Actually i have been using the older model Minelab Explorer XS,which is the first metal detector i have used so i cant compare it to other brands,but i have no complaint with this machine as i have never adjusted the settings since i have had it,so far i have only used it on a few local beaches and it works great,with my larger size coil,it detects objects nearly 2 feet down which i was surprised at.I have learned to distinguish between different sounding objects,and by using the numbered digital display that says its junk, its still too tempting to leave so i just have to dig it up to see what it is!!.So far from beach hunting i have found a few rings and lots of coins which is great because these beaches aren't that populated.I haven't tried parks or fields as i haven't mastered the art of pinpointing as yet and don't want to leave crater sized bunker holes all over the parks.At least in sand it's easy to fill the holes.one time while night beach hunting i dug up a coin,filled in the hole,then couldn't find my digging spade..yep i left the spade in the hole when i covered it.lucky the detector found it!!.It's a great detector,but after a while it gets a bit heavy to swing,just as well we have two arms to swap over,also the pinpointing could be a bit more precise,but its just a matter of getting familiar with it.Anyway i'm happy with this detector at the moment,but would still like to try others just to compare.Thanks Alan.

when I first had my detector we were up in Traverse City right in the harbor.I ask the hotel manager if I could metal detect on the beach and he said yes, so in just a few minutes I found 3 dollar bills!!!l
you see there was a horse shoe bed there and the manager couldn't find four horse shoes and said he would pay a dollar a shoe. I found the 4 shoes with no problem. he wanted to pay me and I said it wasn't necessary but insisted that i take at least 3 dollars, so you don't have to beat me to accept money. On my next outing the family including my step son and his family.I was metal detecting when my step grand son wanted try. He took over the detector and within 5 minutes found a 1940 gold French(i believe) coin. I later found a heavy men's gold wedding ring and I tried it on and guess what, it fit perfectly later I went to a private beach
and I just started detecting (without permission) soon a life guard said I could not metal detect here. I asked why he said that you just couldn't. so I said I would go up near the swings.
next the beach owner came over and asked me to stop. well after a little discussion I said as soon as i dug this quarter I would leave. I dug up the quarter and had a white grease bucket that had my clothes in. I threw the quarter in and carried the bucket like it was heavy loaded with many coins. I am sure that to this day she wonders how many coins I must have taken out of her beach before she stopped me.I would recommend white metel detectors and mine lab. I am still working, so I don't have much time to go out in the field or beaches, but I do it as often as i can and even though there times when it seems it is a big waste of time it is that one gold coin or ring or even a few coins that make it worth while. Believe me once you have tried it your hooked!!!

I started out about 25 years ago coin searching. This also allowed me to find all other sorts of collectibles including rings, gold and silver as well as a lot of pull tabs cans etc. I had a White's 6000DI which was my pride and joy. When I moved from the city out to the county I put my detector in my car instead of allowing it to ride in the truck with the furniture and when I parked at the grocery store to get some cleaning supplies someone broke into my car and stole it. They probably had no idea what to do with it so I basically couldn't afford another detector with a family on its way so I missed detecting for about 15 years.

I finally saved and bought a new detector a White's DFX. My NEW pride and joy. I'd like to get hold of a Minelab SE and decide for myself which is the better detector, my trusty DFX or an SE. I stuck with White's for years, but am willing to compare. Thanks.

I have been metal detecting since I was 10 years old (and now I am approaching 50) and have used many different brands; Jetco, Whites, Garret, and now Minelab. I purchased the Minelab Explorer SE from Kellyco when I returned from Iraq in December 2005.

I immediately tested the detector in my front yard in Bellflower, California and found numerous pennies, including several wheaties, nickels, dimes and a quarter. This was not an old home and I was impressed with the accuracy of the targets identified and the ease of using the detector the first time. The pipointing was right on and had no problem locating the coins quickly.

I took the Explorer SE with me to the Philippines on vacation and used the detector on the beaches there. The salt water had little or no effect on the ability of Explorer SE to find many coins on the beaches in the Philippines. I was finding Philippine Pesos well over a FOOT in the sand. This is the only problem I have with the Explorer SE; IT GOES TOO DEEP!

I moved to West Virginia in November 2006 and could not wait to test this machine here. My best friend I grew up with and metal detected for years allowed me to try the machine in his yard in Williamstown, West Virginia, which is over 100 years old. This is an old community and there are many coins waiting for discovery.

The detector had no problem with the soil conditions and I located a few new pennies at first in the front of the home. I moved to the backyard and I located a wheat penny and thought here we go. Right by the wheat penny there was another penny/dime reading and this was a silver Roosevelt dime. Now I was getting excited. Moving deeper in the yard I got a quarter reading 6 inches deep. I carefully dug down and up popped a 1894-s Barber quarter!!!

The weather has turned cold and has put a damper on my detecting until spring, but I have been scouting sites to take my new Minelab and locate many more treasures.

