Quest Air Metal Detector Review

Wouldn’t it be nice if metal detectors had no cables? No lead going from the coil to the control box, no connectors to worry about, and no cable ties needed to keep the cable from dangling near the coil. XP, of course, achieved this with the Deus 1, ORX, and Deus II, but no one else had gone down that road—until a small Ukrainian company thought it might be a good idea to do the same thing. However, instead of using an expensive control box, they used your expensive mobile phone as the controller! They provide the coil and shaft; you provide the control box.

Air MD crowdfunded the project, and after a couple of years with many false starts and delays, finally started delivering the Air MD metal detector to their backers—well, some of their backers. Many were left waiting for months before their machines arrived. The problem was, the machine that eventually arrived was just not very good. It was certainly nowhere near as good as Air MD had claimed. Complaints started pouring in, and things went downhill from there. That was the end of the Air MD, or was it?

Overview

The Air MD has now morphed into the Quest Air. The original Air MD coil and shaft have been replaced by a Quest coil and shaft. The Air MD app has been rebranded and slightly updated, although it is clearly the same app as before, which never worked very well and still doesn’t—but we’ll come to that in a moment.

There’s a reason why no other company has attempted what XP achieved with its cableless machines: it’s difficult to get right. XP is undoubtedly the master of this technology and clearly realized early on that using a mobile phone as the controller wasn’t the best idea. It simply doesn’t work very well. But Quest seems to think they can make it work, and thus the Quest Air is now available for purchase. We couldn’t obtain one from the company, but a member of our Facebook group, David Wood, kindly loaned us his Quest Air for review.

As mentioned, the Quest Air has changed physically from the original Air MD, but underneath, it is essentially the same product.

Quest Air Specifications

WORKING METHOD: VLF Single frequency 7.5kHz
AUDIO OUTPUT: 16Levels Volume By Smartphone
SMARTPHONES COMPATIBILITY: Built-in V4.0 Bluetooth Module
PROTECTION: Entire Unit IP68, Waterproof to 1M
TELESCOPIC ROD: Fast Release Cam-lock 2 Sections Straight Rods Extendable from 80CM to 130CM
HEADPHONES: Wired headphones connect to your smartphone.
WIRELESS AUDIO: Optional Bluetooth WIREFREE VIBE/PRO HE
DESIGN: Sleek, Flat-folding Design
ARMREST: Position Adjustable Flexible Armrest Cup with Strap
HANDLE: Position Adjustable, Grenade Textured Surface
BATTERY : Built-in 750mAh Li-Po Battery for 10Hrs Operating
RECHARGE PORT: Durable and Corrosion-Resist Magnetic USB System
DETECTION COIL:9“ TurboD Performance Waterproof Coil
METAL ID: 99 Metal I.D. Level for Target Identification
GROUND BALANCE: Automatic(pump) or manually (selecting)
PROGRAMS : Discrimination/All Metal Programs
GAUGE: Depth Reader,Metal ID Indication, Battery Status.etc
SETUPS: Recovery Speed , Threshold, Tones, Iron Audio
WEIGHT: Lower to 2.5LB
OPERATION TEMP RANGE: 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C)
NON-OPERATION TEMP: -4° to 113° F (-20° to 45° C)

The above was taken from the Quest website, but as is often the case with Quest, some details are inaccurate. For example, the charging port is not magnetic; it is USB-C and is located at the top of the lower shaft, covered by a screw-on cap. There’s also no charge indicator light, so you’re left guessing about battery levels until you connect to the app. Additionally, there’s no iron volume control, as stated, and the target ID ranges from -90 to +90, not to 99 as indicated.

Settings include:

Sensitivity 1 to 50
Discrimination -90 to 90
Tones: Simple 1T, Simple 2T, Simple 3T, Simple 4T, Fast 1T, Fast 2T and Fast Multi.
Recovery speed goes from 1 to 10.
Threshold tone goes from 0 to 10.
There is also a Hot Rocks setting which goes from 0 to 10.
Ground balance can be auto or manually set between 0 and 99.

The App

Here lies one of the Quest Air’s biggest issues: the app’s connection to the coil can be hit or miss. It sometimes took me over 15 attempts to connect; other times, the coil connected immediately. Ideally, it should connect the first time, every time. This isn’t a prototype, and there’s no excuse for this inconsistency.

