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I used to like the visual ID info on my Explorer XS but it was a slow machine with too many things to fool around with. All those gee-whiz features did not cut the mustard when it came to depth. Too much screen time was wasted. At a readable depth any target was fun to ID but the deeper fringe targets have been troublesome for older machines and designs. I can see where adapting to a more conventional machine could be a difficulty for some. Transitioning away from ML screens is not easy if that is what you are used to in your equipment.
The ATPRO is best operated by listening first and then using screen info second to evaluate. Any target unlike a US coin is always going to be a crapshoot, even rings. Coins are uniform in size, shape and alloy and being round, can be pigeon-holed on a machine easily. It is the fringe targets most of us are looking for and they have tricked others before us.
I just got my ATPRO and it unmaskes good targets from iron real good, in fact it is the best I have found. The geometry of the coil is very good and an improvement often overlooked for how it complements the control head in function. With the circuitry and programming this machine is an overlooked break-through.
You E-trackers can keep them in the closet if you think detecting with this machine is all about looking at the dashboard. It is a very simple machine to use but you have to let your ears have the priority input to your brain. Learn from real targets what a good repeatable sound is on what you want to find. Then learn what the same thing sounds like at the edge of detection. The edge of detection with this machine is way better than the XS. The E-Trac went with a new coil geometry to gain an advantage over previous models. So did the AT PRO. You don’t have to work harder using the AT PRO to evaluate a target, but you do have to learn this machine without thinking like it is a ML. That screen is a real crutch for ML owners and they will not be happy without it if they cannot let it go.
I could not think of any other way to ruin a detectorists ear than by going with the Explorer and son-of-explorer series machines right off the bat. You get way too much tunnel vision looking at the screen and the details of the audio are totally missed. With that type of machine audio is one-dimensional because your eyes are taking over. A bad habit to be cured from for sure. You will still have to dig a few pull tabs if you want to be 100% sure you did not miss any gold, therefore, there is no advantage with all the menu-driven hoopla. They do not hit small gold hard and if they did the prospectors would all have one. ( the better you can hit small gold with a low range VLF machine [<20KHZ] , the better depth it will have on large gold or on the more perfect gold ring.)
If you ever learn enough about your machine to find out there are not 28 frequencies but simply harmonics of weaker amplitude from the fundamental, then you will wake-up. That is why they are great hitting silver and sucky at hitting small gold. The 28 frequencies is the biggest line of BS and you don’t get BS with Garrett or any US company for that matter. US companies do not sell you on BS technological jargon PEROID. VSAT is another feature that adds no value to performance unless you want to remote a coil 30 feet away. All three coils could have been ID’d at the head but VSAT was proprietary technology from the counter-measures products: vehicles with many coils on a boom. VSAT was sold as a technological advantage no one would use for what it was designed for. Why then, did some buy it? For pretty pictures and advertising? Suckers!
The At Pro is so simple. Bottle cap ID is the best with this machine and depth is totally awesome (for a round gold ring you will hear a nice repeatable tone that later shows a narrow range of ID numbers, with wider spreads at greater depths). When you learn to run this machine you will be spending less time looking at the screen, so don’t make it a crutch now.
Some targets give no ID and this is not uncommon with all the deep machines out there. It is not a fault, it is the way things are because generally you are getting info on a target nobody else has hit. There are few machines I would not try to detect behind if the operator really knew how to use it and the AT PRO is one of them. I am talking about the masked and deep targets. The AT PRO has both depth and excellent iron unmasking and that is the bar.
I know you can program out certain pull tabs with the ML’s. But, if you are not digging pull tabs (old ones) you are missing the gold. The AT PRO can successfully tell you if you are on a steel bottle cap. It can tell you if you are on foil but you have to listen and not look first. That leaves you with pulls, coins, rings and lead to dig if you listen. That is a big advantage if you can learn what the machine’s language is. Turn down the sensitivity when you are on a questionable target and listen. It is simple to learn and you will know a good target before you even look at the screen when you learn to listen.
Anybody can hit the shallow targets and ID them. The pounded land lots are new ground with the AT PRO and that has been seen repeatedly with the few that can hunt now. That is something you do not hear often, so listen-up. For what it does in depth and in unmasking and in target ID audio, it is the best VLF out there in many regards. The price is excellent and it is many times the machine my XS is because I can hit and find the deep and fringe targets it passed by. It also has lightning fast recovery to separate adjacent targets.
If all you know is ML, I pity you and all the bad habits you learned. You may not like any other machine or learn how to use it because of the ML screen crutch you are too dependent of. Some of the features of the AT PRO cannot be bought at any price in the competition’s inventory. Like with the 250, savvy detectorists knew a performance value when they saw one and jumped on it. They are fun to own too.
? It does not fool experienced detectorists. 
