zMCF MultiScanner™ i520 OneStep®

Excellent device! I have a few different types of studfinders and this one works the best. It is great that it finds the stud and shines a light on the center of it for easy marking. You may read many other peoples difficulties with stud finders and they usually blame the unit. They are a tool and not infallable but this one is about as good as they come. Some walls are unreadable with any stud finder; there seem to be ghost studs in some walls, and some construction (remodels) are hard to figure out. A magnetic nail finder can find a part of a stud with a nail in it but the nail may not be centered (a problem for mounting something heavy) or may have missed the stud completely and been plastered over, and one could be looking in a studless area, such as when a window or door hole has been covered improperly. I highly recommend this stud finder, and practicing with it. Tapping the wall can be very misleading and one can poke a lot of small holes (to patch and paint later) with nails before a stud is found. This is as close to x-ray eyes as one can find for studs. It is worth the cost even for the very occasional stud finding job. Update 5-2-10: Unless you are unfortunate enough to get a defective i520 (or have a low battery) it would be difficult to not use this successfully. I have had problems with my other stud finders but this one is consistantly right on and it is very simple to use. I did not have it with me recently so I used the "tapping technique", was SURE I found a stud, and had to patch a hole; missed totally. I brought the i520 with me later and it found the stud about 6 inches from the tap spot. I would toss my other stud finders but they do help sometimes. The i520 finds the studs very easily and consistantly. I highly recommend this device and to watch the included DVD if you have any problems.

I had a cheapie stud finder that was terribly unreliable. It never would repeatedly find the studs. So I ditched it and spent a few more dollars to get this unit. Okay, now we're talkin'... This unit works very well and even sports modes to find metal pipes and electrical wiring. I especially like the LED that comes on when it determines the center of the stud. Pop a pencil in the indentation to mark the spot, scan once more to confirm, and yup, it's the same place. This unit also indicates the edges of the studs, which is handy if you are mounting a shelf with fixed spacing for the mounts and you need to angle a screw to hit the stud. You know where you gotta be! Forget the under $30 stud finders. If you want one that really works and you can rely on the "findings", then get this one. My only gripe is the little felt "feet" on the bottom tend to get stuck on textured sheetrock walls and one of them has rolled up and come off. I stuck a new pad on (the ones you use to protect furniture) and we're back in business again.

This studfinder locates the edges and center of wood or metal studs up to 1 1/2-Inches (38 mm) deep. It shows when you are at the center or edge of a stud. My old studfinder would find the stud but it was always tricky to find the exact center. Sort of hit and miss. Not with this studfinder. I have been very happy with it for working around the house. It has not let me down yet. And it is very easy to use. Select the type of scan (below), put it against the wall and hold the button. As you move the scanner, it will find the center of the stud. There are four different types of scans that it will perform: STUD SCAN mode locates the edges and center of wood or metal studs in normal walls up to 3/4 inch (19 mm) deep. DEEPSCAN mode doubles the scanning depth for walls up to 1 1/2 inches (38 mm) deep, and enables scanning for joists in some ceilings and floors. METAL SCAN mode detects non-ferrous metal, such as copper pipes, up to 1 1/2 inches (38 mm) deep, and ferrous metal, such as rebar, up to 3 inches (76 mm) deep. AC SCAN mode finds and traces live, unshielded electrical wiring up to two inches deep. I would recommend this studfinder to anyone. It is more expensive than most that I have used but it has been so much better to have around the house. And I have no problem finding the center of the stud like I did before. Update: I still have issues finding the center of studs. Sometimes I need to go over a stud a couple times to find the stud. It is still way better than any other stud finder that I have used before.

I have heard a lot of negative things about stud finders in the past so I was a bit skeptical of this one. I tested it out in Home Depot first, and it worked (under ideal circumstances of course), so I decided to go on amazon.com and give it a try (amazon has a much lower price). One thing to be aware of is it does not come with the required 9 Volt battery, so don't expect to pull it out of the package and use it right away, unless you have 9 volt batteries lying around the house. It comes with an instruction DVD rather than a good instruction manual for some reason. I prefer to read things rather than taking the time to watch a dry video of how to use a product. You can also download a one page pdf of the limited written instructions from the zircon website. Of course if you are the type that learns best by watching, you might prefer the DVD over a more detailed user manual. While those are the negatives, there are plenty of positives. First of all, the product simply works. While the instructions provided are not that useful, the device is very user friendly, so it does not need the best instructions. You might need to review things if you are going to use more advanced features that require calibration such as the deep scan or the metal or wire scan, but for the most part you simply push the button and run it over the wall. I have a relatively new house, and the studs are not all that deep, so the normal mode works fine. It was able to accurately find studs in the wall, and helped me to find the joist in my ceiling when installing a ceiling fan. While I haven't needed the electrical scan mode, I did play around with it and was able to trace the electric lines going to my light switches without trouble. I looked at a few different models, but I thought the added features of the 520 were worth the extra cost. If you plan on hanging anything heavy on the wall and you need to find a stud, I would strongly recommend this scanner.

