Minelab Profind 25 Review / Vs Garrett Propointer

Hello there, thanks for tuning in. I've just taken delivery of this fella. It's a Minelab Profine 25 Pin Pointer. Now, I already own this lad, which is the Garrett Pro Pointer, generally regarded as possibly the best pointer you can get. Served me very well, but since my son has got into metal detecting, he also needs a probe, so he's having this one, and I've bought the Minelab one. Now, since I've got both of these pointers handy, I may as well do a few short tests on different targets to see how close they have to be to each pointer before they make a noise or before they start to vibrate. Now on the face of it, they look very similar. They're almost the same length, almost the same width. They both have a screw cap on the end where a nine volt battery goes. They both have a button to switch them on and off and they both have a speaker on there and one there. Both probes have a light, that's the Garrett, that's the Minelab. The Minelab actually looks a little bit brighter, I think we'll test that in a dark place. The first one is the Garrett, you can just about make out the light on that back wall there, not very bright. This one is the Minelab, that's much brighter, very good. I was kind of worried when I only saw one LED, but it's actually a lot brighter than the Garrett, so that's a good plus point. One way the Minelab Probe does really differ from the Garrett Probe is this button here, plus and minus. What that is used for is to put the sensitivity up or down. Personally, I can't really see the point in that because if you're digging a hole you want the sensitivity pretty high. People say it's for trashy places where you have a lot of trash but it's going to pick it up anyway. You may as well just have the sensitivity maxed out, dig your hole in the proper Put your probe in, find your target, never mean farting about with plus and minus and so on. I can't understand why you would want less sensitivity from a probe. One good thing this plus and minus button does do is switch the sound on or off. So if you hold plus, switch it on, sound is now on, and if you hold minus and switch it on, sound is now off. Not sure whether you can hear that but it's vibrating. It's not vibrating as much as the Garrett though, the vibration is really strong on the Garrett. All right which one has the loudest sound? Switch them both on. That's the Garrett you can hear there, both about the same. So before doing the tests with the coins and so on, we know that the Garrett vibrates more but the Minelab has a much brighter light. That's pretty good for me because in the winter when I get the chance, I tend to go out on a night after work. Obviously in the winter in the UK it's very dark. This will make a real difference because I sometimes struggle with the Garrett to see exactly what's going on in the hole especially if it's a deep target. Now the most important thing to do a test with different coins and a gold ring to see just how close you've got to be with the probe to the target for it to beep or vibrate. All right we'll start off with something big. Nice big cartwheel penny. One of the biggest pennies ever made in Britain. George III. Not that that makes any difference. It's a big lump of copper First up is the Garrett. Right, that's just over five centimeters, which is two inches. Next up is the Minelab with the sensitivity all the way up. All right, just over five and a half centimeters, which is just over two inches. So a little bit of improvement. Right, next up is the Garrett with the George V Schillen, just over four centimeters, which is just over inch and a half. And now the Minelab, four and a half centimeters. So again, a small improvement there. This one's really going to be asking a lot from the probes. It's a George II Maundy 2 pence. Tiny, thin little coin. First up is the Garrett. It's 3.5cm, which is just less than 1.5". And now the same target with the Minelab. And that's 4cm, which is just over 1.5". Again, another small improvement. Lastly, I've got my wife's wedding ring. It's gold, and I'm going to try that one. I'm going to try that one both flat and on its end. So this is the garret, picking that up at about five and a half centimetres, which is just over two inches, and try it on its end, just less than two centimetres, which is about three quarters of an inch. Now the mine lab, ring flat, just short of five and a half centimetres, I think that's actually a little bit less than the garret, and now on its end, just over two centimetres, a little bit more than the garret, just over three quarters of an inch. One thing that is missing, On the Minelab that is present on the Garrett is a scraper blade, which is that thing there. If you have loose soil, that's handy just for scraping the soil away without damaging this plastic. You can see how scratched and worn this probe is, this Garrett one. I've had it for a while. And by using that to scrape through the loose soil, that saves this wearing out. That isn't present on the Minelab, which is a bit of a shame. So on the face of it, the Minelab It does pick up targets a little bit further away generally. Is that enough to warrant the higher cost of this over the Garrett? I don't know. I do like the fact that on the Minelab you can turn the sound off because quite often I'm hunting around the back of farms and houses and so on on a night with permission and I don't want the sound on. So with the Garrett, I was putting a bit of electrician's tape over the speaker to quieten it down. I like the idea that you can switch the sound off, so that to me is a benefit. I also like the brighter light on the Minelab. This will make it a lot easier to find my target. So the Minelab will do everything the Garrett probe does, slightly better, not massively better. Um... To be honest, I was quite disappointed. I was expecting it to get maybe another 20-30% extra depth. It doesn't, at least not in these tests. But that said, it is a nice probe. Knowing what I know now about the Minelab and about the Garrett, which one would I buy? To be honest, I would probably still go for the Garrett, which disappoints me, because this costs quite a lot more than the Garrett, and I could have just bought another Garrett one. Yes, this is a nice probe, and it does tell you if you've lost it. If you've left it switched on somewhere near a hole, three minutes later, it'll start to beep. So if you get to another hole and you think, God, where's my probe? All you've got to do is listen for it. It'll beep. You should be able to find it again. It switches itself off after five minutes. So if you don't find it within the first five minutes, you're knackered. It's lost, just like the Garrett. But I do like that idea. I like the idea that if you lose it, you've got a very good chance of finding it again, because the sound is pretty loud. If you can't hear that in a field, it's a bad job. What would I have liked to have seen from the Minelab probe? Considering the fact that the Garrett one has been out for years, and this should be a massive improvement, Well, I would have liked to have seen a scraper blade, like the Garrett has, unless that's part of a Garrett patent or something. Also, I would have liked to have seen possibly another light on the other side, because if you think about it, when you're looking in a hole, this light is only being cast along half of your hole. This bottom half is totally shaded by the probe, so if you had a light on both sides, you could get a hell of a good view inside your hole on a night. I also would have liked to have seen the Minelab probe fully waterproof. I imagine it would have been great to take on holiday just at the edge of the beach where the waves are coming in, where people tend to fall over. If there wasn't metal detecting allowed on the beach, you could have just swam around, waterproof probe in the sand, could find all sorts. The fact that it's only weatherproof and that little hole stops it being waterproof bums me out a bit. I would have liked it to be totally waterproof, as I would with the Garrett. They're both weatherproof. But I would have liked to have seen both of these probes fully waterproof. So, anybody investigating the cost of the new Minelab probe is probably now saying, Ponguru, you've got more money than sense. But, considering the fact that this has just cost me 125 quid, I neither have money nor sense. So, head to head, which one's better? Well, the Minelab one is better. It has extra features, it detects targets further away, it's weather proof, it's got a better light, the sounds are good which you can switch on and off, but it does cost a lot more. This one is between 85 and 90 quid, the Garrett. This one cost me 125 quid. So are the benefits that you get from the Minelab probe really worth the extra money? I don't think so, personally. I would give them both 10 out of 10. Both good probes. In the end you get what you pay for. The Garrett one is pretty expensive it's best part of 90 quid but at least it was when I bought it. Might be a little bit more now with inflation and so on. The Minelab is 125. Both pretty expensive probes but I wouldn't buy anything less than either of these for my detecting. I've seen people using cheaper probes and they've been absolute crap. These are both very very good probes.