Rutus Atrex – Is This A Deal Breaker?
Rutus is a small family business based in Poland. They have been producing high-quality metal detectors for many years and yet it is probably fair to say that they are a niche product. Rutus is not a name that immediately springs to mind when looking for a detector. Especially if you are new to the hobby.
The Rutus Atrex has pretty much flown under the radar since its release late last year. There was no big show launch, no real fanfare at all and if you were not already a Rutus user you may still not have known anything about it. This is a real shame because in many respects the Atrex is a nice machine. Very well built and with some unique features, some of which are listed below.
Features:
- 72 Frequencies 4.4 kHz to 18.6 kHz
- 9 modes including Beach, Coins, Ultra-Deep, Fast
- Water reject.
- Multi Filter
- 8 Recovery speed settings
- Dual Mode – Motion and Non-Motion
- WiFi Connectivity
- Colour TFT Display
- Choice of software. Multi, Basic or Advanced.
That all looks great, on paper. But there are issues that need to be addressed.
In particular, the simultaneous multi-frequency mode does not work as well as it could and there are some iron masking problems when using this mode.
A more pressing problem that perhaps cannot be remedied by a software update is the screen brightness. Indoors the screen looks fine but once you take the machine outside in any normal sunlight situation it can become unreadable.
As most detectorists spend a large proportion of their time searching in daylight, the screen brightness issue is definitely of concern.
Can these issues be overcome? Who knows? We know the machine is software updatable so the problems with the SMF mode could possibly be resolved that way. As for the screen brightness issue, time will tell.
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