Its truly amazing that in this day and age, where a company has had more than one model to get it right..they still haven't. The complexity involved in something as simple as wanting to turn the volume up or down, has Fisher dumbfounded. Read the manual to understand what im talking about.
Anyway....
The audio from the F19 is very sharp/abrupt/tight, very fast recovery, almost to fast....blink and you'll miss it. Very good at holding a steady number for our coinage, even when placed on edge. Yet the response from one or our coins was no bigger in response than a small bit of foil or jewelry . Both emit a very narrow sound/response.
Maxing out the gain was met with only a small amount of chatter working in the backyard, mind you this yard like many in suburbia, is surrounded By sheds, power lines and houses right round. Lowering the gain is your only defense with this unit should your area of operation be littered with EMI. Unfortunately with the F19 if you encounter bad EMI...tuff titties. It has no freq off set adjustments or anything on board that you'd expect from a unit costing a tad over 1k to deal with such a common problem.
Signal acquisition is very precise, using a pretty rapid wiggle your able to single out close by metals and winding up the disc lets you weed out the evil ones reasonably well. Changing the iron audio is something im not all that fussed on being the owner operator of the v3i. If you use mixed mode audio you'll know what im talking about.
The F19 will hit old roofing nails that have the lead cap, it also hits the old nails that are gal coated with the lead cap.Yet they both respond better in one direction than the other, and given the wiggle, you can pick them most of the time....if their bent like a horse shoe...all bets are off. The F19 also signals loud and clear on most anything thats round with a hole in it....no matter the level of rust. if its round, its a ring to the F19. Yet take that rusted ring when its out, and present it to the coil on different angles and it will vanish like a fart in a fan factory. Unlucky i guess that i got a couple that were presented with the hole facing up. Im happy to dig such things as they could be relics.....and this is marketed as a relic detector....
It uses VCO audio in the AM mode...i hate that.
It also has VCO audio when using v-break.....i can deal with that.
Ergonomically in my opinion, its a pig, mostly due to the 10x5 coil being filled with resin by the solidness and feel of it.? This makes it very unbalanced when first picking it up, but it sits ok without the need for the arm band. But you will notice the weight of the coil. Yet the coil performance wise is tight in operation.
Sturdy enough to the feel, yet the toy like appearance causes eyebrow moments reminding you of how much it costs. The coil plug is an accident waiting to happen, it pokes out from the rear of the c/box just begging to be altered by whatever means able to adjust its position due to Murphy's law.
It also runs off a single 9v battery, while it does this ok......its the year 2015.
Not that its advertised with anything, but mine came with a carry bag, under-chin earhones, a nugget finding DVD, and something else from memory.? And i cried about the price till i got it a tad cheaper...whats wrong with that.???
Was this a review of the F19?...nope!...just an observation from a few quick tests and comparisons between it and the Fors gold and MXT.