Vanquish 340/440

Vanquish 340 arrived yesterday.


Looks good ,well presented nice clear display and has 3 tones.
    Sensitivity can be adjusted and there are 3 modes to choose from. Coins, Jewellery, and All Metal.
Pretty much a turn on and go machine, Just select you search mode and sensitivity and away you go.
   Runs very quiet until metal is detected; I have not as yet noticed any ground noise.
The detector is quite sensitive and was able to detect all of the small gold items I presented to the coil inc a couple of light weight gold chains my gold bug and safari struggled with...That was a surprise!
    The detector is very basic and the Disc modes cannot be adjusted to your own liking and there is only 5 Disc icons which groups a lot of targets under one icon range, however the numerical TID separates each item. The detector  performs very well and during my brief testing period the machine achieved quite respectable depth on all of my test patch targets, (did not miss any) Gives a low tone on ferrous items and medium to high tone on non iron. There is 3 volume levels.
   If you are not into bells and whistles this little detector should give you a bit of no fuss fun and enjoyment.
There is a 3.5mm hp jack skt....A curious  feature is that the audio must be stereo coz the low tone comes out of one hp and the high tones come out of the other. Seems to be pointless. Also in the coin mode the sensitivity to Aussie 5 cent coin is low (almost discriminated  out) compared to the All Metal and Jewellery mode.
    So I guess the detector could miss small gold chain and light weight rings in the coin mode, therefore the jewellery and All metal mode would be the preferred modes for most detecting  and the coin mode for those who don't want to dig a lot of rubbish .

The detector is able to see this 7g 22k ring through this approx 1kg piece of solid iron stone in the jewellery and all metal mode.
The All Met mode gives an low tone on the rock but a high tone when the ring is placed beneath the stone with coil about 3 inches above the stone.
The Jewellery mode gives no signal until the ring id placed beneath the ironstone. OK, OK maybe not at a great depth but it does see the ring, which indicates a reasonable ground mineral capability.Not too bad for an entry level metal detector. I don't know what the beach performance is like but is reputed to be very good. over wet or dry sand.




If you think this lil tecta is just an Ace 150 or 250; It is not and is  very much superior to those two Garretts

Just some observations, not gospel.

Thanks Adrian

I won one of these in a raffle and gave it to my wife. I haven't tested it at all but noticed it did not come standard with a skid plate. A bit annoying. Perhaps to keep the price of the detector itself a bit lower.

Yeah no skid plate. No big problem unless you are a scrubber.
     It is not too bad for an inexpensive machine.....I paid 399 AUD.
The 340 is clearly a coin and jewellery detector . It is no Equinox  but there is no doubt that it will find stuff without any fuss or bother.
     I was only able to use it with sensitivity at just below 50% due to EMI where I am and the depth ability at that setting was around 8 inches on a 1 dollar coin in the ground, so no doubt when running at 75% to max the results will be significantly better, although 8 inches is around where most targets at the beach are found. Don't go crazy with the sweep speed (slow down) and it will respond to some small gold chains in the sand at around the zero to 5 inch mark with sens 50%.
      So long as there is no EMI about you will be able to run the sens much higher than that and achieve better depth.
The 340 has Multi IQ engaged continuously so is similar to the 540 but without selectable frequencies.... There are no instructions in the box other than a simple start up guide

Thanks again.

I've wondered if the new machines encapsulate the best tech at these prices. Seems like a good value machine. My wife would probably use it in cow paddocks and a few parks.

I reckon you could use this little detector anywhere other than submerging it. Not WP.
I will give it a run tomorrow over some moderately iron mineralised ground that stops my safari.

Went to Pine Island with the 340 this morning and gave it a good run.
!...It works well and was able to set sens to max.
2...Hits hard on coins in All Metal mode and at respectable depths. One 5 cent piece came in so strong I thought it was a bottle cap...but tone was medium...Bottle caps give a combination of high and low tones.
3....No ground noise at all.
4....No pin point function. This became annoying because the elliptical coil was not a good pin pointer and it was easy to be off target by 3 or 4 inches
5...A 400 dollar detector designed to be a coin and jewellery detector should have a pin point function.
6.... The lack of a skid plate could be a problem at some time because the bottom of the coil has cavities in it that traps dirt and mud and possibly small bits of metal that might interfere with operation
7...The detector performed silently over some of the ground that upsets the Safari and my Sov XS.
6...Has a fast recovery speed and can find coins along side some iron items. The ring in the previous post could be detected with a high tone when only 2 inches from the stone with both iron tone for the rock and high tone for the ring and a very fast sweep speed..Impressive I thought.

