jmc24
Full Member
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2020
- Messages
- 166
- Reaction score
- 264
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Colorado
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Gold Monster 2000, Manticore, Nokta Legend 2, Magnetar 9000, XP Deus 2, FTP Tek Point, Nokta Accupoint, Gold Hog River Sluices and Flow Pan, Royal Mini High Banker.
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
- #1
Thread Owner
A huge thanks to Tim Henderson (YouTube channel Tim Henderson) for loaning me his XP Icon remote to test and use for a few days. I really appreciate it. I loaned him my Garrett VX7 as a testing exchange.
First things first. XP are simply not dumb enough to release a detector series like the Icon/Icon X in order to directly compete with themselves and their Deus 2 format whether its the full Deus 2 remote or the WS6 Master. That is just impossible. There have to be layout, feature and performance compromise differences.
So, I will also get this out of the way. I have never been a fan of XP's PWM audio, period.....GIANT PERIOD. I can stand it for a few hours but then I need a break. I really like their Hi Square audio on Deus 2 which has the sparkiness that PWM has but it doesn't have the ragged tone edges that just have too many ugly harmonics for me to deal with. I like the clean, sometimes percussive edges of Hi Square audio. I am okay with their Square audio but at least on the Icon, the Square audio being used is too drawn out and a bit mushy for my liking and it is only available with morphed audio. I am slowly and reluctantly getting into XP's audio morphing........more like very reluctantly. PWM is available on the Icon with and without morphing. You can just bypass morphing audio all together if you want to by just not using the stereo ready headphones and back phones. I had no trouble loading V4.2 Icon compatible software on my non stereo WSA ll back phones and just used them for all the testing. My favorite Deus 2 Hi Square audio is not available on the Icon series.
Those audio choices made arbitrarily by XP to give one distinct difference between the Icon series and Deus 2 already make the Icon a hard sell for me. Just my totally subjective opinion as far as XP's audio themes.
The complete lack of user friendly Silencer and Bottle Cap Reject settings also make the Icon series a very, very hard sell for me. That is not subjective. It is crucial for me to have control over those settings where I detect due to the ground conditions here.
Anyway, I have completed my testing and got in a 2 hour hunt today with the Icon accompanied by my Deus 2 full remote with both using the same Deus 2 FMF 11" coil.
I used my original, non stereo WSA ll back phones running V4.2 software with the Icon and used my WSA ll ST back phones paired to my Deus 2 remote with morphing OFF. I tested the two land based programs on the Icon and it was obvious that its Field program with soil subtraction was the best option here since it has soil subtraction that helps for dealing with the magnetite mineralization here. Deus ll's General program is the best overall choice for the magnetite rich soil here too for the same reason.....it has soil subtraction tech.
I used the Icon Field program with these settings. 5 tones, disc 8, iron volume 8, Multi on frequency shift CH01, PWM with no morphing setting 1, Standard ground type, reactivity 2, sensitivity 24, ground balanced at 87.50. My Deus 2 was using General, 5 tones Hi Square set to tone breaks for US coins and with tone pitches that I can differentiate well, disc 10, bottle caps 0, notch OFF, silencer 0, sensitivity 95, frequency max 40 kHz, iron volume 7, audio response 4, morphing OFF, ground balanced at 87.25.
I was hunting a park that I have already hunted at least 20 times. I have pulled lots of wheat pennies, silver dimes, silver quarters, war nickels and some gold and silver rings from this park. It has dirt that is very similar to my home test garden which fills up the Deus 2 iron oxide mineralization meter.
My first goal was to let Deus 2 go first and I would flag any targets that sounded and behaved like they were high conductors with some depth in the 6" to 10" range which is where I have found many of the good coin targets and some of the rings at this park. I wanted to see if depth was comparable on Icon and Deus 2 using the same coil. I was concentrating on target IDs above 87 which is usually the highest target ID of US zinc pennies here. That is also where I have my last tone break set on my Deus 2 5 tone audio so zinc pennies will have two tone audio that splits over that tone break. So zincs have a mid pitched tone and a high tone that often alternates which lets me quickly decide by that and other audio characteristics as to whether I will dig that zinc because that's what it most likely is, or I might pass it up. The big gold rings I've found that had zinc penny target IDs usually have a solid single tone and only one target ID.
