Here's my go at a review of the Garrett AT Pro so far. I currently have about 30 hours logged on the AT Pro and will update as I log more hours... I'll try and break this down into specific categories and uses of the detector. I have used it so far to coinshoot, relic hunt, and water hunt fresh water, so no salt water review yet. When I purchased the AT Pro about a week ago I couldn't find too many in depth reviews so that's why I'm putting this together. This is my full honest opinion of the detector no embelishment, I currently own a Minelab Sovereign Elite, Minelab Musketeer Advantage, Garrett ACE 250, Tesoro Silver Sabre Plus, Nautilus DMC 2b, JW Fishers Pulse 8, and have owned a White's DFX300, Fisher CZ6, Garrett GTA350, White's BHID, Tesoro Sandshark.
Assembly and Construction: The Garrett AT Pro for me was very easy to assemble, taking only about 15 minutes. The headphone and coil jacks use specially designed pinned adapters and will require careful attention of alignment in order to not bend the pins inside the adapters. Take your time and it's a breeze. The fully assembled detector is very similar in construction to the ACE series and is a fairly solid build. I'd give overall construction an 8 of 10. The pro's are solid materials, comfortable hand grip, fairly lightweight, easy to use buttons, and comfortable arm cuff design. The con's are slight shaft wobble due to no cam locks (not horrible), arm cuff is too close to handle loading most of the detectors weight on your wrist and middle of the forearm, bad positioning of headphone adapter (Should be facing toward arm cuff).
Controls: The controls on the AT Pro are very similar to the ACE series with the addition of a few new features such as ground balancing (both auto and manual), iron audio and iron disc, and 6 modes as opposed to the ACE's 4. I feel the controls are all easy to operate and not confusing in the least. A very user friendly design perfectly adapted to both novice and pros.
In the field: I have taken the AT to numerous sites I have previously detected as well as 2 new locations in order to better learn the capabilities of this detector.
Ground Balancing: My soil here in New Jersey has very low mineralization and ground balances in the 85-90 range with very few sites entering into the 70's. Ground balancing is a nice feature of this detector and very simple to utilize. Auto ground balance requires just a few pumps up and down of the coil while depressing the GB button and you will hear the detector become quieter and more stable as it tunes itself to the ground minerals, it will also display a numerical readout that shows the mineralization of the ground, 80-90 indicates low mineralization and as the number decreases the mineralization present is higher. Manual ground balancing allows the user to fine tune your balance and allows more advanced users to run a positive or negative ground balance allowing for slight changes in sensitivity based on the type of detecting you will be doing.
Iron Disc and Iron Audio: I currently run my AT Pro in Pro mode, full sensitivity (if able), iron disc set to 35, iron audio ON. I feel the iron disc feature as well as the iron audio feature allow the user to quickly locate iron clusters while relic and old coin hunting to better zone in on where the more productive spots are. With iron audio on and your iron disc set higher then zero all iron that has been disc'd will come through with a low grunting machine gun type tone and all other targets above the iron disc will sound off with a midrange tone or high tone. With iron audio off, the iron disc'd targets will not sound at all and all targets will sound off with a midrange or high tone. Some targets such as crown style bottlecaps and square nails have the tendency to break through as high tones on most detectors and the AT Pro is no different, however, with iron audio ON those items will now sound off with both the "false" high tone as well as show their true nature with iron tones breaking through allowing the user to better discern if the target is in fact a "false" good signal. I have found these 2 features to be extremely valuable in heavy iron laden sites. The AT Pro has incredible target separation and in most cases will allow the good nonferrous targets to break through the iron and still sound off even in heavily iron infested and trashy sites.
Depth: IMO contrary to popular belief and reviews, the AT Pro is not the depth monster many claim it to be... Running this machine side by side with my Sovereign equipped with a 10x12 SEF coil the AT just could not attain the same depth the Sovereign and my Nautilus provide. The AT Pro during testing IN GROUND (not air tests) was able to pick up coin sized targets with reliable target ID to about 6" - 7". It was able to pick up coin sized targets to approx. 10" - 11" with degraded audio and target ID, and was unable in any setting to pick up a coin sized object beyond 11". I was able to locate buckshot sized targets to approx. 4".
Target ID: The VDI numerical readout of the AT is a nice addition to Garretts lineup and is a HUGE help to those that coinshoot. For me the VDI seems to be a bit shaky and not very accurate on targets beyond 6". The target ID was very accurate on shallow targets with most coin shaped targets not moving more then a number or two during location (I.e. 80-81).
My field report: I personally think this is an incredible detector for anyone looking to add a versatile detector to their arsenal. It isn't the deepest I've used, but definitely the most versatile. My only real complaint is that the unit LOVES hot rocks which is a downside to almost all single frequency machines, they ID around 37-45. I will be using the AT for scouting sites, in water detecting, and iron infested sites. Here's my breakdown of features...