You may be wondering, why I should pay more for similar featured BOSCH or other major brandname product, when I can have one from Zircon for $40? Believe me, the "big ones", really have advantages over cheaper models. Some practical results from using Zircon i520: Metal rods behind the MDF board: Excellent accuracy in finding, good depth. Metal rebar in concrete wall: Good performance, AC detector feature definetly helps to distinguish rebar from wires. Wires in plaster wall: Not so good, often misses them, regardless are they hot or cold. If plaster coating is a bit thicker (in range of declared sensitivity), no detection at all. (It should be noted, that manual says, that performance in plaster or gypsum walls may be unsatisfactory) Wires in concrete wall: Excellent accuracy. Unfortunately, I don't have any studs behind the gypsum boards, so I can't test detection in that aspect. Overall, this unit performs ok, just having two VERY BIG disadvantages, besides the ones mentioned above: 1. LCD vertical angles are very limited, so when looking from bottom or top, it appears that it's always on, so for example, if you want to check wires above your head, you have to climb on ladder, otherwise, screen is unreadable. 2. Unit is very sensitive to rotation. If you tilt it slightly over it's axis during the movement, false detection will occur. Altrough this "feature" is mentioned in manual, it makes usage of detector not so pleasant. Will I continue to use this unit? - Yes. Will I reccomend it to a friend? - No.

I have tried various methods of finding studs to hang heavy items, e.g., Large Vanity Mirror Cabinet. The "hunt and peck" method leaves a lot of holes. The magnetic stud finders can find the stud nails all right, but I found out they also find copper metal hot water pipes and could not tell me the difference. Drilling into one of those hot water pipes by mistake was quite an experience I do not want to repeat. This Zircon i520 Stud finder is a lot cheaper than the plumber I had to call out on an emergency to fix my mistake. The Zircon i520 easily found and correctly identified the same copper metal water pipes I drilled into by mistake. It also found live electrical lines, plus the studs I was looking for. Great device. Clearly shows you the edges and center of the studs. Very easy to use. DVD How-to guide (plus, there are training videos on line at Zircon's website. I can highly recommended this stud finder.

A bit confusing to use, unclear where the studs are.

Background: I'm coming from using one of the those clip-on stud scanner from a cordless drill. That thing was crap as it thought it found a stud but it was an empty space. I've use old 'dumb' stud scanners before as well. I bought this stud finder for multiple reason. Primary: I just got a LCD TV mount and wanted a real scanner. This particular scanner is a bonus in that it can also find AC signals (with load on sockets) AND metal. The last thing I needed was to drill down and find a power cable or air duct! This scanner is great, with the graph on the display it's easy to find the center and the automatic beep with light pinpoints the center. Steps are 1. slap on wall, 2. swipe across, 3. stop when beep. On a test setup it found the stud perfectly. I was curious about the dvd it came with but it's a bit tedious to go through so after the first 10 minutes and only watching 'how to use the AC scanner' I gave up on the videos and applied the same method to the other functions. The idea to search for the AC signal is a bit weird, it dynamically changes the sensitivity to find the middle. Basically one would swipe across and find the first boundary, at the max of one boundary reset the scanner and you will find new boundaries within parent... keep going until the side-to-side swipes meet in the middle or where the signal is. Same applies to metal scanner. Make sure to not have you hand above the scanner (or where the light is)... the hand adsorbs the signal and messes up the measurements. Only (very minor) gripe is that there is no toggle on-off switch. Using the side button is a bit of a pain in a tight or long reach area and easily turns off when not pressing hard. It doesn't help the unit is on the large size. Improvements: Would be nice to have a bubble so you can scan and mark in a straight horizontal line (or vertical). Additional thoughts: Signal 'bars' is a nice addition to help determine the true stud (not some random crap behind the dry-wall). final thoughts: Very impressed at quality and consistency of finding studs. Very happy I didn't get the basic stud finder!

Fonctionne très bien pour des tasseaux de bois derrière une plaques de placo. Pratique : il indique les bords et le milieu. Plus de difficulté pour ma part avec des câbles électriques dans une gaine derrière plaque de placo.

Das Produkt war mir nicht unbekannt, da ich das Vorgänger Model hatte. Das neue Model ist noch besser in der Handhabung und hat einige Funktionen mehr. Es zeigt sehr genau die Leitungen an. Super Gerät.

after reading various feedback on scanners i was a bit worried if this would be effective but it sounded like it was worth spending more to get a decent one .....and it was. Needed to find studs for a shelf for heavy books and this scanner was 100% found the stubs easily and even found the center lines. the shelf is up and holding heavy books so it was a great success and worth spending a bit more have not tried it for power cables so cant comment on that

I recently bought one of these and it would not work-despite battery level showing good. After an e-mail to Zircon, I was informed that this will only work with a brand new battery! due to the way it operates. Replacing the battery, it worked brilliantly-so WHY was this not mentioned in the leaflet with the unit as it is quite an important issue? I have fed this back to Zircon and hopefully this will help others who are experiencing similar problems. For an item of this quality and price there should not be anything left to guess work. Thus the 4 stars.

Used it two or three times, seems reliable although have to recalibrate on each occasion