Gold Stinger X5

The Gold Stinger X5 is a conventional swing-coil detector, and that is exactly where its value sits: the package includes two genuine elliptical search coils — a large 36 × 41 cm coil for ground coverage and depth on bigger targets, and a 26 × 32 cm coil for tighter, more mineralised or trash-heavy ground. Three search modes cover the practical work: All Metal for maximum sensitivity with an on-screen depth estimate in centimetres, Discrimination for sorting targets into four colour-coded classes (gold, other non-ferrous metal, ferrous metal and voids), and Pinpoint for narrowing a signal down before you dig. Ground balance is automatic, with mineral-rejection filtering aimed at the hot, wet and lateritic soils common across the Gulf and the Sahel. The control unit uses a backlit colour TFT screen with a graphical interface in eight languages, Arabic and French among them, and runs from a rechargeable 7.4 V lithium pack — the supplier spec sheet quotes about five hours of active detecting and a roughly four-hour charge. The search coil is waterproof for damp ground, wadi beds and shallow water, while the control unit is not and should be kept dry. On depth we prefer to be straight with you: Stinger Detectors quotes a headline figure of up to 5 metres, but that is a manufacturer claim and we do not present it as a working specification. What a coil of this size realistically delivers is around 30 cm on a coin-sized piece of gold and up to roughly 1.2 m on a large buried mass, depending on soil. Note also that the manufacturer has since replaced the X5 with the Gold Stinger X6 on its own website; we supply the X5 with a three-year supplier-stated warranty.