There's a such thing as the right tool for the job, no doubt, and that is something I pointed out about the V3i early on when I said it thrives in mild to moderate inland soil conditions. Due to frequency crosstalk in its demod channels it does have a weak spot, which is keeping up with rapidly changing ground and harsh mediums. In those mediums the solution is to locktrac with offsets. That's not always an ideal solution, so you either live with it or buy another machine to pick up where it leaves off. For some that machine is an MXT. Lately that machine is an Equinox. Mild to moderate ground still remains the V3is playground, and I've not seen a single machine out there do better at finding the good stuff and leaving trash behind in those circumstances if the V3i is in capable hands. Not the MXT, not the Equinox or even the mighty CTX if you plan to pick more than silver. The problem is that so few people are willing to learn what it can do, and they expect it to behave like other multifrequency machines, and it won't. It is an entirely different approach from any other multi designs.
I disagree that each is not a game changer in its own ways. The V3i changed the game for sure, but not for the number of people Whites had hoped. The V3i placed more control and information in the users hands than any machine before it or since, on the idea that users can do better than factory presets if they are willing to learn more about the features. Factory presets are no more the best solution for all environments than locktrac is for harsh environments. Unfortunately what Whites also found out that users can also do worse than factory presets, and in fact tend to err towards doing worse with too much control. They overestimated the number of people willing to learn in the short term for their own long term gain, or to just use the V3is own factory defaults and presets, which is like putting someone in a Sport car and telling them not to speed unless they want to learn to become a better driver first. They are going to speed with the same exact skill set they had before. What people want is a machine that will compensate for lack of skill and adjust itself.
The Equinox is also a game changer insofar as offering as much as it does in one package. It addressed the weakness of FBS, which was small low conductors. It offers yet another approach to multifrequency. If the same settings and presets are not always best for a variety of circumstances, neither are the same couple of frequencies, and that is all FBS really was at bare bones, was the same two frequencies in the same repetition in every mode (despite marketing rhetoric around 28 frequencies and 1.5-100khz etc.). FBS machines were well behaved, silver cherry pickers. Any machine can cherry pick silver though. Spectra did not have this weakness. It was just as hot on Gold and so many preferred the V3i to FBS because of this alone. But the V3i, FBS, and other multi platforms were slower than machines like the F75, Deus, and could not pick out of iron. Minelab combined the best of FBS with a smarter mode defined frequency algorithm, with the balance and selection options of Spectra, in a super fast recovery, giving us the fastest multi platform on the market. It's an evolution of multifrequency. At its base ability, it's not confined to the mid range. In fact, one of the ways it's a game changer is it offers high end performance at a mid range price and feature set. If it had a more robust build quality and more features like target trace and 2D disc there'd be no doubt about where it ranks. To anyone who is only getting mid range performance out of it, particularly in harsher environs, rest assured, it's capable of more, and there's more that can be done to dial it in. It's not the simple turn on and go machine people think it is. It too requires above average knowledge, which is one reason Minelab launched its education campaign about Multi-IQ and Equinox functions.
Please all competitors keep this in mind as moving forward.
