The BH Tracker 4 doesn't have a lot of performance or features, but within its limitations it does what it does very well. Predictable and easy to use. The approx. 6.5 kHz operating frequency, and low sensitivity compared to an expensive machine, allow it to be used on a saltwater beach with little difficulty although if you're where you're actually getting your feet wet you'll probably have to reduce the sensitivity and/or increase the discrimination level. ......Although as an engineer I'm constantly looking at ways it could be "improved", the boss reminds me that of those people who actually own a Tracker 4, it's almost impossible to find someone who's unhappy with it, so "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". A surprising number of people here in the USA who have expensive machines have a Tracker 4 as a backup or loaner machine. .....I used to know a guy who'd had several expensive machines and never liked them, and gave up on metal detecting, but then oddly his wife gave him a Tracker 4 for Christmas, and he went out to the park and learned out to use it, and from then on out he spent many hours a week "cleaning out" parks in Colorado, often embarrassing the heck out of other detectorists who had shown up with expensive machines that they hadn't learned how to use properly for coinshooting in a public park.
For a 7 year old kid, the Tracker 4 may be a bit unwieldy. We have a "BH Junior" model (sometimes goes by other names depending on where it's being sold) which is toy-size, but has basically the same circuit as our adult-size VLF model which is somewhat similar to the Tracker 4 but is a more recent design electronically. The BH Junior (and its other-named versions) usually retail in the US$ 50-75 range. It is even easier to use than the Tracker 4 and its audio is more responsive to target depth and size than that of the Tracker 4. ......One time I was asked to find a piece of jewelry believed to have been lost on a church lawn. I could have used anything we've got at any price, up to and over $1000 for this job, even competitors' units which we have in engineering dept. for evaluation. However, I chose the lowly BH Junior for its responsiveness to shallow targets and ability to discriminate in a trashy area. I wish I could report that I found the missing bracelet, but no such success was had. It was evidently lost somewhere other than where the girl thought she'd lost it. If it had been there I'd have found it.
There are things which a low-cost metal detector can do just as well or even better than an expensive one can. And, of course, there are things an expensive machine can do that an inexpensive one can't. But within its limitations an inexpensive metal detector can do very well.
When it comes to working on a salt water beach, the conductive effects of salt water tend to give metal detectors fits, other than the multiple frequency machines which will run fairly quietly. Not even PI machines are quiet in the surf. Most inexpensive metal detectors operate in the 5 to 9 kHz range, and have sensitivity low enough that combined with "motion circuits" and discrimination such that they can be fairly well behaved on a salt water beach. Another thing to consider is that very few metal detectors are waterproof regardless of cost, and that hunting on a saltwater beach runs the risk of water or salt spray getting inside the machine and destroying the circuitry, which of course is damage not covered under warranty. For some people those are good reasons to prefer an inexpensive machine for salt water beach work.
Nowadays there are machines with visual target ID down to about US$100, in the same range as low-cost machines without visual target ID. In this price range, machines without visual target ID generally provide a more nuanced audio response and more control over discrimination. That's the tradeoff. Given that choice, my personal preference is the units without the visual ID. Outside the USA visual ID isn't all that useful anyhow because it is only the peculiarities of USA coinage that make it such a desirable feature here. (Most more expensive machines offer a visual ID system and audio system which work somewhat independently so you don't have the tradeoff that exists with the low-cost models.)
--Dave Johnson, Chief Designer
Bounty Hunter, Teknetics, & Fisher
