Review: The Garrett Carrot Pro Pointer AT

As I was preparing for metal detecting season this year, I was watching a metal detecting video online where I heard reference to the new “Garrett Carrot.” Intrigued, I did a little research online and found out this was a reference to the Garrett Pro Pointer AT, nicknamed the Garrett Carrot for its bright orange color.

I am a happy owner of the regular Garrett Pro Pointer and was very curious if the Garret Carrot would be worth the upgrade, especially since it is slightly more expensive than the regular Pro Pointer.

I decided to purchase the Garrett Carrot, which came out in 2015, for the reasons listed below:

1. Waterproofing: As soon as I found out that the Garrett Carrot was waterproof down to 10-feet, I immediately decided to purchase it. Although you can waterproof the original Pro Pointer, that involves rubbing all sorts of sticky goop on it (as you can see here), which I really did not want to do. There was a nice shallow stream I was detecting in with my regular Pro Pointer (which is water resistant but not submergible) but I was not able to get into deeper water with it. The Garrett Carrot changes that.

2. Easier to find if lost: The bright orange color makes the Garrett Carrot very easy to find if you drop it by accident or set it down somewhere and forget it, unless you drop it in a pumpkin patch or a carrot farm. Even if you did that though, the Garrett Carrot automatically emits a distress signal 5-minutes after it is dropped. The regular Pro Pointer does not do this. After 5-minutes of warning chirps (that become more frequent over time), it shuts off to save batteries.

3. Six different settings: Another great feature is the ability to set the Garrett Carrot to vibration mode or audio mode. Each mode has settings of minimum, medium, and maximum sensitivity. The vibration mode is good if you are near people and do not want to make much noise, if you are under water, or if you are hearing impaired. The default setting is medium sensitivity with audio. I changed it to maximum sensitivity with audio so I do not miss the target. Some people may decide to set it to low sensitivity for highly mineralized ground environments but I would argue there is no need to do this if you just ground balance the pointer. Beau Ouimette shows how to do this in this great video. I tried it out and it works well. The Garrett Carrot has a quick-press Fast Return function that allows you to narrow the detection field of large objects. One reason why you really may want to switch to the low sensitivity mode is if you have an object in the ground close to a large metal structure (e.g., metal bench, play set) because now you can move away from the large metal structure, come in slow towards the target and only detect the target. If you had one standard setting as on the regular Pro Pointer, the signal from the large metal object will likely interfere with pinpointing the target.

4. Inch/Cm Markings: The Garrett Carrot has inch/cm markings which are lacking on the original Pro Pointer. This is not essential for the experienced detectorist but still a useful feature to have.

5. More sensitive to gold: Need I say more.

6. Old Features: All features of original Pro Pointer are retained.

Overall, I highly suggest purchasing the Garrett Carrot for all of the reasons stated above. To put it simply, the best pointer on the market just got better and this is not a paid endorsement. I have had it for several weeks now and really enjoy it. The only downside is that because there are multiple detection settings, you may accidentally press the on button too long, enter reset mode, and switch to another setting by accident. Once you use it for a day though and read the instruction manual, this likely will not happen and if it does it is very easy to fix.