Whilst up in Adelaide, I took the opportunity to look at a replacement for my ageing Pro-find, with a pinponter that offered both waterproofing and target ratcheting as must haves.
After not previously considering a Garrett product due to well known quality issues with wiring and related falsing, I took a leap of faith and purchased the waterproof AT pro pointer (also known as the "carrot").
The AT does not come with a lanyard, even though a mount is supplied, so a bit of a negative considering some other manufacturers supply one at no extra charge.
A good quality T.REIN retractable lanyard was purchased as an extra from the Garrett dealer, which ultimately pushes the purchase price towards the $300 mark. This has a 36" Kevlar cord, polycarbonate case, stainless steel screws and metal gear loop, and a quick disconnect mount for the pinpointer end of things. As the Garrett pouch has no metal loop for mounting the lanyard (as on the TRX pouch), this specific T.REIN lanyard comes with a velco belt strap.
As for the carrot, I pefer single button operation for both ratcheting and sensitivity/mode operations. The button itself has a more positive feel to it, being more pronounced over the very flat TRX button. It is also much louder than the TRX, and the LED light proves much more useful than the inadequate lighting on the TRX.
The orange colour was a good decision by Garrett, I never could see the logic behind making pinpointers with dark plastics or camo colour schemes.
The actual operation on coin targets is pretty much as what I expected, sensitivity is pretty good on smaller targets, though not quite up to TRX levels, and the proportional audio is excellent.
One thing that did catch me off guard was picking up other targets along the length of the pinpointer shaft whilst trying to pinpoint a coin target in a hole. The TRX only pinpoints at the tip, hence you do not pick up unwanted targets in the hole that may come into close proximity to the shaft. I guess the upside is the ability to scan sideways through soil/sand for targets, though it can prove tricky when searching around a hole with multiple targets.
One way to get around that issue was to narrow down the target location by using the ratcheting feature, as this tends to ignore the smaller targets whilst locking onto the stronger coin target, though with several larger targets in the same hole, things could get a bit tricky. In this instance, tip detection only is a big plus.
My Deus did react to the AT pointer being held relatively close to the coil, though no where as noticible as on the PI pinpointers. I had no issues with falsing when using the Etrac which was a huge plus (it doesn't play ball with PI units, requiring a noise cancel on start-up).
One other feature missing from this pinpointer is the inability to use AA batteries as an alternate power source, so a plus there to the TRX and newer Deteknix units.
Overall I am pretty happy with the "carrot", though I feel it should be priced closer to the $200 mark for what features are on offer when compared to other brands. The downside is the current US exchange rate which commands a premium price, the TRX is also in the same boat in that respect.
