I'll have to admit I'm kind of a Minelab Fan.

Audio is a big factor in the detector I use, some brands I just can't get used to. Really never liked the audio on any of the Nokta/Makro models I've owned, but learned to live with it. To me the Garrett At series and the Dues/ORX have the best audio. Whites and Fisher/Teknetics are OK too although I prefer Fisher/Teknetics over Whites (I used mainly Whites for the first 15 years). Tesoro was good too, but they're out of business, enough said about them.

IMO Minelab is one of those that is different, you have to get used to them before you can really excel with their machines (I guess you can say that about any machine). The Equinox took me a while to get used to, especially running 50 tones, even though I've been a long time Explorer/eTrac user. Wanted to sell the Equinox many times and kept going back to the Dues. But then one day it just clicked and now I prefer the Equinox over most of the machines I own (site dependent of course). The Vanquish is a lot like the Equinox, way simpler to operate but also not as good as the Equinox in trash or the eTrac for that matter.