Conclusion:
The Vanquish 340 is a very nice well mannered easy to operate beginner to whatever level that you might be at type of detectorist. Use it for what it has been designed to do. Which is to find metal anywhere and in almost any ground mineral conditions  

Took the Vanquish 340 to the beach today.
Worked fantastic. No probs with the wet salt beach sand. Ran very quiet until target detected.Sensitivity at max was not a problem and left it at max all day. Found one and two dollar coins at a good 8 to 10 inches deep in wet sand at the high tide water line. One 50 cent coin at approx 16 inches, a 5 cent at approx 8 inches. All signals were good and unmistakable targets. All targets  were old coins that had been in the sand quite some time. Also found a number of small sinkers and a few fish hooks and  Surprisingly few ring pulls and zero bobby pins. I did not take much notice of the TID and simply dug all targets that did not give a solid low tone. It is advisable to dig all combo high and low tones produced by  this tecta.
Nice detector and very usable for pros and beginners. It is brain dead easy to use, yet achieves very good results.

I think I am the only coin and relic hunter on this forum. I feel alone Oh soooo sooooo alone.

Hi Adrian seems like the vanquish 340 is a very capable detector
liked the way you reviewed it,should appeal to those starting out detecting and experienced users as well
here in Tasmania on the beaches i use an Equinox 800 and finding lots of old and new coins,rings plus a few relics over the 2 years ive had it
just wondering have you used one there?
Seems you have put a few brands of detectors through there paces but cannot see anything on how the equinox performs against them
Value your input on this if you can test one out sometime soon...................thanks Mark

adrian ss wrote:I think I am the only coin and relic hunter on this forum. I feel alone Oh soooo sooooo alone.

You are not the only one , Adrian ss . I have 2 relic detectors in my arsenal . Got one of those basic Aldi ones and an Infinium.

When hunting for Gold you tend to come home with more relics instead .

Good write up on the 340 . You are a wealth of knowledge. You can never have enough detectors Is that number 23 or something ?

No I have not used an EQ yet and am unlikely to unless the price is very low.
I did have a chat to a bloke on a South Coast beach who was swinging one (800) and he had no complaints about it.
The capability of the EQ and vanquish range seem to be similar with the exception that the higher the price the more bells n whistles. and now Garrett is about to toss a new coin/relic/jewellery machine into the mix.

soldier of fortune wrote:

adrian ss wrote:I think I am the only coin and relic hunter on this forum. I feel alone Oh soooo sooooo alone.

You are not the only one , Adrian ss .  I have 2 relic detectors in my arsenal . Got one of those basic Aldi ones and an Infinium.

 When hunting for Gold you tend to come home with more relics instead .

    Good write up on the 340 .   You are a wealth of knowledge. You can never have enough detectors   Is that number 23 or something ?

The Aldi machines will find stuff at the beach in the dry sand, Parks n gardens and picnic grounds and the old Infinium is a favourite of mine that has found a truck load of stuff for me. It is a detector that you can use near on anywhere.
Have lost count of my tectas but it is over 58 in toto since 1960. and in the twenty + range at the moment.
I have not had the opportunity to test out the very top end machines due to the on the spot costs involved. Leave those to the pro's.

I also have one of the last 4500`s with an SP01 ,but waiting for my knee to heal up before i can have another crack at the gold. Bought it last year ,but stuff got in the way of detecting for awhile. The Infinium is a good machine and easy to use ,but mine gives off false signals when detecting in grass. May be something loose in the coil or the cable . I have the cable taped down very well ,but still get false signals.

The Infinium should not sound off over wet grass. May possibly be a bad shielding in the coil or cable connection. Do you have an other coil, does it do it with both coils?

Shouid have mentioned the problem is on the 8" mono and not the DD coil. Only started happening in the last year or so. The mono is my preferred coil . Possibly a fault in the connection where it goes into the coil. I haven`t pulled anything apart to look at it internally. Might have to have a closer look at it.

No point trying to take the coil apart, it is totally potted in epoxy resign .
Maybe check that the coil cable plug connections have not got damaged or bent pins.
The mono is my fav coil for the beach. The big DD is also great but is a bit clumsy in the waves. The 5 x 10 inch DD is also pretty handy on the beach.

Not gonna try to pull the coil apart ,but rather just have a gander at the connection going into it. There may be some play in it. It has had a lot of use of the years.
How would you compare the Vanguish 340 to the cheap Aldi one i have ? Not putting minelab down ,but interested to know if they have a better discrim mode and sensitivity . I think someone said the Aldi one is just a goldbug with a different label on the outside.