Basically, both detectors could hit all of the deep targets that I detected with the deepest being that solid copper wire at 8" deep. If there were deeper coin sized targets in the area that I used for the test, neither detector detected them well enough for me to hear them.
My other goal besides detecting those deeper flagged targets with the Icon was also letting it detect other targets in the hunt area which was roughly 30 yards by 30 yards.
I flagged 14 targets with Deus 2. Some of them were obvious deep high conductor US coins which turned out to be copper Memorial pennies and clad dimes between 6" and 8" deep. The deepest high conductor target was the solid copper wire shown in the photo.
A few of those 14 deeper targets were obviously ferrous targets that were giving some high tone false responses but also characteristic iron responses too on Deus 2. I marked them anyway because I wanted to see how the Icon would handle them.
As soon as I started detecting with the Icon, I noticed that its 5 tones had the top three pitches set very close together. From a musician's standpoint they were a whole step apart which is basically equivalent to playing two adjacent white keys on a piano with a black key between them. The other thing I noticed was that the highest tone on that 5 tone audio started at target ID 70. Remember, I said that the highest tone on my Deus 2 setup starts at target ID 87. So, I was hearing a TON of high tone responses that I did not hear with my Deus 2 setup and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. So another big, arbitrary choice that XP made which means the Icon 5 tone audio is definitely not setup for US coin targets and that cannot be changed by the user. That really threw me off, both the highest pitch tone break and how close together the 4th and 5th tone pitches were. I could have switched to full tones and I did for awhile but PWM full tones is just about unbearable by me for very long.
Anyway I was getting high tone falsing on the magnetite in the ground and I was hearing most of the pull tabs, can slaw, steel crown bottle caps, aluminum screw caps, zinc pennies and all other US high conductor coins all with the same high tone. I had to look at the display every time I heard one of those targets so hundreds of times during this 2 hour hunt. I rarely look at a display when I'm coin/jewelry hunting with other detectors except right before I decide to dig. The target tones and their nuances tell me everything I need to know.
Some of those trash targets sounded too good to pass up too and many of their target IDs were in that compressed 80 to 89 range that can be lots of things here in the USA. Unfortunately, all of the steel crown bottle caps in the photo and several others that I tossed in the garbage, had mid to upper 80s target IDs with next to no indication that they were ferrous bottle caps. A couple of them had mid 90s target IDs also with no ferrous indications.
The biggest issue I had was digging deep iron. Like I said above, I deliberately flagged some probable iron targets that Deus 2 correctly identified. Icon on the other hand gave very little indication that those deep iron targets were actually iron. Icon also falsed badly on the two bolts in the photo and gave very little indication of their ferrous nature. Those two bolts were about 4" deep and had clear high tone and upper 80s to low 90s target IDs. Deus 2 had similar target IDs but it also had some ferrous responses and most importantly, an audio characteristic that sounds like someone thumbing a deck of cards which means I can actually hear the individual threads on those bolts even at 4" depth. I have never heard another detector do that. Icon definitely did not. Remember, I had Deus 2 Silencer on 0 and Bottle Cap Reject on 0 and Deus 2 was still giving me plenty of important and useful ferrous target information that the Icon simply could not.
Basically, I would never dig that much trash with Deus 2 either by accident or that many zinc pennies unless I was in a situation where big gold rings were possible.
As for the bling ring, I marked that target as a possible ring with Deus 2. It had a solid 88 target ID and a bigger audio footprint than a zinc penny but smaller audio footprint than a big aluminum screw cap. I could not hear any big size distinction like that using the Icon and its PWM audio.
Another substantial issue became apparent here where I detect during test garden testing.