I recommned this detector for anyone wanting to find old and deep coins. However a novice detectorist should read the manual thoroughly and test the detector in your yard and learn how it works before taking this out for use.

I rate this detector a 5 star rating.

I've been detecting for 7 years. My first detector was a Predator II made by Garrett which my father bought from Kellyco in the year 2000. I was 14 at the time. I’ve bought and owned lots of detectors. Luck and experience gave me the feeling that I needed an advanced detector so I opted for the Explorer SE. After much research, it just felt right, it had many positive reviews and the finds made with it just made my jaw drop, so I bought it.

I got it after days of anticipation. I had read the manual twice, which I downloaded from Minelab's website before it arrived, and I visited sites devoted to the Explorer just to get a head start (which I highly recommend to do for everyone who has ordered one).

I love coin shooting (jewelry is a bonus), and this detector excels in that area, the ability to read both ferrous and conductive targets through a graph is really valuable to me because I can determine if the target is being "masked" by another one just by the sharp to dull sound and the positioning of the target in the graph, to give you an idea the pointer "jump" from one point to another to indicate an inconsistent target, what most call an "iffy" signal, could be deep silver, a coin being masked, or a coin on edge.

Another neat feature is that you can save settings on your detector which you can tweak to your liking or to specific targets; this is very valuable if you're like me who go from one site to another and when you have little time to detect. The chart is easy to read to determine what might be underneath (quarter, dime, etc. If it's silver, copper, a ring/pull-tab, etc) and you can swap from the chart to graphics at any time you want!

The Explorer SE is an excellent machine, it does have a learning curve, but you just need to spend some time in the field with it to understand it better and read the manual when in doubt. The features are amazing and with its stock settings it's a true turn-on-and-go detector, you just need to tweak it to get the best out of it since not every site is the same and conditions vary in the field.

I bought this detector a few months back, to this day I've found LOTS of coins, jewelry, even a Rolex Yacht-Master worth over $6,000 which was returned to the owner after tracking him through the Rolex dealership using the watch serial number. This machine goes DEEP; 13' is not a match for this beast.

Overall, I recommend the Explorer-SE to everyone, experienced and beginners alike because of its ease of use and ease to customize it; it's a good feeling to know you have the best with you out in the field; HH!

The Minelab Explorer SE finds coins most leave in the field. I use mine in parks school yards house back yards and beach areas.You won't come home empty handed when you use this detector.

It goes deeper, like having x-ray eyes to ferret everything out of soil. There is a learning curve to use the most refined detector in the world today. The heavier weight the detector is easily mitigated by a thingy strap. Also, with probe there will be only empty when you quit at the end of the day. This will quickly become your new best friend. You will not go wrong as this is your detector of choice.

From mountain top, to the waters edge, no one has a better detector than this. Its depth and multiple frequencies will help you clean up what other hunters have left behind. This is the best and probably will the best for some years to come. The only to improve on this would be a x-ray unit which showed you a picture in the ground and it probably wouldn’t go much deeper. The iron mask eliminates so much junk and the fact it is programmable creates a unit you can look for everything relics coins nuggets and war mementoes, literally a do it all machine. The simultaneous combination of picture on screen digital numbers and picture on the screen placed the explorer head and shoulder above the rest on the market today.

I am never disappointed when I go out, and don't worry about competition as I know I have the best. Long live Minelab.

When I turned the Minelab Explorer SE detector on for the first time I was a bit shocked and confused. It was not really easy to understand what it was telling to me by those all sounds. Then, after reading carefully manual and some playing with settings I understood, this is not just a detector, this is a brilliant. So many functions and monster performance! Do you need to find really deep coin? It can. Are you dreaming about one device, which can feel and see smallest piece of metal and the huge one without changing any settings? It can!!!

Okay, it takes some time for practice, but the result is telling everything. I still remember when a friend of mine with his detector found 3 coins, when I had already more than 15 at the same spot. Want to experience such feeling, when you know that you are best here and no one can do more? Try Explorer SE. And it happens every time, only you decide what to search for. Any setting can be changed and really easy to do it. I pasted more than 1 years I have had it and I found more, than before, during 4 years of searching with another detector. It costs any penny spent on it. There is only one negative side, which can be a little problem for some people. It's a bit heavy. For me it became some kind of motivation. I have improved myself and now have stronger arms. So it is not a problem now to search whole day on the fields.

I would give 6 stars to it, but have only 5.

With 30 years of metal detecting, I can say I've probably used about every type of detector available. I started with a BFO, went through the progress from TR to VLF and varies forms of discrimination, but today’s detector technology is like comparing the Model T to a Ferrari. The Minelab SE is without a doubt a high performance detector.

I've had my Minelab Explorer SE for a short time, but I've already pulled some very deep coins from our heavily hunted park. The SE excels at pulling that extremely deep silver. One of the things I like about the Minelab SE is how it teaches good detecting technique. Years ago it was all about the sound. Success was the results of hours and hours of listening to what your detector is trying to tell you, and learning its language. The SE brings that experience back.

