Threatening to become a game changer in the Gold Prospecting world, Nokta Detectors has registered their new Pulse Induction Metal Detector design on IP Australia, which appears to be called 'MAGNETAR' (def: (noun) A type of neutron star that has a very intense magnetic field).
With some enormous claims made by Nokta's Vice President of Sales, Dilek Gonulay, it’s easy to imagine that Nokta Detectors will soon be shaking up the Gold Prospecting detector market just as they have done with the coin, relic and beach metal detector scene.
This is all big news as the Magnetar will be Nokta's first Pulse Induction machine, after 20+ incredibly strong years of VLF and SMF Metal Detector production. With a team of approximately 50 engineers at Nokta HQ, we're excited to see what the future holds for Nokta and detector users!
In this blog we’ll be compiling everything we know about the Nokta Pulse Induction Detector - known as Magnetar - in one place and updating as new information is revealed about the new PI detector.
Two Versions of the Nokta’s New Pulse Induction?
Nokta are in fact, working on two Pulse induction metal detectors! One of them is a Gold prospecting focused machine while the other will be more tailored to Relic Hunting. We are not yet sure if both of them will be called Magnetar or if only the Gold Prospecting PI will be called that.
Dilek has also stated in a post on Detector Prospector forum that “The gold version of the PI will come out first”. The images throughout this blog were recently registered on the IP Australia website as seen here and are not necessarily 100% indicative of the final design.
Performance and Price of the Nokta Magnetar PI?
Although the Nokta Magnetar PI has not yet been released we can still make some fairly strong assumptions about its intended price point and performance based on comments made by Dilek Gonulay who stated, “Based on performance, our benchmark competitor models are the most expensive models”.
This is to say that the Nokta’s new Pulse Induction is intended to compete (performance-wise) with the most expensive gold prospecting metal detectors on the market, the GPZ 7000 and the GPX 6000.
To quote recent marketing material above, it simply states “small & larger nuggets” implying that the new Pulse Induction is not strongly weighted to only one size of gold nugget, but rather it is intended to perform well on a variety of gold nugget sizes.
In terms of price, we know that Nokta’s pricing model is typically much more competitive than other manufacturers because all of their manufacturing is done in house and unlike other companies, they do not have pressure from shareholders to maximise profit margins. To set expectations though, Dilek said “Please note that our device can't be compared to some of the lower priced models in this thread”, meaning it’s not going to be the cheapest PI detector out there.
To summarise, it’s safe to say the performance benchmark is set to that of the GPX-6000 & GPZ-7000, while we can also assume that the pricing of Noktas PI will be less than either model but not as cheap as the least expensive PI detectors on the market.
Nokta Magnetar Weight and Waterproofing?
Being able to withstand a rainshower or a washdown is a valuable feature for any metal detector, yet it is a rare feature on gold prospecting PI detectors with only two currently in production. The Nokta Magnetar will infact be “fully submersible” according to Dilek, yet the claimed weight of 2.1kg (4.6lb) puts it at the exact same weight as a GPX 6000, which is considered a very low weight PI detector.
Typically waterproof detectors are heavier than their non-waterproof counterparts, so it will be very impressive to have the best of both worlds in one detector.
Dilek also stated that Nokta’s new PI detector will have “the best balance in the industry”, a critical feature in a gold prospecting metal detector where fatigue becomes a huge factor when swinging these machines for hours on end.
Active Magnetic Sensor Technology?
The new IP registration briefly alludes to a new feature/technology Nokta are calling “Active Magnetic Sensor Technology”. At this point in time we can only speculate about what this means.
Currently, the strongest theory is that it will be able to distinguish magnetic metals (commonly iron) from non-magnetic metals (like gold). This is a feature previously found on a few older Pulse Induction detectors like the GPX-5000 but required the use of a DD coil to take advantage of. Currently, though, no newer PI detectors have this capability.
What is included with the Nokta Magnetar?
Dilek has confirmed that the new Nokta Magnetar PI will come with two coils. It is not uncommon for PI detectors to come with a Mono and a DD coil to cover a variety of conditions you can come across in the gold fields like, Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) and extreme mineralisation.
Dilek also mentions that the Magnetar PI will include a bungee and a storage backpack which will double as a harness to further support the weight of the metal detector during long sessions of gold detecting.
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