I live in Denver and this area has over 300 public parks to hunt. I hunt most of them and shovels, even hand digger shovels are simply not allowed in these parks. Some people do it anyway and get all of us in trouble sometimes and we have to have some difficult conversations with these guys when we see them with long handled shovels and even pick axes in the public parks here. Amazing.
Anyway, every hunt that I go on in these parks is a selective digging hunt where I am concentrating on certain targets only and leaving a lot of the trash and hopefully not too much treasure behind while also not destroying the park with hundreds of obvious dig hole plug circles that do not look good at all for months afterwards since we are having a drought here and water use is very restricted.
For that reason, I have to have a detector that gives me super accurate information to make dig and no dig decisions using a flathead screwdriver for target recovery. Nothing I can do about this except make the best of it. At least these public parks and public schools allow metal detecting.
I own a Deus 2 HF2 coil and for the most part I really like it. However, XP made another arbitrary decision on the Icon series which was to not allow user adjustments of the maximum simultaneous multi frequency used. I can change that Max frequency on Deus 2 in any multi frequency program using the HF2 coil. I can't do that within the Icon series programs. The max frequency for the Park and Field programs when using the HF2 coil has been reported to be locked at 53 kHz. Using its stock coil and the other Deus 2 FMF coils, that max frequency is 40 kHz. That has serious consequences which cannot be ignored.
To prove or disprove this locked 53 kHz max frequency possibility, I used my Deus 2 with HF2 coil set at 53 kHz max frequency and Icon with HF2 coil on a simple, two US coin target ID and target tone accuracy test.
Below is a video of that test showing Deus 2 and Icon with the HF2 coil, really struggling in the preset discrimination patterns set by XP for the Park and Field programs due to the 53 kHz max frequency combined with the mineralization here causing lots of higher than normal target IDs. They both do a little better when the discrimination patterns are removed but target IDs are still way higher than normal. Overall, both detectors had basically the same fair to poor performance running that HF2 coil at 53 kHz. I did do another test after making the video where I put Deus 2's max frequency at 29 kHz using the HF2 coil and target IDs were back to normal.
If the goal of XP and hopes of end users was to simplify Deus 2, having to learn a totally different target ID scale using the HF2 coil due to the locked 53 kHz max frequency is certainly not making the Icon a simpler detector to use. It's a lot more confusing in my opinion and XP at least needs to provide some kind of warning about this for Icon/Icon X buyers that want to buy the HF2 coil.
The Icon with the Deus 2 FMF 11" coil performed better on the same targets with less target ID up averaging. It still did not do well using the Park program preset discrimination/notch pattern.
This video is about 10 minutes and shows Legend 2, Vanquish 340, XP Icon and XP Deus 2 using small elliptical coils testing target ID accuracy on a surface US nickel, 4" deep US nickel, 6" deep US nickel, surface US quarter and 6" deep US quarter.
The microphone is in the right ear cup of my Avantree Audition Pro headphones which are hardwired to each detector. Vanquish 340 volume is kind of loud because it only has 3 volume settings. My voice is not very loud because again, the microphone is inside the headphone ear cup. Sorry.
One other negative is the volume level of Icon's pinpoint mode. I use that function a lot on every detector to really get as close as possible to the target's exact location to minimize the size of the plug that I'm digging. The pinpoint volume is obnoxiously loud to the point of possible hearing damage.
Other than the things I have mentioned as negatives with one of those being purely subjective on my part and the others being arbitrary marketing decisions by XP to make a person buy a Deus 2 instead of the Icon, I actually like the Icon. I can set it up and operate it easily. I can see where it would be excellent on milder ground conditions.
Would I own one after knowing more about it and how it performs here in higher magnetite mineralization. NO. I really need detectors that work well here. Icon borderline works here and the things that are holding it back here cannot be adjusted by the end user.
So, I like the Icon just fine for what it is. It is a decent detector that I would put in the same class as the Garrett Vortex, Nokta Score series, Minelab Vanquish series and the X-Terra Elite. However, at least here where I detect, it is definitely not a Deus 2 full remote or a Deus 2 WS6 or a Legend 2, Equinox 700/900 or definitely not a Manticore.
