Hit the local forested park first thing yesterday morning and again early afternoon to give the Apex a true in the field run. It was overcast with no breeze. If I could have charged the mosquitoes for all the blood withdraws made, I could have covered the cost of the Apex. I opted to run the jewelry mode with sensitivity 2 bars down from full on the first trip. 2nd trip was zero mode sensitivity 1 bar below full and Iron volume at 2. Overall the Apex is fun to use. Its light and well balanced, a joy to swing. The arthritis in my right hand showed no signs of complaining after the hunts. That hand always aches after using my XLT and MXT. Something about the ergonomics of the grip. While in the jewelry mode I put the Iron Audio mode to test on many targets that gave a good one way response but iffy or no response swinging the other direction. I dug the targets to see how accurate the Iron Audio was and I will say 100% of the time it was iron of some kind. I really like that feature. The Apex is more talkative than my other detectors. I was getting quite a few one way high tone blips. The only issues I had was with the pairing of the MS3 headphones. During the morning hunt I lost connection once for a few seconds, then the detector/headphones paired back up. The 2nd trip they unpaired 8-10 times in a 2 hour period. It would take anywhere from 5-30 seconds for everything to reconnect. At one point I shut everything off and restarted fresh thinking maybe things didn't pair up like they should when I first started out. I also noticed during this time that while pinpointing a target I would loose pinpoint audio momentarily as I would bring the coil towards me. It would quickly cut out then back in. Today I took the Apex to the backyard to see if I could replicate the issues with the thought I would try wired phones if it was still cutting out in pinpoint mode. Everything was fine so I will have to keep an eye on that. I'm right handed and yesterday I had the headphones volume control on the right side of my head, on/off switch on the left. Not sure if that was creating too much distance between the detector and the headphones mode on/off switch thus causing the unpairing issue.
Working around the trees and the close cropped brush made me wishing there was a smaller coil on the Apex. I also hit some areas that were trashy. I was able to pull a few coins out but trying to separate the targets and pinpoint them was somewhat of a challenge. This morning I took the Tesoro back and investigated some questionable targets I had marked yesterday. The Tesoro also gave iffy responses and yielded trash when recovered. Yesterdays 2 outings didn't yield a bounty of coins but I did manage 2 dimes, 2 nickles and 8 pennies under and around the trees.
So far my overall opinion of the Apex is good. As of now it will not be replacing my Whites. I'm excited to get it on the beach in a couple of weeks. I'm also looking forward to wet soil so I can take it to some open grassy areas.
Ive attached some pictures of the area I hunted. Im not sure what the concrete pads where used for. I'm thinking maybe pads for trailers or small structures. There's a lot of old nails around then.

Minelab Equinox 800, Nokta Fors Core, Garrett Carrot