Ok, so you're researching, watching youtube videos and reading online reviews trying to convince yourself that the cheaper Bounty Hunter Land Ranger Pro is the next best thing to the Garrett AT Pro / AT Max. I get it, you want to save some cash and still have a capable detector. Take it from someone who's owned all three of the detectors I just mentioned, the Land Ranger Pro packs a lot of features for the price, but it will never truly compete with Garrett's AT Pro or especially the AT Max. Having said that, I believe the LRP's ground balancing puts it ahead of the game if you're comparing it to the other Garrett's like the ACE series, or any other sub $500 detector out there. Having said that, I believe the Garrett AT Pro should be considered the baseline for what a good detector is. More in depth review: Performance / Sensitivity: As far as performance goes, the LRP is a solid performer and can detect coins to 7"-8" inches in my mineralized East Texas soil. The ground balance does good, but doesn’t isn't as good as ground balancing of the Garrett AT Pro / Max. The LRP could probably detect deeper than what I’ve experienced, but turning the sensitivity above 8 causes the detector to give a LOT of false readings in my area. After chasing phantom tones with the LRP and digging enough dirt up to bury a car and finding nothing, I stopped running the sensitivity over 6 or 8, otherwise it’s just plain annoying. The AT Pro and Max can be a bit chatty when sensitivity is turned all the way up, but they're usually detecting something, not just going crazy over mineralized soil or big tree roots. Yes, my LRP loves tree roots. As much as detectorists hate them, like most detectors, the LRP enjoy chirping on pull tabs and bottle caps. These sound like the coins and rings you’ve been dreaming about digging up, but turn out to be trash when dug up. The Garrett AT Pro gives off promising tones on pull tabs too, but the iron disc on the AT Pro / Max grunts on bottle caps, so it's very easy to know when when you're over a bottle cap vs coin, whereas with the LRP, you'll be digging a LOT of caps. Now if you’re one of those guys who digs every signal no matter what, then don’t worry about what I just said (and you probably don’t use a Bounty hunter anyway). Iron disc: In light-iron trash like a nail here and there, the LRP’s iron disc does fairly good at discriminating, but in medium to heavy iron trash the LRP sounds like you’ve hit the jackpot due to the conductivity of all the iron. With no pro-tones, the LRP can be hard to tell if you’ve found a coin or just a few nails. How does the iron disc compare to the Garrett AT Pro / Max? Once again, Garrett’s iron disc grunts like a caveman and let’s you know there’s iron below no matter how conductive it is. I've been very impressed with Garrett's iron disc. To be fair, the iron disc on the AT Pro / Max stinks compared to the XP Deuc, but now we’re talking about a $1,500 detector. So what do I not like about the Bounty Hunter LRP? One of my biggest complaints about the LRP is the bubble buttons. This may sound small, but it's HUGE when you're actually in the field with the detector. The Precision Point (PP) button on the LRP simply is not reliable. This is a known issue, just Google it. Yes, there's mods you can do to fix it, like taking the unit apart and soldering a separate button for the PP, but Bounty Hunter should have this issue fixed by now. To summarize what the PP button issue is, the button (no matter how you push it) is intermittent which makes the Precision Point hard to use and almost worthless at times. There’s a lot more I could review and talk about, but most everything has been covered many times by other reviewers. To summarize, the Bounty Land Ranger Pro is probably the best, cheap detector out there, but it falls short in almost every area when compared to mid range detectors like the Garrett AT Pro. If this is your first detector, or you're upgrading from another Bounty Hunter, you're bound to be very impressed with the LRP. Keep this in mind, everything the Land Ranger Pro can do, the AT Pro can do better, and sometimes much better. Before you spend $280 on a Bounty Hunter, seriously consider saving up and spending $550 on a Garret AT Pro. You’ll be glad you did. So why 4 stars after a critical review? Because even with its quirks, the Bounty Hunter Land Ranger Pro does what it's advertised to do (minus the annoying PP button) at a price that won't break the bank.
