hello k ,first and foremost stay away from the wet sand (high mineral content drives a lot of machines crazy) if you plan on doing a lot of beach hunting you may want to upgrade.for the beach (and anywhere else) i recommend a minelab multi freq machine (sovereign,quattro,explorer,safari,etc.) or just for the beach think about a pulse induction detector.no discrimination but much deeper than a vlf machine and a rule at the beach is dig everything.so good luck and hh..........jb