats the CTX in every element, except for GPS location tracking – The CTX3030 still wins on this one.

Target Separation

Here’s something we have to tell you, as it blew our minds. Ensure you’ve read the above about 2D ID mapping to fully understand this bit.

We were given a demonstration by Mark Lawrie, The Chief Engineer at Minelab and this demonstrated how good the Manticore is at target separation. Mark first showed us how the it would communicate a hammered coin. He waived it left to right above the coil, and sure enough, as described previously we saw a nice, tight dot, on the centre line of the display. What was really impressive however was when Mark added a second target into the mix. On the second demonstration, Mark waived the hammered coin again, but also a large piece of lead with his other hand, both passing from left to right over the coil. We once again saw the hammered coin’s dot in the same place, but now saw a larger, messy splodge in the far-left corner of the screen. This easily illustrated that two targets were present and that the Manticore is easily able to separate targets and reduce masking. This is a real game changer in terms of knowing when to dig, particularly in trashy sites like Roman settlements where lots of iron may be present and would therefore sometimes cause detectorists to doubt signals and decide not to dig.

Ease of Use

The Equinox 800 comes with 4 preset modes, field, park, beach and gold and although is a brilliantly versatile machine can also be used by a beginner with little training. The CTX3030 in contrast requires a little more time invested to decipher the received information.

The Manticore combats this by having a few more preset modes and adapting the previous 2D ID mapping system of the CTX3030 into a much simpler, and easier-to-read system (more on this in a minute).

The telescopic nature of the shaft, quick locking bolts, and quickly adjustable scorpion armrest even mean that physically, it’s simple to set up and adjust. We know that Minelab spent a particularly long time on the main preset. Their aim was to create a machine which was as optimised as possible for the widest variety of detecting situations.

Preset modes available:

• 5 x All-Terrain Modes
• 4 x Beach Modes
• 1 x Goldfield Mode

We caught up with Detexpert Paul Cee who was an official tester and asked him his thoughts on how easy to use the machine is. Paul told us that even though it’s a high-performance detector, you can get a handle on the controls and be confident within a very short time.

Multi-IQ+

More power didn’t just mean more power in the coil, it meant more power in the brain too. We don’t yet know the specifics, and maybe never will, on how Multi-IQ+ differs from Minelab's first version of Multi-IQ found in the Equinox and Vanquish series. We do know however that the increase in presets requires more in terms of how Multi-IQ+ processes and delivers information. Also, in terms of general processing, there are a lot of neat, configurable characteristics (see below) within the machine, which isn’t relevant to Multi-IQ+ but must be enabled by an increase in general processing power.

Configurability

You can configure anything on this detector that you would expect with other sophisticated metal detectors such as Equinox, but there’s a lot more to be tinkered with if you so wish. Here’s a great example of how adjustable this machine is to the user’s preferences.