Over the years I've found myself getting lazy and relying on visual information to make the decision to dig or not for me. While it's true that this does have you digging less junk, it also tends to lead you to pass up some of those questionable targets that often are some of the best. The SE brings back the skill of sound recognition to detecting once again. The visual information you get from the SE via SmatFind or Digital still plays an important role in determining target ID, but I've found that for the really deep stuff visual forms of ID'ing are far less reliable than the sound.

I've been able to pull many deep wheats and silver out of my favorite park, and most have been thanks to the SE's ability to score on good targets next to trash. I've pulled some coins out of the same hole with nails. The SlimLine DD coil handle mineralized soil like a champ, and makes picking the good targets out of the trash a breeze.

The Explorer SE is the first and only land based detector that I have owned. I’m relatively new to the hobby, but I wanted a detector that I could grow into instead of out of. And, while the Explorer SE was expensive, I felt it would ultimately be more economical to buy a higher end detector once rather that have to trade up in the future.

So far anyway, most of my time has been spent searching for coins in local parks, or hunting along beaches. While the Explorer SE offers a wide range of custom programming features and adjustability (which I am just beginning to explore now), I have found that for most of my searching, the base factory preset program is all you need this program has been designed to allow coins and jewelry and to reject/discriminate iron. Just turn the detector on, perform a noise cancel adjustment, and go.

In addition to the factory presets, the detector provides the ability to create, save, and recall your own custom search programs, though I have not advanced to the point of creating my own patterns yet.

The Explorer SE measures and displays a targets iron content and its conductivity and displays this information on its display screen either graphically (what Minelab calls smart find) or digitally by providing the numeric reading for each measurement. I tend to be more visual, and prefer the graphic display, over the digital readout. Along with the visual display, the Explorer SE produces a tone based on the targets conductivity the higher the conductivity, the higher the signal tone. With a little practice, all you have to do is listen to the tone, check the screen, and you can pretty much determine what the target is likely to be.

Though it takes a little bit of practice, pinpointing is straightforward and simple, and there is a depth indicator on the display screen that gives you an indication of how deep you will have to dig. Also, the Explorer SE seems to be quite sensitive, I certainly feel that if there is a target down there, this detector will pick it up.

I should mention that the display screen can be difficult to read in some lighting conditions (though I have to admit I have not yet experimented with the contrast settings to see if this can be improved), and the detector tends to be happiest with slower rather than faster sweep speeds.

Overall, I am quite happy with this detector; it is sleek looking, is easy to use right out of the box, provides good visual and audio detail, and offers plenty of adjustments that you can modify to suite your tastes as you gain experience with the detector.

Hello my name is Derek Bradley, and I'm an avid metal detectorist. Since the summer of 1989 I've owned and operated some of the best metered and non-metered units on the market. Needless to say I've spent my fare share of time with my hands in the dirt.

I mainly coin and relic hunt around my hometown of Dalton, Ga. where the ground minerals vary greatly from location to location. From red clay, to limestone, to "hot rock" fields, all the conditions exist that require a machine with excellent ground tracking and balancing capabilities.

When Minelab stormed on the scene with their Explorer series detector with FBS and Smartfind technology, I was as skeptical as the next guy. After all, this was the "New kid on the block" which was untried and unproven, and when your claim to fame is "true automatic ground canceling" and "superior detection depth" through mutiple frequencies, you better be able to back it up. So customarily as with all new detector claims, I waited for user reviews and manufacturer upgrades to deem its claims as fact or fiction. By the time the SE model hit store shelves with years of user feedback, I decided the explorer merited a serious look and hopefully the higher price tag to boot.

Right out of the box I noticed it's sleek stylish design with no knobs. It was completely a push button keypad and a digital readout. At first impression I see how the explorer could seem overwhelming and a bit intimidating, but the "quick start guide" provided by Minelab literally makes it easy as turning it on and going detecting in less than a minute.

Armed with new possibilities provided by FBS and Smartfind I set out to see what this "thing" would do. I'll never forget that first time out and how the explorer found coins in a trash laden school yard where many detectors trod many times before. The ground conditions are terrible and ever changing because the yard is full of fill dirt and top soil from many places, but I pulled $6.56 from it all in 2 1/2 hours.

Another time I was hunting a Confederate battle line and pulled 15 miniballs from among the trenches at depths greater than any other digs I'd made. I can't say other detectors couldn't find them but just that they hadn't, and now, they won't.

After 6 months of the minelab advantage under my belt I can't go back to my old machines. I'm still learning about all the great things the SE is capable of and all the possibilities at my fingertips. It's technology that's simple and easy to use, and most of all, fun. It's versatile for beginner or pro. and expands opportunity as user needs change and grow. It's not a miracle worker but it's power to explore your world.