Best Underwater Metal Detectors: Submersible Machines and Wired Audio

It means one of three quite different things, and the listing will usually tell you which if you read it carefully. A waterproof searchcoil means the coil alone can go under, which covers puddles, damp sand and wading up to your ankles. Garrett states this about the Garrett ACE 200 explicitly: the coil can be submerged, the control box cannot. A weatherproof body means rain and spray but not immersion. A published submersion rating, usually stated as IP68 and a depth in feet or metres, means the whole assembled machine can go under to that depth.

The current crop of submersible machines cluster at one figure. Minelab publishes 16 feet for the Minelab Equinox 700, the Minelab Equinox 900 and the Minelab Manticore. Nokta publishes 16 feet for the Nokta Simplex Ultra and IP68 to 16 feet for the Nokta Double Score. Garrett publishes 16 feet for the Garrett Vortex VX9 and 10 feet for the older Garrett AT Pro. XP publishes 66 feet for the XP Deus II, which is an outlier and the reason it turns up in diving conversations.

Depth ratings are static pressure ratings, not promises about how you will treat the machine. Seals age, battery doors get grit in them, and a rinse in fresh water after every salt session is the difference between a machine that stays sealed and one that does not. The Minelab ratings reference and the Nokta ratings reference collect the published numbers so you are not reading marketing copy for them.

The audio column is the one to read twice. A machine with no wired waterproof headphone option is a machine you cannot use below shoulder depth, whatever its submersion rating says.

Because radio does not travel through water. Bluetooth runs at 2.4 GHz and the proprietary low-latency protocols the detector makers use sit in the same band, and water absorbs signals at those frequencies over a distance measured in inches rather than feet. As soon as the control box goes under, the link to the headphones breaks. It is not a range problem you can solve by moving the headphones closer, and no manufacturer claims otherwise.

So every submersible machine needs a physically wired connection to a sealed headphone set. Minelab sells the Minelab Equinox Waterproof Headphones at $170.00 for the Equinox series. Garrett sells the Garrett Submersible Headphones at $149.99 for the AT series. For the Nokta machines the Thresher Submersible Headphones for Nokta at $157.99 fills the same role, and DetectorPro's Gray Ghost Amphibian Headphones for Minelab is the aftermarket answer for Minelab bodies.

There is a second, quieter reason the wired sets matter: a sealed muff blocks the noise of surf, which is loud and constant and sits right on top of the faint signals you are listening for. DetectorPro publishes 24 decibels of ambient noise reduction on its muff design. That is worth as much in the wet as the waterproofing is. If you want the background on reading a marginal signal in the first place, the signal reading guide covers it.

Recovery becomes the hard part. On land you dig a plug and put it back. In water you are working a scoop by feel against a current, and the target moves while you are doing it. That is why water hunters run long-handled scoops and why they work slowly across a small area rather than covering acres. It is also why a pinpointer that is rated for immersion, such as the Garrett Pro-Pointer AT which Garrett publishes as submersible to 20 feet, earns its place immediately.

Salt is the other change, and it affects the machine more than it affects you. A multi-frequency machine or a dedicated Beach mode is what keeps the detector stable in a conductive medium, which is the whole argument of the salt water guide. Rinse everything in fresh water afterwards, including the shaft threads and the headphone connector, and dry the machine before you close it away.

Finally, plan the exit before the entry. Water hunting concentrates entirely on the ground in front of you and it is genuinely easy to look up an hour later and find the tide has moved. If most of your hunting is going to be at the water's edge rather than in it, the beach roundup is the more useful page, and it covers scoops in detail.