In many ways it is a very different detector instead of just being a simplified Deus 2 in my opinion.
I have heard through the forum grapevine that the morphing audio and the Icon series are the first offerings from XP that were not inspired and developed by their original owner, Alain Loubet. Maybe that is true and maybe it's total human BS or AI fiction.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
First things first. XP are simply not dumb enough to release a detector series like the Icon/Icon X in order to directly compete with themselves and their Deus 2 format whether its the full Deus 2 remote or the WS6 Master. That is just impossible. There have to be layout, feature and performance compromise differences.
So, I will also get this out of the way. I have never been a fan of XP's PWM audio, period.....GIANT PERIOD. I can stand it for a few hours but then I need a break. I really like their Hi Square audio on Deus 2 which has the sparkiness that PWM has but it doesn't have the ragged tone edges that just have too many ugly harmonics for me to deal with. I like the clean, sometimes percussive edges of Hi Square audio. I am okay with their Square audio but at least on the Icon, the Square audio being used is too drawn out and a bit mushy for my liking and it is only available with morphed audio. I am slowly and reluctantly getting into XP's audio morphing........more like very reluctantly. PWM is available on the Icon with and without morphing. You can just bypass morphing audio all together if you want to by just not using the stereo ready headphones and back phones. I had no trouble loading V4.2 Icon compatible software on my non stereo WSA ll back phones and just used them for all the testing. My favorite Deus 2 Hi Square audio is not available on the Icon series.
Those audio choices made arbitrarily by XP to give one distinct difference between the Icon series and Deus 2 already make the Icon a hard sell for me. Just my totally subjective opinion as far as XP's audio themes.
The complete lack of user friendly Silencer and Bottle Cap Reject settings also make the Icon series a very, very hard sell for me. That is not subjective. It is crucial for me to have control over those settings where I detect due to the ground conditions here.
Anyway, I have completed my testing and got in a 2 hour hunt today with the Icon accompanied by my Deus 2 full remote with both using the same Deus 2 FMF 11" coil.
I used my original, non stereo WSA ll back phones running V4.2 software with the Icon and used my WSA ll ST back phones paired to my Deus 2 remote with morphing OFF. I tested the two land based programs on the Icon and it was obvious that its Field program with soil subtraction was the best option here since it has soil subtraction that helps for dealing with the magnetite mineralization here. Deus ll's General program is the best overall choice for the magnetite rich soil here too for the same reason.....it has soil subtraction tech.
I used the Icon Field program with these settings. 5 tones, disc 8, iron volume 8, Multi on frequency shift CH01, PWM with no morphing setting 1, Standard ground type, reactivity 2, sensitivity 24, ground balanced at 87.50. My Deus 2 was using General, 5 tones Hi Square set to tone breaks for US coins and with tone pitches that I can differentiate well, disc 10, bottle caps 0, notch OFF, silencer 0, sensitivity 95, frequency max 40 kHz, iron volume 7, audio response 4, morphing OFF, ground balanced at 87.25.
I was hunting a park that I have already hunted at least 20 times. I have pulled lots of wheat pennies, silver dimes, silver quarters, war nickels and some gold and silver rings from this park. It has dirt that is very similar to my home test garden which fills up the Deus 2 iron oxide mineralization meter.
My first goal was to let Deus 2 go first and I would flag any targets that sounded and behaved like they were high conductors with some depth in the 6" to 10" range which is where I have found many of the good coin targets and some of the rings at this park. I wanted to see if depth was comparable on Icon and Deus 2 using the same coil. I was concentrating on target IDs above 87 which is usually the highest target ID of US zinc pennies here. That is also where I have my last tone break set on my Deus 2 5 tone audio so zinc pennies will have two tone audio that splits over that tone break. So zincs have a mid pitched tone and a high tone that often alternates which lets me quickly decide by that and other audio characteristics as to whether I will dig that zinc because that's what it most likely is, or I might pass it up. The big gold rings I've found that had zinc penny target IDs usually have a solid single tone and only one target ID.