I don't know which Aldi tecta you have but the 340 will be hard for it to beat on the beach or anywhere else for that matter. The Aldi is a single frequency vlf tr discriminator  (Old School) the 340 processes 3 frequencies at the same time and is a superior discriminator to anything you are likely to get at Aidi.
The gold bug lookalike may have better sensitivity to very small gold chains in the dry sand although I don't know what frequency the Aldi machine operates at.
In a nutshell there is no comparison. You do not have to stuff around with ground balancing with the 340.
The  440 and 450 are even better and the 450 has a lot more TID separating ability.
If you want to go all the way then the Equinox 600 or 800 are top notch coin, jewellery and relic machines.

Sorry , Adrianss. I am sort of giving you half information without meaning to .  This is the one.

I don`t need anymore detectors now  but i reckon if i was learning all over again ,the 340 might be a good start.





Thanks for the info.

Ahhh yes I had one of those for a while (from Ebay) and it found a lot of stuff for me in and around the Canberra parks n picnic grounds. But because it has fixed preset ground balance the tecta was not so flash over wet salt beach sand and would blank out when the coil was an inch or 3 above the sand which meant that small rings and coins were likely to be missed in the water.
The operating frequency of 6.6khz is a frequency that some early Whites machines used.
Eventually I wanted a detector with Manual and or auto ground balance in order to get a bit more depth and sensitivity in the more mineralised grounds and that would balance the wet salt sands. There are numerous machines that will achieve that these days.

Traded the 340 and a couple of oldies in on a 440 just to see what the 440 is like. So far it seems to be quite good.
Will elaborate after I have given it a good run in various ground conditions.

Today 05/03/22.

Have not been out with the 440 yet coz it is raining and there is a bit of lightning about but I did do some response and sensitivity testing with gold and silver chains and rings of weights ranging from 1 g to 22g.
   Overall response was good with the 9 to 14k gold rings giving a reading between 6 and 17 (1g to 5g range). The chains were in the 1 to 14 range.
The 18 to 22k gold rings rang up at between 12 to 23. All of the gold rings gave a medium tone except for the heavy high k
rings which gave a high tone.

The medium tone covered a wide range of targets..... GRRRRRRRR

What surprised me was that the silver chain and rings produced similar tone as the gold items.....Also GRRRRRR

Sensitivity to small chain was good as long as the detector sensitivity was a above the 60% mark.....Down around the 40% mark some small chains will be missed.

The Relic setting cuts out iron ????? This will not make relic hunters happy coz they find a lot of iron relics....Suggest they use the All Met Mode and dig the low tones for iron items.

Even though you can create your own Disc Pattern with this machine, if you do then you will absolutely miss a lot of good targets.....Search in All metal and dig all signals and if you must leave a target in the ground then leave the Low Tones........But then you might be leaving a nice pistol or or gold field relic behind.

This of course will not upset the Green community .

Where abouts would you rate this machine against all your other relic detectors ? I know you said you haven`t been out in the field for a proper test ,but going on your testing so far ,do you think it could be in your top 10 ,bottom 10 or somewhere in between ? Is it just another machine or does it offer more than some other relic detectors you have ? Why would a relic setting cut out iron ? Seems silly. Most relics ARE iron of some sort.

The relic mode is a mystery to me but you can use your own disc settings if you need to . The All Metal mode is good and gives a low tone for iron.
I don't rate it it as a great machine but it is good and can achieve  respectable depth if you can set the sensitivity above 60%.
    It seems to handle a fair range of ground iron mineralization. The detector is fully automatic just switch it on , select you mode and away you go, thanks to the multi IQ frequency set up.
     I would like a larger coil for relic hunting.
The pinpoint function is a bit wishy washy/vague.
      Features aside , the detecting ability of the 440 seems to me to be about the same as the EQ 600 while being even easier to use than the 600.
At this time I will say that it is a good value for money machine that either a first timer or hardened pro could achieve good results with.

Anyway I have not given it a proper test run yet, I have only had this machine for a day and a bit so don't take these observations too seriously  Time will tell if I will keep it.

The detector was able to detect all of these gold items.
   Weight ranged from 0.2g for the smallest item and 2 g for the lightest chain and 7g for the heaviest chain:
All gave a medium tone  and the TID  number display ranged between 1 and 15 and an average of approx 9.
   Target ID is better/more accurate.using the number display rather than the Tones.

So far all Low tones in All Metal Mode have been ferrous items.