First Impressions: Whites V3i vs. Minelab Excalibur II 1000

[Trokair]

First Impressions: White's V3i vs. Minelab Excalibur II 1000

Quick Run-Down

Hardware:Excalibur is waterproof, V3 is not. V3 is easier to swing, has wireless headphone and speaker options, has a screen/visual indicators, has battery charge indicator.

Operation: Excalibur has constant background hum that frankly can get annoying but can be useful. Excalibur tones "smoothly" where the V3 gives a crisp *Beep* for most of it's stock programs when it finds a target. V3 is easier to pinpoint with (both targeting and switching modes).

Performance: Discrimination is more granular on the V3 but I've found it to have similar performance to the Excalibur. Excalibur gets better depth so far in highly mineralized ground vs any program I could find or create on the V3. V3 is more comfortable to use on land as the headphones on the Excalibur aren't the most comfortable things and make digging awkward.

Customization: V3 wins Software customization, Excalibur wins hardware customization. V3 allows you to build a custom program from scratch with a hundred different variables to set. Excalibur is constantly having mods made for it and also has more stock hardware customization (do yourself a favor and get the hip mount kit or different shaft, you will thank yourself)


The Story
5 years ago I bought a White's V3 spectra as my first metal detector. I've messed around with just about everything I could think of program wise, grabbed other people's programs etc. The majority of my hunt time had been on beaches and I'd seen/read of plenty of people who had Excaliburs and had done great with them so I decided to purchase one as my main Beach detector because I wanted to try something simpler that more importantly was waterproof. I've had the Excalibur for 3 weeks.

So far all of my hunts this year have been on land, in highly mineralized and trash ridden soil. Both detectors can get up to 12 inches on although I find the Excalibur tends to run deeper with less falsing then the V3. For comparison I'm using the stock "Beep-Dig" program for the V3. The V3 is a complicated machine and you really can build a terrible program that finds nothing in the ground you are hunting where the Excalibur is just turn on and go. I have to assume the reverse that I could build an amazing program though I haven't found that combination of all of the settings just yet.

The Verdict
I'm actually really happy with both detectors. They are so vastly different from each other that having both makes sense. Right now I'm focusing on using the Excalibur as it is the newer one and I want to get a good grasp on it but there are certainly plenty of features from both that I'd love to see thrown into a single model. Ease of use is a total toss up with the Excal being much more software friendly "turn on and go" and the V3 being much easier to use hardware wise on land with the speaker/wireless and being able to easily put the machine down.

I'm going to keep this updated as I continue the head to head with these. Anyone with any questions on either please feel free to ask and I will respond back.

 

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[adamBomb]

Is the V3i locked in salt mode like the Excal? If not, it should be able to detect gold that the Excal wont even recognize exist. The excal is locked in salt mode and thus only meant for salt beach/water detection whereas I believe the V3i can excel in both but its not waterproof. I dont know enough about the V3i though. I wouldnt use the excal on land unless its your only option. See this thread for more explanation:

salt mode lack of sensitivity?

 

[Trokair]

Is the V3i locked in salt mode like the Excal? If not, it should be able to detect gold that the Excal wont even recognize exist. The excal is locked in salt mode and thus only meant for salt beach/water detection whereas I believe the V3i can excel in both but its not waterproof. I dont know enough about the V3i though. I wouldnt use the excal on land unless its your only option. See this thread for more explanation:

salt mode lack of sensitivity?

It is not locked in salt mode. The V3 is really deeply customizable. I'm using both on land right now and because of the heavy mineralization at my spots the Excalibur is performing really well. Of course it could be my programing with the V3 that is the problem. I don't really expect there to be any gold in the ground where I am. East Coast farm land. That said I do keep my ears to the ground for gold but so far just a wide variety of pull tabs. My two main spots still have days worth of potential though. My first spot I have only pulled trash and modern coins though it is the older site. As I continue to comb these two over and over it should get better as I eliminate older buried trash.

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[vferrari]

I have a Deus and picked up an Excal II for the same reason. Dedicated beach hunting with a detector that is built to take the abuse in and out of the water. I have never thought about using the Excal other than at the beach, but I too live in VA in hunt highly mineralized farmland for relics with my Deus and ATX PI machine. I might "experiment" with the Excal on a relic hunt just to see what would happen. Regarding the ATX, which I could also use at the beach, I find the Excal lighter and can separate the control box from the coil shaft for an even lighter setup as far as my arm and shoulder are concerned. Keep posting your Excal experiences. Thanks.

