Terry,
You are certainly entitled to your opinion but it would be best if you weren't so biased and lacking knowledge on the subject of PI's. It is sad that people will actually believe you.
First, the TDI is not a low powered unit. I can't say about the Infinium, but the Tesoro PI's are low powered similar to many of the PI kits available. Want a low powered PI with no ground balancing ability then build a kit. At least then you will have a better idea of how PI's work.
The fact that the Infinium and the Tesoro PI are waterproof makes them useful in many areas where hunting in water is required or desired. Nice clean beaches free of basalt and other minerals are ideal places to use such PI's. The Infinium because of the ground balancing ability will allow it to be used in areas containing basalt or has a clay base and anyone who has hunted in AZ knows basalt and clay are very common especially in gold producing areas.
If people want to know about the TDI or the Infinium then reading what Steve Herschbach or Jim Hemmingway has to say on the subject is the way to go. They are two well known individuals who have actually spent sufficient time with these two detectors and can speak intelligently on the subject.
The fact is, a non ground balancing PI that has a delay setting back far enough can be used poorly for gold hunting but the gold has to be as big or bigger than you can find with most cheap VLF's. Even the Garrett 250 you mentioned is competitive.
Terry to insult the TDI and Infinium clearly shows your bias but what is worse is it also shows your clear lack of knowledge of the detectors and of what either of these two detectors can do.
Second, no non ground balancing (GB) PI will compete with a PI that has ground balancing abilities in most gold producing areas and I speak of this with far more knowledge than you. In fact, at the time I started I tried the Tesoro PI and quickly rejected using it.
Instead, I spent a lot of years trying, studying and modifying PI's for gold hunting and realized that ground balancing was needed if the detector was going to be of any value for nugget hunting. In fact I started in 2000 with a non ground balancing PI and over the next couple of years of studying PI's, I added that feature plus the ability to use DD type coil. At that time only the older Eric Foster Goldscans and the Minelabs had ground balancing on their PI's.
Since the ML was getting too heavy for my father to use, I felt I needed to come up with something he could use while he was still able to hunt and at that time, no one was making such a PI. So, after studying extensively and with the help of the world renown Eric Foster, I was able to build a ground canceling PI that weighed a lot less.
So, my knowledge of PI's is from both use and extensive studying of how they work. As for my serious nugget hunting, well that dates back to 1987 and continues through today. I did hunt for gold going back to the early 70's but that is a different story. As for knowledge of the more common VLF's popular for gold hunting over the years, well you can read my field tests of them in Lost Treasure. I even field tested the SD 2200 for LT.
The Tesoro PI works well for what it is designed to do, and that is to hunt in salt water or maybe fresh water where basalt or other mineralization isn't there to affect it.
As for those of you looking for knowledge, I strongly recommend you try the different detectors discussed here in this thread. It won't take much testing to realize what is fact and what is opinion.
Reg
It's all good.