Assembly (ease): 9/10
Construction: 8/10
Depth: 7/10
Target ID: 6/10
Weight and Balance: 7/10
Recovery Speed: 8/10
Target Separation: 9/10
Versatility: 9/10
Features (Bells and Whistles): 7/10 (Iron audio/disc is amazing)
Tones: 7/10
Headphones: 5/10
Coinshooting: 7/10
Relic/Old Coin Hunting: 6/10 (Needs more depth and loves hot rocks)
Freshwater Hunting: 7/10 (Somewhat chattery in our iron mineralized creeks and lakes)
Price: 9/10 (great price for all you get)
Overall: 8/10
Target ID: 7/10
Assembly and Construction: The Garrett AT Pro for me was very easy to assemble, taking only about 15 minutes. The headphone and coil jacks use specially designed pinned adapters and will require careful attention of alignment in order to not bend the pins inside the adapters. Take your time and it's a breeze. The fully assembled detector is very similar in construction to the ACE series and is a fairly solid build. I'd give overall construction an 8 of 10. The pro's are solid materials, comfortable hand grip, fairly lightweight, easy to use buttons, and comfortable arm cuff design. The con's are slight shaft wobble due to no cam locks (not horrible), arm cuff is too close to handle loading most of the detectors weight on your wrist and middle of the forearm, bad positioning of headphone adapter (Should be facing toward arm cuff).
Controls: The controls on the AT Pro are very similar to the ACE series with the addition of a few new features such as ground balancing (both auto and manual), iron audio and iron disc, and 6 modes as opposed to the ACE's 4. I feel the controls are all easy to operate and not confusing in the least. A very user friendly design perfectly adapted to both novice and pros.
In the field: I have taken the AT to numerous sites I have previously detected as well as 2 new locations in order to better learn the capabilities of this detector.
Ground Balancing: My soil here in New Jersey has very low mineralization and ground balances in the 85-90 range with very few sites entering into the 70's. Ground balancing is a nice feature of this detector and very simple to utilize. Auto ground balance requires just a few pumps up and down of the coil while depressing the GB button and you will hear the detector become quieter and more stable as it tunes itself to the ground minerals, it will also display a numerical readout that shows the mineralization of the ground, 80-90 indicates low mineralization and as the number decreases the mineralization present is higher. Manual ground balancing allows the user to fine tune your balance and allows more advanced users to run a positive or negative ground balance allowing for slight changes in sensitivity based on the type of detecting you will be doing.
Iron Disc and Iron Audio: I currently run my AT Pro in Pro mode, full sensitivity (if able), iron disc set to 35, iron audio ON. I feel the iron disc feature as well as the iron audio feature allow the user to quickly locate iron clusters while relic and old coin hunting to better zone in on where the more productive spots are. With iron audio on and your iron disc set higher then zero all iron that has been disc'd will come through with a low grunting machine gun type tone and all other targets above the iron disc will sound off with a midrange tone or high tone. With iron audio off, the iron disc'd targets will not sound at all and all targets will sound off with a midrange or high tone. Some targets such as crown style bottlecaps and square nails have the tendency to break through as high tones on most detectors and the AT Pro is no different, however, with iron audio ON those items will now sound off with both the "false" high tone as well as show their true nature with iron tones breaking through allowing the user to better discern if the target is in fact a "false" good signal. I have found these 2 features to be extremely valuable in heavy iron laden sites. The AT Pro has incredible target separation and in most cases will allow the good nonferrous targets to break through the iron and still sound off even in heavily iron infested and trashy sites.
Depth: IMO contrary to popular belief and reviews, the AT Pro is not the depth monster many claim it to be... Running this machine side by side with my Sovereign equipped with a 10x12 SEF coil the AT just could not attain the same depth the Sovereign and my Nautilus provide. The AT Pro during testing IN GROUND (not air tests) was able to pick up coin sized targets with reliable target ID to about 6" - 7". It was able to pick up coin sized targets to approx. 10" - 11" with degraded audio and target ID, and was unable in any setting to pick up a coin sized object beyond 11". I was able to locate buckshot sized targets to approx. 4".
Target ID: The VDI numerical readout of the AT is a nice addition to Garretts lineup and is a HUGE help to those that coinshoot. For me the VDI seems to be a bit shaky and not very accurate on targets beyond 6". The target ID was very accurate on shallow targets with most coin shaped targets not moving more then a number or two during location (I.e. 80-81).
My field report: I personally think this is an incredible detector for anyone looking to add a versatile detector to their arsenal. It isn't the deepest I've used, but definitely the most versatile. My only real complaint is that the unit LOVES hot rocks which is a downside to almost all single frequency machines, they ID around 37-45. I will be using the AT for scouting sites, in water detecting, and iron infested sites. Here's my breakdown of features...
Assembly (ease): 9/10
Construction: 8/10
Depth: 7/10
Target ID: 6/10
Weight and Balance: 7/10
Recovery Speed: 8/10
Target Separation: 9/10
Versatility: 9/10
Features (Bells and Whistles): 7/10 (Iron audio/disc is amazing)
Tones: 7/10
Headphones: 5/10
Coinshooting: 7/10
Relic/Old Coin Hunting: 6/10 (Needs more depth and loves hot rocks)
Freshwater Hunting: 7/10 (Somewhat chattery in our iron mineralized creeks and lakes)
Price: 9/10 (great price for all you get)
Overall: 8/10
Target ID: 7/10
I know that using Iron Disc with Iron Audio changes the breakpoint between low grunt and mid tone (so the threshold is at the Iron Disc setting), but if you set Iron Disc to 35 that tone threshold is only moved by a few points. Am I missing something else there?
Have to admit I love mine and wouldn't trade it for the world.
..It seems to me that this detector balances between 80-90 just about everywhere unless you are at the beach..I don't really trust my auto ground balance number..