Minelab Safari Review

The quiet member of the FBS family

The Safari is one of those machines that never quite got the credit it deserved, and owners will tell you that themselves. It runs Minelab’s FBS, or Full Band Spectrum, multi-frequency system, the same core technology as the old Explorer and the much-loved E-Trac. The difference is that Minelab took that deep engine and wrapped it in a far simpler machine. Where the E-Trac buries you in menus and its own Ferrous/Conductive smartscreen, the Safari uses a normal low-to-high conductivity scale and a lot less setup. Owners often describe it, fairly, as a professional detector that a beginner can actually get on with.

What owners genuinely rave about

The recurring theme across long-term reviews is depth and stability. FBS transmits multiple frequencies at once, and in real terms that means the Safari reads mineralised UK ground well and gives you believable, rock-steady target IDs on high conductors. That matters because a stable ID on a silver coin at depth is what gives you the confidence to dig a marginal deep signal instead of walking off it. One owner recounted pulling a Victorian silver threepence from around ten to twelve inches within hours of buying theirs, then adding a pile of hammered and Roman coins from a field that had already been worked by other machines. That is FBS depth doing what it does best.

The other quiet win is coils. Because the Safari shares its coil mount with the Explorer and E-Trac, there is a healthy second-hand coil market, so fitting a bigger coil for depth or a small one for trashy ground is easy and cheap.

The gripes that come up again and again

Two complaints dominate the threads. First, the balance. The Safari is nose-heavy, and over a long hunt owners generally report it becomes tiring on the wrist and arm. Second, and this is the big one, it drinks batteries, as above. Beyond those, it is the slowest of the three FBS machines for recovery speed. Recovery speed is simply how quickly a detector resets between two targets, and a slow machine smears two close signals into one. On clean pasture that barely matters, but drop the Safari onto an iron-carpeted site and it will struggle to pick a good target out from beside the rubbish. And like most of its era, the control box is not waterproof, so this is a dry-land and shallow-edge machine only.

If I were buying one, and who it suits

These only exist used now, and that is where the value is. If I were checking one over, I would open the battery compartment and look hard at the contacts for corrosion, since battery-hungry machines tend to get worked hard there. I would confirm the screen is clean and clear, and swing it over a few known targets to check the IDs settle rather than jump about.

Who is it for? A patient coin and relic hunter working UK pasture or plough who wants proper FBS depth without the E-Trac’s learning curve. Who would I steer away? Anyone who needs to detect in water, anyone hunting dense iron who needs fast recovery, and anyone who wants a light machine for all-day comfort. If you want the same FBS depth with more control and better iron handling, the community consensus is to stretch to a used E-Trac instead, which adds the Iron Mask feature the Safari lacks.

If you have swung a Safari for years and see it differently, I would genuinely like to hear it. Drop me a line through the contact page and I will fold it in.