Basically, both detectors could hit all of the deep targets that I detected with the deepest being that solid copper wire at 8" deep. If there were deeper coin sized targets in the area that I used for the test, neither detector detected them well enough for me to hear them.
My other goal besides detecting those deeper flagged targets with the Icon was also letting it detect other targets in the hunt area which was roughly 30 yards by 30 yards.
I flagged 14 targets with Deus 2. Some of them were obvious deep high conductor US coins which turned out to be copper Memorial pennies and clad dimes between 6" and 8" deep. The deepest high conductor target was the solid copper wire shown in the photo.
A few of those 14 deeper targets were obviously ferrous targets that were giving some high tone false responses but also characteristic iron responses too on Deus 2. I marked them anyway because I wanted to see how the Icon would handle them.
As soon as I started detecting with the Icon, I noticed that its 5 tones had the top three pitches set very close together. From a musician's standpoint they were a whole step apart which is basically equivalent to playing two adjacent white keys on a piano with a black key between them. The other thing I noticed was that the highest tone on that 5 tone audio started at target ID 70. Remember, I said that the highest tone on my Deus 2 setup starts at target ID 87. So, I was hearing a TON of high tone responses that I did not hear with my Deus 2 setup and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. So another big, arbitrary choice that XP made which means the Icon 5 tone audio is definitely not setup for US coin targets and that cannot be changed by the user. That really threw me off, both the highest pitch tone break and how close together the 4th and 5th tone pitches were. I could have switched to full tones and I did for awhile but PWM full tones is just about unbearable by me for very long.
Anyway I was getting high tone falsing on the magnetite in the ground and I was hearing most of the pull tabs, can slaw, steel crown bottle caps, aluminum screw caps, zinc pennies and all other US high conductor coins all with the same high tone. I had to look at the display every time I heard one of those targets so hundreds of times during this 2 hour hunt. I rarely look at a display when I'm coin/jewelry hunting with other detectors except right before I decide to dig. The target tones and their nuances tell me everything I need to know.
Some of those trash targets sounded too good to pass up too and many of their target IDs were in that compressed 80 to 89 range that can be lots of things here in the USA. Unfortunately, all of the steel crown bottle caps in the photo and several others that I tossed in the garbage, had mid to upper 80s target IDs with next to no indication that they were ferrous bottle caps. A couple of them had mid 90s target IDs also with no ferrous indications.
The biggest issue I had was digging deep iron. Like I said above, I deliberately flagged some probable iron targets that Deus 2 correctly identified. Icon on the other hand gave very little indication that those deep iron targets were actually iron. Icon also falsed badly on the two bolts in the photo and gave very little indication of their ferrous nature. Those two bolts were about 4" deep and had clear high tone and upper 80s to low 90s target IDs. Deus 2 had similar target IDs but it also had some ferrous responses and most importantly, an audio characteristic that sounds like someone thumbing a deck of cards which means I can actually hear the individual threads on those bolts even at 4" depth. I have never heard another detector do that. Icon definitely did not. Remember, I had Deus 2 Silencer on 0 and Bottle Cap Reject on 0 and Deus 2 was still giving me plenty of important and useful ferrous target information that the Icon simply could not.
Basically, I would never dig that much trash with Deus 2 either by accident or that many zinc pennies unless I was in a situation where big gold rings were possible.
As for the bling ring, I marked that target as a possible ring with Deus 2. It had a solid 88 target ID and a bigger audio footprint than a zinc penny but smaller audio footprint than a big aluminum screw cap. I could not hear any big size distinction like that using the Icon and its PWM audio.
Another substantial issue became apparent here where I detect during test garden testing.
I live in Denver and this area has over 300 public parks to hunt. I hunt most of them and shovels, even hand digger shovels are simply not allowed in these parks. Some people do it anyway and get all of us in trouble sometimes and we have to have some difficult conversations with these guys when we see them with long handled shovels and even pick axes in the public parks here. Amazing.
