The reason why it's known as a great beach machine is because so many other machines can't even come close in terms of depth in bad ground. Also, because it's a water machine and a land unit. Chest mount the box, throw a plastic bag around it for added safety, and by all rights it's now a water unit. It also doesn't come with a meter stock because most beach hunters don't use one. On the other hand, throw a meter on it and you now have what can be argued to be the deepest land unit on the market for finding old coins deep at hunted out parks. In addition, it's Iron Mask On ability will find coins in trash that aren't even shallow yet have been missed by all other machines over the years, including even machines with a "fast" recovery speed. Put it this way, if you are looking for the best land unit for old coins one can argue the GT, Etrac, or Explorer. Based on the user, settings, coil, and ground conditions any one of those three will beat the others at a given site. There isn't anything on the market that even comes close to them. From what I hear the F75LTD and T2LTD are the closest, but when the ground minerals get rough I hear they can't keep up. Just MHO.
I've owned Explorers off and on over the years and they were never as deep as my GT in my ground. I've dug coins at spots I gridded hard with the Explorer yet the GT found ones it missed. I'm talking in small areas around a specific tree or something where I know I covered every square inch from several directions with my Explorers and various settings, yet the GT got some easy hits on old coins for me. You can rack that up to many variables including ground moisture and settings but it still doesn't explain why I never dug coins as deep as I have on my GT. It could even come down to the more solid ID lock of the GT versus the Explorer. I use a jumpy ID as the main indicator of a junk target in high trash areas. If the GT locks onto 180 with good audio you can just about bet it's a coin.