A Range of Hand-held Pinpointers
A Range of Hand-held Pinpointers
Compact, hand-held pinpointers can sure save a lot of wasted time & effort digging for and locating targets such as coins, jewellery, relics, and gold nuggets/specimens, upon both land, and also underwater. I know so, from decades of experience of digging (and backfilling) thousands of holes on land throughout our awesome Continent.
The way I look at it – the more time I save from digging, the more time I then have to detect more targets, especially when I am sometimes time-poor on my detecting adventures at the beach, parks or out bush.
The more expensive pinpointers feature adjustable sensitivity settings - which is very handy in challenging ground conditions e.g. when using it upon/in mineralised ground or upon/in saltwater-saturated/conductive ground. They also feature audio/tactile alert options of vibration mode, with or without target-proximity audio indication.
In late 2023, Minelab released a new hand-held pinpointer – the PRO-FIND 40.
The Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer has a 2-YEARS Minelab Warranty, with a nominal 9-Volt battery life of about 20 hours, and costs $269.
I did some simple, in-store testing using the new Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer – to determine the maximum air-depth range of detection of an Aussie $2 coin, and also a flat (7x4mm) 0.43 gram gold nugget (and compared to using the similar costing, orange-coloured Garrett Pro-Pointer AT - commonly called “The Garrett Carrot”). Both of these pinpointers contained new/same batteries, and were set on Maximum Sensitivity.
The results were as follows:
$2 coin - Minelab PRO-FIND 40 = 7cm range (Garrett Pro-Pointer AT = 6cm range, and Minelab Pro-Find 15 = 3.5cm range)
0.43 gram gold nugget – both the Minelab PRO-FIND 40 and the Garrett Pro-Pointer AT pinpointers = about 2cm range.
The new Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer has the following features:
• 10% more Depth than the Minelab PRO-FIND 35
• A Rapid Re-tune function - making it quick and easy to compensate for ground conditions
• Improved Stability - for more accurate pinpointing
• Adjustable Sensitivity - with 5 levels of adjustment
• A Lost Alarm - that sounds after a period of inactivity & combined with a bright red body - makes the PRO-FIND 40 easy to locate
• A Ferrous Tone ID - that helps to sort trash from treasure
The new Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer kit includes:
• PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer - with speaker and LED flashlight
• Holster
• Lanyard
• 9V PP3 battery
• Multi-language instructions
'Gold Rat Metal Detectors' sell a range of waterproof pinpointers (varying in cost from $159 up to $309) including:
Garrett Pro-Pointer AT (commonly called “The Garrett Carrot”)
The Nokta PulseDive pinpointer, and the Nokta PulseDive 2-in-1 Underwater Metal Detector, both feature Pulse-Induction technology – and both operate on a lower frequency of about 3kHz.