 

[williamsingr]

Your first mistake was buying anything minelab, second was over spending on machines, 3rd is buying too many machines without the proper research into the best all around machines for which I see you DO NOT even own...If you wanted the best all around and ALL PURPOSE machine then you should have looked at the and bought the MXT ALL PRO. Wich is the same machine as the MXT PRO, that with your MX SPORT you dont need any of the others and you would have spent thousands less then you did

 

[wingmaster]

I know of a guy who was a tester for the V3i, I've detected with him a few times and he really has the V3i down good. He has a program called magic's program and can be found on the White's forum, I've told a few people about and they liked it pretty good. You would need to tailor it to the ground your in but I would give that one a try for sure, he has it set up to tick if your in nails which is real handy looking for old home sites where the house or cabin is long gone. He can pull dimes at 10" all day long and get some at 12" before. HH

 

[vferrari]

Your first mistake was buying anything minelab, second was over spending on machines, 3rd is buying too many machines without the proper research into the best all around machines for which I see you DO NOT even own...If you wanted the best all around and ALL PURPOSE machine then you should have looked at the and bought the MXT ALL PRO. Wich is the same machine as the MXT PRO, that with your MX SPORT you dont need any of the others and you would have spent thousands less then you did

Not clear which poster you are directing this post at.

 

[Trokair]

Not clear which poster you are directing this post at.

Fairly certain it was directed at me but let us not feed the troll.

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[Trokair]

I know of a guy who was a tester for the V3i, I've detected with him a few times and he really has the V3i down good. He has a program called magic's program and can be found on the White's forum, I've told a few people about and they liked it pretty good. You would need to tailor it to the ground your in but I would give that one a try for sure, he has it set up to tick if your in nails which is real handy looking for old home sites where the house or cabin is long gone. He can pull dimes at 10" all day long and get some at 12" before. HH

I've seen the magics program before. I really need to reload that and give it another go. We dug up another Buffalo nickle with the stock beep dig program the other weekend so that at least is working where we are.

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[NeilinFR]

The Excal is not "locked in salt mode nor does it have a salt mode". Any of the BBS/FBS machines do very well either on salt or freshwater beaches. One of the benefits of this technology is that you can go from one type of soil such as wet salt sand and go right up into the dry sand with no adjustments. Its seamless searching and why is this important? because you cannot always recognize when the soils change by looking at the surface your walking on.
And both BBS and FBS machines do very good on smaller gold, not as good as some, but very good. If you want to hunt micro jewelry they would not be the machine of choice but then again a machine that actually finds micro jewelry isn't going to perform well on beaches like the BBS/FBS machines do.
I have only one real complaint with Minelabs and that's the weight. The performance is superb with any Sov, Excal,Explorer or ETrac. I have never used the 3030.
I would think that V3i is a good compliment to your Excal, good luck with them.

Is the V3i locked in salt mode like the Excal? If not, it should be able to detect gold that the Excal wont even recognize exist. The excal is locked in salt mode and thus only meant for salt beach/water detection whereas I believe the V3i can excel in both but its not waterproof. I dont know enough about the V3i though. I wouldnt use the excal on land unless its your only option. See this thread for more explanation:

salt mode lack of sensitivity?

 

[NeilinFR]

If you don't mind digging all metals try the all metal mode(pinpoint) on the Excal.....its really deep and faster resetting then the disc mode.

I have a Deus and picked up an Excal II for the same reason. Dedicated beach hunting with a detector that is built to take the abuse in and out of the water. I have never thought about using the Excal other than at the beach, but I too live in VA in hunt highly mineralized farmland for relics with my Deus and ATX PI machine. I might "experiment" with the Excal on a relic hunt just to see what would happen. Regarding the ATX, which I could also use at the beach, I find the Excal lighter and can separate the control box from the coil shaft for an even lighter setup as far as my arm and shoulder are concerned. Keep posting your Excal experiences. Thanks.

 

[adamBomb]

The Excal is not "locked in salt mode nor does it have a salt mode". Any of the BBS/FBS machines do very well either on salt or freshwater beaches. One of the benefits of this technology is that you can go from one type of soil such as wet salt sand and go right up into the dry sand with no adjustments. Its seamless searching and why is this important? because you cannot always recognize when the soils change by looking at the surface your walking on.
And both BBS and FBS machines do very good on smaller gold, not as good as some, but very good. If you want to hunt micro jewelry they would not be the machine of choice but then again a machine that actually finds micro jewelry isn't going to perform well on beaches like the BBS/FBS machines do.
I have only one real complaint with Minelabs and that's the weight. The performance is superb with any Sov, Excal,Explorer or ETrac. I have never used the 3030.
I would think that V3i is a good compliment to your Excal, good luck with them.

According to Tom Dankowski (NASA Tom) it is locked in a form of salt mode. All salt water machines are unless there is an option to change it like the CTX/Etrac/CZ3D. This is one of the reasons why people will tell you that CTX/Etrac/CZ3D can work better on the land/dry sand than the excal/cz21. Different machines for different purposes. I am not saying the excal/cz21 wont work in fresh water just that if you could change their settings like the CTX, they would work much better.

And both BBS and FBS machines do very good on smaller gold

Are you sure the excal does very good on small gold? Here is just one example of many:

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Your first mistake was buying anything minelab

I thoroughly disagree. Multi-Frequency is absolutely the way of the future. If you detect by sound, using most detectors you're only sending one frequency into the ground. Thus you're only getting a limited feedback on the target ID. When a signal is evaluated by multiple frequencies (18 for BBS, 28 for FBS & FBS2) - it's like listening to high quality stereo versus mono. With multi-frequency it's like going from black & white to full technicolor in sounds. The real advantage I see is in picking good targets out of bad trashy soils.