New Machines From Quest But Is It Enough?
Quest Metal Detectors are an interesting brand. First appearing under the name ‘Deteknix’ they were quickly sued for copyright infringement by First Texas Instruments. The allegations being that Deteknix had reverse engineered one of their machines and copied components as well as software. This however was not proven and the case dismissed with prejudice. Both parties were ordered to pay their own costs. The “with prejudice” part means the case cannot be brought again.
First Texas instruments (Fisher, Teknetics & bounty hunter) however have spun this outcome to make it appear that they won the case when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. As a result Deteknix changed their brand name to ‘Quest’ and for the most part moved out of the USA and back to their base in China.
Despite all that the Quest brand has flourished and continued to grow. They have already released two new machines this year, the X5 and X10. These complement the existing lineup of Q20, Q40 and Quest Pro.
We knew there were new machines coming but until this past weekend we had very little information about them. Even now info is sparse but here is what we do know.
There are three new machines. The Q30, Q50 and Q60. The latter being a multi frequency machine although not simultaneous multi frequency as some had suggested.
The Q60 lets you choose between 3 x frequencies which we understand are 3, 14 and 24 kHz.
All three models are waterproof and fully submersible to 5 meters/15ft.
The Q50 and Q60 come with 2.4G wireless audio. The Q30 lacks this feature.
There are 5 search modes on the Q60. Not entirely sure what they are but we think they may be All Metal, Field 1/Field 2, Beach 1/Beach 2, possibly a Jewellery mode and maybe a user mode?
All models have built in rechargeable batteries.
Pricing and launch dates are not yet available but will update this article as soon as we know more.
The question now of course is how do these new machines from Quest stack up to the competition? The Nokta Simplex should begin arriving in customers hands within the next week or so and will have quite a head start over the other newcomers. The Minelab Vanquish will not arrive until next year, probably in the Spring and there will be the new C.Scope Evo 6000 landing at about the same time.
If Quest can get their new machines out the door this side of the Winter holiday season they could be onto a winner.
https://www.questmetaldetectors.com/
For more info and discussion visit the two Quest Facebook Groups: Quest Official Facebook Group and Quest Metal Detector UK Group.
