Minelab Equinox 900 vs Nokta The Legend: Which Is Worth the Money?

Three things, in descending order of how much they matter. First, price: $659.00 against $999.00. Second, the ecosystem: Minelab publishes its own 6, 11 and 15 inch coils for the Equinox and approves the Coiltek NOX range on top, while Nokta publishes four coils of its own and very little beyond that. Third, the feature list, where the Equinox adds a Gold mode, two extra single frequencies and the finer target ID resolution.

What does not separate them is the class of target either one finds. Both run several frequencies at once, which is the property that matters on wet salt sand and in mineralised ground, and both publish the same general coil sizes. A silver dime at eight inches is a silver dime at eight inches on either machine. If you are buying because you believe one of them reaches ground the other cannot, read the depth chart first and save yourself the money.

Everything below is drawn from the manufacturer listings in our catalog. Where a maker does not publish a figure, the table shows a dash rather than an estimate.

The second table is the honest one, because it shows where the published record simply runs out. Nokta prints far less about the Pro Pack than Minelab prints about the 900, which is not the same thing as the Legend being worse.

This is the part that the spec sheets hide. You will buy at least one more coil, and the two brands price coils very differently.

Anyone who expects to own the machine for years and to buy coils for it. The Equinox range is the most widely supported platform in the hobby: Minelab publishes three of its own coils, Coiltek 10 by 5 NOX Search Coil and Coiltek 15 inch NOX Search Coil are approved third-party options, Minelab ML105 Wireless Headphones covers the Equinox and two other current Minelabs from one set of headphones, and Minelab Equinox Waterproof Headphones exists for the times the machine goes under water, where wireless does not work at all.

Buy it too if you hunt goldfields as well as parks, because the fourth mode and the two extra single frequencies are aimed exactly there. And buy it if resale matters to you. Neither maker publishes resale figures and we will not invent any, but the Equinox is the machine more people are looking for secondhand, and a machine that sells easily is a machine you can change your mind about. If you are assembling a kit around it, the intermediate setup lists what goes with it.

Anyone who would rather put the difference into the rest of the kit. For the money you save against the 900 you can buy Garrett Pro-Pointer AT, a serious digger such as Lesche Digging Tool and Sod Cutter with sheath, Nokta Bluetooth Low Latency Headphones for The Legend and a finds pouch, and still be ahead. That is a complete working outfit rather than a better detector, and for most people a complete outfit produces more finds than a better detector does.

Buy it too if your ground is ordinary. On inland park and pasture with moderate mineralisation, the published difference between these two machines is not something you will hear. What you will hear is the difference between a 6 inch coil and an 11 inch coil on a trashy site, which is why both packs include one of each. The coil size chart explains the trade in detail, and the coil size selector will pick one for a specific site.

Coverage and recovery. Most people swing too fast, overlap too little and dig too few marginal signals, and no detector on the market corrects any of those three. The coil coverage and sweep time calculator will tell you how long a site honestly needs, and the number is usually several times what people expect.

After that it is the pinpointer, because it converts a five minute dig into a one minute dig and doubles the number of targets you recover in a session. Garrett Pro-Pointer AT is submersible to 20 feet and made in the USA; Minelab PRO-FIND 35 is the matched Minelab equivalent with a ferrous tone. Either one does more for a day of detecting than the difference between these two machines. If you are choosing between more comparisons, the Equinox 900 against the Manticore and the Manticore against The Legend are the next questions most people ask.