I've used both. The E-Trac or and Explorer with an 8 inch coil is what you want. The Minelabs allow for a slower sweep and that's how they get in between the iron better.
Minelabs are good machines but here in the Red irony dirt of Virginia, Minelabs don't do very well. Twice a year I attend an invitational hunt in Culpeper called Diggin IN Virginia as well as go up often to dig with guest and friends and have had amply opportunity to see them in action, get reviews from others who use them, as well as have used them myself. If that's all you have, than you can manage it, but it does not perform as well as other VLF machines do in the irony soil here. That said, many VLF machines don't do well in the Irony soil, an exception to this is the Teknetics T-2 Limited (SE) and the Whites DFX does fairly well also. If you live in an area that is mostly irony soil, you may want to augment your collection of detectors with a Pulse machine like a Whites TDI or Garrett Infinium if you don't already own one. They handle the Red iron-laden soil much better than most VLF machines. Hope this helps.
e-trac does everything it needs to do. amazing machine. i spent a month deciding between the 2 and after deciding on the e-trac i don't have an ounce of regret; maybe an ounce of silver though ;p and some gold.. i am pretty sure both detectors can handle high iron content very well once you learn how to use them. e-trac is just known to be easier to learn.
i love the e-trac. i am confident it will find anything that is still detectable (with the right coil). stock coil is a+ but for trashy sites most seem to be using smaller coils. i do damn well handling iron using the stock coil