Let’s take a closer look at the Nokta Score & Double Score 2
Nokta’s New SCORE Series Metal Detector was released around December 16, 2023, and was easy to find in stock at most dealers. Nokta had done a decent job making them available to the US market without long waiting lists. Most of the accessories are also now available to date.
We decided to give this new simplified Mult-Frequency metal detector a go on the beach where very conductive salt can present noise and false signals. The SCORE will lock into Multi Frequency mode while in the beach program, allowing for maximum performance in these conditions. Other programs like park or field have the option of changing out of multi-frequency mode to a single frequency of 15kHz. Some extreme conditions with electrical magnetic interference (EMI) can sometimes cause chattering while running multi-frequency, so it was nice to see the SCORE does have this option for coin or relic detecting if so desired.
The backlit screen and buttons with white icons are a very nice upgrade compared to SCORE’S big brother The Legend. Weight will not be much of an issue with the included SC30 (12 x 9) coil, we found it to be quite well balanced and easy to swing. Overall great coverage too for beach conditions with a coil of this size. The price does reflect the fact that headphones are not included with the standard packages. We were using the Nokta Bluetooth headphones while testing it and ran it for a bit without headphones to see if hearing it along the shoreline would be a problem. The external speaker was plenty loud enough to hear good solid tones with relatively low wind conditions, but we do recommend using headphones while beach hunting to help better hear those signals.
The SCORE 2 is fully waterproof up to a maximum depth of 16 feet deep, we tested it out in the breakwaters under approximately 3 feet of seawater with no problems to report. There was a minimal amount of chatter at the tide’s edge in the water but nothing that would really justify an issue. We were running the Double SCORE 2 and adjusted the recovery speed up to 3 (default 2) and it smoothed right out. Please note, that when you increase the recovery speed, you will lose some depth. The Double SCORE 2 has recovery speed settings where the lower priced SCORE does not. It is worth mentioning here that most experienced beach hunters will always run their metal detectors slightly chatty keeping the sensitivity as high as possible without making it unstable. They will also lower their recovery speed just a bit to gain some depth while we know targets along the low tide line will normally be on the deep side with moving sand and water working them down. All other settings were left at their defaults because we were mainly testing the SCORE as a turn on and go metal detector where people don’t want the need to play with settings possibly causing adverse effects.
Overall, the SCORE performed like a true beach metal detector without any major issues to report on that would keep us from recommending it here in the shop to customers getting started, or even folks that just want a well performing turn on and go simultaneous multi-frequency (SMF) metal detector that is easy to learn and use while having fun! We did not spend any time testing it out on heavy iron infested sites where all detectors can struggle a bit, but we did give it a run through our test garden. Depth, target separation, and stability were all very respectfully acceptable for a metal detector not being tweaked with advanced settings. The SCORE Series does include a factory 3-year limited warranty and is an updateable metal detector for when or if the need for a software update has been released by Nokta.
SCORE & Double SCORE 2 Manual: Download
Comparison Chart: Download
If you have any questions or would like to add something we may have not touched on, please feel free to comment below, or contact LMS Metal Detecting.
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