Simple, no nonsense case ● Arm-rest/detector arm stand has been designed for fingertip control and perfect balance ● Lightweight control box ensures CS990XD is especially easy on the arm ● Quick and secure length adjustment with locking mechanism enables the detector to be tailored to any user ● Waterproof lightweight polo search head is fitted for deep probing and superb stability

REVIEW

The first thing which struck me when I picked up the CS1MX was its incredibly light weight. That's a real bonus for any enthusiast who spends a lot of hours out in the field. There's a feeling of quality in the construction of the CS1MX. The balance is excellent

My philosophy for trying out a detector is to just take it out for the entire day and work with it just as if it were my regular detector. I've been detecting for 25 years and my usual detector has a lot more specification than the CS1MX so I was a little anxious about how the day would turn out

There's a neat slot-in compartment for the battery. Powering up the detector is simply a matter of switching on and turning up the sensitivity. A quick test in air indicated detection range of around 30cms on an average coin which certainly puts the CS1MX into the 'professional class'. Setting out detecting on a section of ploughed and rolled farmland, it was possible to maintain a high sweep speed. The CS1MX is responsive and extremely light on the arm. I prefer to set the discrimination control as low as the site allows. Even zero discrimination is good when there's little rubbish about. That way you get maximum depth and it's easy to distinguish iron by its characteristic signal. I found that I could doublecheck 'iffy' signals by trying higher levels of discrimination. Whilst the CS1MX has nothing like the discrimination capability of the top machines, it is sufficient for the vast majority of UK farmland sites. There's no pin-point control on the CS1MX so to identify the exact target position you just reduce your sweep arc until the search-head is almost stationary. That's no handicap when the detector is as light and responsive as the CS1MX

The automatic feature of the CS1MX could cope quite well with changes in ground moisture, but a change to mineralised earth or patch of coke required sensitivity adjustment. I imagine that high levels of salinity on wet sand beaches would cause similar problems

And so my day's detecting progressed. I liked the CS1MX for its sheer simplicity of operation. The depth is superb. My final tally for the day was 12 non-ferrous targets, 3 of them valuable, retrieved from depths of 10 - 25 cms, and 1 large iron gate bolt found at 40cms (the CS1MX was trying to tell me it was rubbish, but it was me who thought it might be 'a hoard')

VERDICT

I really enjoyed the CS1MX. It is an excellent general purpose detector with some performance characteristics comparable with machines 3 times the price. In common with any hobby product, a professional will be able to get more performance out of the CS1MX than an amateur. The CS1MX puts professional performance levels within everyone's budget. The best value for money I've encountered in my 25 years of hobby experience