Anyway, every hunt that I go on in these parks is a selective digging hunt where I am concentrating on certain targets only and leaving a lot of the trash and hopefully not too much treasure behind while also not destroying the park with hundreds of obvious dig hole plug circles that do not look good at all for months afterwards since we are having a drought here and water use is very restricted.
For that reason, I have to have a detector that gives me super accurate information to make dig and no dig decisions using a flathead screwdriver for target recovery. Nothing I can do about this except make the best of it. At least these public parks and public schools allow metal detecting.
I own a Deus 2 HF2 coil and for the most part I really like it. However, XP made another arbitrary decision on the Icon series which was to not allow user adjustments of the maximum simultaneous multi frequency used. I can change that Max frequency on Deus 2 in any multi frequency program using the HF2 coil. I can't do that within the Icon series programs. The max frequency for the Park and Field programs when using the HF2 coil has been reported to be locked at 53 kHz. Using its stock coil and the other Deus 2 FMF coils, that max frequency is 40 kHz. That has serious consequences which cannot be ignored.
To prove or disprove this locked 53 kHz max frequency possibility, I used my Deus 2 with HF2 coil set at 53 kHz max frequency and Icon with HF2 coil on a simple, two US coin target ID and target tone accuracy test.
Below is a video of that test showing Deus 2 and Icon with the HF2 coil, really struggling in the preset discrimination patterns set by XP for the Park and Field programs due to the 53 kHz max frequency combined with the mineralization here causing lots of higher than normal target IDs. They both do a little better when the discrimination patterns are removed but target IDs are still way higher than normal. Overall, both detectors had basically the same fair to poor performance running that HF2 coil at 53 kHz. I did do another test after making the video where I put Deus 2's max frequency at 29 kHz using the HF2 coil and target IDs were back to normal.
If the goal of XP and hopes of end users was to simplify Deus 2, having to learn a totally different target ID scale using the HF2 coil due to the locked 53 kHz max frequency is certainly not making the Icon a simpler detector to use. It's a lot more confusing in my opinion and XP at least needs to provide some kind of warning about this for Icon/Icon X buyers that want to buy the HF2 coil.
The Icon with the Deus 2 FMF 11" coil performed better on the same targets with less target ID up averaging. It still did not do well using the Park program preset discrimination/notch pattern.
This video is about 10 minutes and shows Legend 2, Vanquish 340, XP Icon and XP Deus 2 using small elliptical coils testing target ID accuracy on a surface US nickel, 4" deep US nickel, 6" deep US nickel, surface US quarter and 6" deep US quarter.
The microphone is in the right ear cup of my Avantree Audition Pro headphones which are hardwired to each detector. Vanquish 340 volume is kind of loud because it only has 3 volume settings. My voice is not very loud because again, the microphone is inside the headphone ear cup. Sorry.
One other negative is the volume level of Icon's pinpoint mode. I use that function a lot on every detector to really get as close as possible to the target's exact location to minimize the size of the plug that I'm digging. The pinpoint volume is obnoxiously loud to the point of possible hearing damage.
Other than the things I have mentioned as negatives with one of those being purely subjective on my part and the others being arbitrary marketing decisions by XP to make a person buy a Deus 2 instead of the Icon, I actually like the Icon. I can set it up and operate it easily. I can see where it would be excellent on milder ground conditions.
Would I own one after knowing more about it and how it performs here in higher magnetite mineralization. NO. I really need detectors that work well here. Icon borderline works here and the things that are holding it back here cannot be adjusted by the end user.
So, I like the Icon just fine for what it is. It is a decent detector that I would put in the same class as the Garrett Vortex, Nokta Score series, Minelab Vanquish series and the X-Terra Elite. However, at least here where I detect, it is definitely not a Deus 2 full remote or a Deus 2 WS6 or a Legend 2, Equinox 700/900 or definitely not a Manticore.
In many ways it is a very different detector instead of just being a simplified Deus 2 in my opinion.
I have heard through the forum grapevine that the morphing audio and the Icon series are the first offerings from XP that were not inspired and developed by their original owner, Alain Loubet. Maybe that is true and maybe it's total human BS or AI fiction.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
