Introducing the Nokta Fors Core Product review Supplied by Nokta metal detectors " Another top performing metal detector from Nokta " Remember to mention Gary's detecting with all enquiries

Eastern European manufacturers are really starting to become noticed in this country and for good reason Here is my Nokta Fors Core review. By Nick (Maxi 21)

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from what I had heard Nokta metal detectors offer value for money machines which are set up for European conditions. So I was looking forward to testing Nokta’s latest offering the Fors CoRe (which stands for CO-ins & RE-lics). It operates at 15 Khz and has four pre-set programmes plus some unusual features such as a pinpoint LED light from the handle, and the ability to turn on a vibration as well as the normal audio alert to signals, for the hard of hearing.

The option I was testing was the full ‘Pro-Package’ and it certainly was a full package! The carrying case which slides out of the cardboard packaging, looks stylish with details such as an easy grip handle and Nokta’s logo embroidered on the side.


Menu names and terminology

The main compartment of the case contains the body and 2 shafts of the detector, plus a number of accessories (listed below) including usefully rechargeable batteries and a charger for mains or the car. The side zip of the case carries the three coils that come with the Pro-Package the standard 11”x7” DD, the larger 15.5”x13” DD and the tiny 5” coil.

Contents of Pro- Pack

The manual was clear, well written and putting the detector together was easy enough and once connected it felt solid in its construction. Impressions so far are all very positive; it looks and feels like a quality detector! The first thing you notice are the two displays, the main screen is on the body of the system box, which for me being right handed was facing towards my body. The second display is mounted on the top of the ‘flight stick’ style control and shows the target ID numbers when detecting, or the ground balance value when manually ground balancing, or when pinpointing the estimated depth of the target.

Programes

The Fors has four pre-set programmes referred to as GEN, DI2, DI3 & COG. All are accessed from the main menu and are very easy to move between using the up/down switches and then moving within the programes to alter menu options using the + & - buttons.

GEN is the ‘all metal’ mode and there is no audio variation on signals, I didn’t use this setting, but Nokta claim it’s the deepest searching of all available programs.

COG is the COnductive Ground program for wet sand and again in the time I had with the machine I didn’t have access to a beach so didn’t run that program.

The two discrimination programs are DI2 (2 tone) & DI3 (3 tone), I tried the DI2 initially but found it very sensitive and didn’t seem to lessen when I dropped it from the pre-set 50 sensitivity down to 30 and lower, so I switched to the 3 tone DI3 and that seemed far more stable straight away without the need to alter sensitivity.  I’m not the most technical of people and rather than try to alter settings in DI2 to solve the background chatter, I took the easy route and stuck to the DI3 mode!

Ground balancing is easy via a button on the control stick and pumping the detector until an audio beep, there is also the option to auto ground balance if you are on an area where ground values are likely to change .

After some air testing at home, to understand the audio responses I would expect to hear out in the field, on a variety of coins, a gold ring and iron, I was ready to get out detecting; see table below for air testing results, which I did out of interest on both the standard and also the large coil. The distances where measured when good two way target signals came through.

In operation I found the audio sounds easy to distinguish and so apart from the initial set-up of the machine, I didn’t need to see the large display on the side of the main control box, which was lucky as it would be very hard to read whilst detecting! The control stick LCD readout which is right in front of you when you are using the FORS was useful to see the stability of the target numbers, on good two way signals.
 The button at the top is the ground balancing button. Underneath the control stick in the ‘trigger’ position is the pinpoint switch, which when used will change the display to the estimated depth of the target. It reverts back to the target numbers once released.

I was really pleased with the target separation on the Fors it seemed to pick up the small targets well on the trashy site I tested it on, giving good solid two way signals under the coil and between the iron. In fact a couple of times I had trouble locating the item with my hand held pin pointer because the target was so small, one of which was a small coin weight which I posted on the website forum.

Using the standard coil the detector was well balanced and although it may look heavy overall to some because of the size of the control unit, it wasn’t for me and I didn’t have any arm or shoulder fatigue after a couple of hours use. The large coil did alter the dynamics of the balance slightly, but not much and I had no problem swinging the large coil. There is a Velcro arm strap which is supplied, which I didn’t use, but you would probably want to if swinging the large coil all day.

The small 5 coil operated well on a particularly contaminated section enabling me to pull some non-ferrous targets out from amongst the iron.
The pinpoint feature worked very well and its switch is also conveniently on the main control ‘stick/ handle’ – the one thing I did find that took a while to get to use to, was the siren wail if you were on top of surface target, it’s useful but just a bit of a shock to the ears! With only 4 AA batteries to power this machine I thought that it would go through them in no time, but after a three hour session on top of a hour or so of testing time, I was pleased that the read out was still showing full power bars for the batteries.

Overall I was impressed with the Fors, it could pick out small targets between the iron on a contaminated site to some depth and when it found them it ‘locked’ on well with a good diggable signal. I’m sure with more time and on different permissions I would be able to fine tune the programmes to my preferences and I would be pretty confident it could really perform well. So if you haven’t looked to the new range of detectors coming from the East – check out the Fors and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.