Garrett and Fisher make well-priced mid-range metal detectors that anyone starting out will find easy to use. The ACE 400 and the F44 are both good buys with the F44 potentially coming out on top with its manual ground balancing capability. Let’s take a closer look.
What's Better? Garrett ACE 400 vs Fisher F44
Short On Time?
Tell me which is best now →A Detailed Comparison of The Garrett ACE 400 vs The Fisher F44
Frequency
The Fisher F44 operates on a 7.69 kHz frequency whereas the Garrett ACE 400 has a higher adjustable 10 kHz frequency.
The ACE is more likely to pick up smaller targets but will have slightly less ground penetration.
Display
The ACE 400’s display has three buttons for power, mode and sensitivity with a large numeric target ID scale from 0-99 and a target depth indicator.
The F44 also has a numeric ID display and target depth indicator along with power, menu, mode and pinpointing.
The F44 pips the ACE 400 with its backlit screen which is helpful in bright sunshine.
Ground Balance
Here’s the big difference.
The F44 has manual ground balancing whereas the ACE 400 has a factory pre-set.
Manually adjusting ground balance helps even out tones in a mineralized area. The F44 will make detecting easier on mineralized grounds.
Target Identification and Discrimination
The Fisher F44 has jewelry, coins, artifacts, custom and all-metal modes with twenty adjustable sensitivity levels.
Garrett’s ACE 400 has coins, jewelry, relics, custom, and zero discrimination modes with notch discrimination and eight sensitivity adjustments.
Both machines have automatic pinpointing.
Iron Audio
The ACE 400 and the F44 both have iron audio.
Waterproofing
Both machines have waterproof search coils up to a few inches but neither control box is waterproof. Fisher states the F44 is ‘weatherproof’ so it may withstand the rain but be careful not to drop either machine in water.
Audio
There’s not much difference here.
The F44 has Fisher’s four-tone audio so you can detect without looking at the display. The tones are bass, low, medium and high whereas the ACE 400 has three-audio tone ID levels.
Coil
The F44 has Fisher’s 11” coil and the ACE 400 has Garrett’s 8” x 11” DD PROformance coil.
Fisher’s will cover more ground in one sweep but there’s little difference in performance.
Length and Weight
The F44 weighs 2.3 lbs and adjusts from 40” and the ACE 400 extends from 40” to 53” It weighs 2.9lbs.
Again, there’s little difference.
Cost
The cost of an ACE 400 and a Fisher F44 is about the same
The Best Choice
The ACE 400 and the F44 are very similar machines but the Fisher F44 has manual ground balancing so it is the better choice even though the Garrett ACE 400 has an extra search mode and adjustable frequency.
When both machines are the same price it makes sense to get the one with the most usual feature – and it can’t be denied that manual ground balancing can really make the difference.