Once connected, the app is simple to use. The only two modes are AM (All Metal) and a default mode where you can set discrimination levels to block out iron, etc. There’s no notch feature, so discrimination is linear.

The App can be run in landscape or portrait modes as well as dark or light. To the left is the large target ID window with discrimination level above and depth guage to the right of it. Along the top right is the coil power level indicator, power on/off and an options button.

Options are:

Keep Screen On, which is obviously useful if you want to view the display as you would with a “normal” detector.
Screen Brightness mode which reduces brightness to a fixed level.
Work In The Background which just lets the phone vibrate when you get a target whilst the display is off.
Day/Night mode, which turns the display to dark or light versions. It is set to night mode in the image below.
Force Landscape Orientation.
Enable highlight LED: This is supposed to turn on the coil’s LED to help with targeting but there is no LED on the Quest coil. It is assumed that this is a hangover from the original Air MD which had an LED built into the coil.

Below the power level indicator, power button and options there is a target window which provides a visual guide to what might be under the coil. Iron, foil, ring and coin. One or more of these will flash depending on the target but it should be born in mind that these are very rough estimates and often bear no relation to what is actually under the coil.

Below that we have the settings button, the AM (all metal mode button), Pinpoint mode and GB (ground balance) button.

All metal simply disables any discrimination you have set and allows you to detect everything including iron. Pinpoint is a single press to hone in on the target and ground balance can be done either by pressing the button once and then pumping the coil or by pressing the button and using the plus/minus buttons to change the setting manually. Reducing the ground balance manually to zero can help with stability on the beach but there is a trade off with a loss of depth.

The layout is clear, and adjustments are easy to make. All settings seem to be saved when the app is disconnected, except for the tone setting, which resets if the app is fully closed. This should be addressed in a future update.

The app is compatible with iOS 12.0+ and Android 5.0+. This means you can use an older phone, perhaps one stored after an upgrade—a more appealing option than risking your latest £800 iPhone. You don’t have to mount your phone on the handle; you can keep it in your pocket if desired, but doing so limits the app display’s usefulness.

In Use

Inland

Inland, it’s fair to say the results were good, though not without issues. To achieve maximum depth, we had the machine set to All Metal mode with sensitivity maxed at 50 and recovery speed set to 1. With these settings and going very slowly, you may hit a small Roman bronze at 8 inches and a Vicky penny at 12 inches, depending on the ground. However, most people wouldn’t detect like this because it affects stability. More realistic settings would be sensitivity at 35-40, recovery speed at 2, and discrimination at 10 to ignore most small iron—unless, of course, you are artifact hunting, where All Metal mode is preferable. Overall, results were fair but not outstanding.

On The Beach

We found the Quest Air to be usable on the beach. Stability was generally good on dry sand, likely due to the low 7.5 kHz operating frequency, but it was less stable on wet sand. Lowering sensitivity to 25 helped; we dug a few coins despite some chatter, but it wasn’t ideal. Test targets were reliably detected to 8 inches on dry sand, including a large 9ct gold ring. On wet sand, while it hit targets, falsing was frequent, making it hard to distinguish real targets from false signals. Overall, for a single-frequency machine, it performed adequately.

In both inland and beach locations, there were issues as outlined below.

Conclusions

Quest’s advertising claims the Quest Air is “HIGHLY RESISTANT TO EMI.” This may have been true during their tests, but it wasn’t our experience. Both inland and on the beach, we encountered EMI levels that made the machine unusable in certain areas. To mitigate interference, sensitivity had to be lowered to 25, significantly affecting depth, with a large Vicky penny detectable at only 6 inches, occasionally blipping at 8 inches.

The Quest Air’s build quality is generally good, though it’s puzzling why they used the Q35’s shaft, which limits compactness when collapsed. They should have opted for the more compact shaft from the Quest X10 IDmaxX.

It’s hard to recommend the Quest Air beyond its novelty factor. Due to the shaft only collapsing to 80cm it is not as portable as it could be and as a cableless machine, it falls short. The Quest X10 IDmaxX is cheaper, more powerful, more portable, and doesn’t require a phone as the control box, thus avoiding flaky app issues.

Quest has cheaper, better alternatives, and there are also good options from other makers like Nokta and Minelab.

The Quest Air may aspire to offer the XP experience at a lower price, but in the world of cableless metal detectors, XP clearly has nothing to worry about.