Some tidbits of Information from another CTX Tester...

[Don in South Jersey]

1. Battery pack. Rechargeable Lithium, LIPO, or Alkaline/NiHm? You will not be disappointed with the battery pack.... but it's not LIPO, or NiHm

2. The hint about looking at the meter on the screen shot machine, with the orange line; that looks similar to the Polar Plot feature of a Whites V3i on signal analysis.....would the CTX-3030 feature be similar to that....or something totally new? Better than anything I've seen before. This is one of the best features, but I can't go into more detail

3. The eTrac has a huge following in the United States for silver coin hunting. It is dubbed the "silver king" because of its ability to sniff out silver coins. It loves round things. But the problem with it for me....I am a relic hunter most of the time, and although the eTrac *could* find relics...it wasn't the best machine out there for such purposes. Many of the items we look for in relic hunting are a mix bag of low-mid conductive items, and of different sizes and odd ball shapes....stuff the eTrac just wasn't sensitive on. I've had it to give solid iron readings on 1 oz musket balls that were 6 to 8 inches in the ground. Versus the GPX machine that can hit the same size musket ball, at over 18 inches with a very strong signal. Just an observational question for those that have handled it.....is the CTX gonna be more suited for all types of hunting more so than the eTrac, which excelled primarily at coin hunting? One of the problems I had with the E-Trac was that for Relic hunting I needed to run the detector in conductivity sounds. This is great for the majority of target as they fall into the lower conductivity-scale. The problem occurs at the high end of the scale, where high conductive artifacts and copper coins have exactly the same high pitch as iron. So it becomes tempting to switch to ferrous sounds, but then all the lower conductive goodies (the majority of what I'm looking for) moves closer to the ferrous area.
One of the features in the CTX 3030 addresses this, mixing things up

 

[CDDZ]

I think the battery pack is going to be LiMn batteries, a much safer chemistry and capable of very high discharge rates.

 

[Critterhunter]

The amp draw of detectors is VERY low, so I doubt it would need batteries capable of high discharge rates unless there are some very strange things going on under the hood. For example, a small light weight lipo about 1/2 to maybe even 1/3rd the size of a pack of smokes (Lipos are popular in the electric RC plane crowd for these light weight/high capacity reasons) can handle amp discharge rates as high as 60 or 80 amps, depending on the C raiting of the pack. Lipos have become relatively cheap these days if you know where to look. Packs that used to go for $200 or $300 can now be had for as little as $15 from the right sources. No lighter battery technology that I'm aware of than lipos, due to both the internal makeup of the pack as well as the fact that they don't use a hard metal outter shell like most batteries do. Even most of the lithium ion packs I've come across have a metal casing, but I suspect there may be some that don't.

So a lipo would have the advantage of a lighter weight and high capacity in terms of run time while still being much smaller/lighter than conventional rechargeables such as nimhs, nicads, or many other new battery types...But the high discharge (amp rate) of a lipo isn't exactly needed for a detector...But it would still be a great option. That's why I run one in my machine...Mainly less weight than other battery types, along with being able to charge them in one hour and have it be perfectly healthy and fine for the pack where as one hour charge rates are pushing other battery technologies such as nimhs and could lead to shorter life for those. Another key plus about lipos is they hold their voltage very high until the very end of discharge, so that even a lower capacity lipo will trigger the low voltage alarm on a detector at a later point then a nimh with a higher capacity...As the nimhs will constantly drop their voltage as they discharge in a much faster pace than a lipo will.

Either way, yes...I hope they are using some form of new battery technology available these days that has various advantages over nimhs or nicads. If anything just to save as much weight as possible, let alone faster charging times or longer battery life and of course longer run times in the field. These various battery technologies are getting pretty amazing in the ability to have a much higher capacity (run time) than a nimh or nicad pack that is much bigger and much heavier compared to them.

The only nasty thing about lipos is they have a bad habit of blowing up and catching on fire if they are shorted for even a few minor seconds, or if they are punctured in some way. They also require special chargers that among other things balance each individual cell in the pack as they will also go nuclear if over charged by a small amount. The first chargers on the market didn't have this balancing ability, and as a result there were fires caused when the cells became so out of balance with each other than one was overcharged. Lipos also can't be drained to less than 3V per cell or it will more than likely ruin the pack, so a device has to insure proper voltage monitoring to sound the low battery alarm before the pack reaches this point. Luckily the machine I adapted to run on a lipo will sound it's LVC (low voltage cutoff) at around 10.2 to 10.5V.

 

[CDDZ]

Which is Why I do not think that Minelab would use LiPo to power this unit. Not a lot of detectorist know a lot about the different battery technologies and how to handle them. LiMn are one of the safest chemistries to use these days. LiFePo4 is another chemistry that could be used.

 

[GpSnoopy]

Probably Li-ON, it's the prevailing battery technology for almost 2/3rd's of all rechargeable consumer devices today, including laptops, smartphones, tablets, cameras, etc.

 

[UncleTom]

I would like the A123's

 

[brocifus]

I use the ion lithium in my E trac its a proto type so not on market . It works perfect