Re-post...
"I can say that the three prior Explorers I owned were not as deep in my soil as my Sovereign GT, both using the stock 10" search coils. The Explorers seemed to have much more trouble with the mineral content of my soil despite any which way I set them up. In fact, I found my QXT Pro was just as deep as my Explorers on silver and copper items, but the Explorer was deeper on lower conductive targets with it's extra higher frequencies.
The SE or Etrac with the 11" Pro Coil I would expect to edge out a Sovereign with a stock 10" coil in some situations, but throw a 12x10 on your Sovereign and it's a whole new ball game. Also, I find the stability of the Sovereign's ID to lock on to deep coins or ones in rough ground in a much more "less iffy" way than my Explorers ever could do.
I can personally say that I've re-hunted areas that I've gridded numerous times from several directions using my Explorers, and yet my GT has found me deeper coins or even ones shallower in rough ground that the Explorers some how missed.
A lot of the performance difference comes down to your soil type, what coil you are using, and how well you understand either machine's response at depth. Any one of these factors can vary the results for people in comparison.
The final straw for me was how "high maintenance" my Explorers were in terms of keeping on top of them to provide maximum performance, in particular with sensitivity settings. It seemed like I could never find the perfect balance between auto or manual, and once I did 50 feet later the machine would get erratic and picky about where it wanted it now. The Sovereign doesn't seem to change it's mind as much on what it wants to "run all out". The audio is also much more telling to me in terms of target quality and differences.
I can honestly say the only thing I miss in terms of controls on my Explorers was the ability to learn reject/accept a very specific target number. That proved useful when one pesky piece of junk was all over a site. However, I also found it's VDI resolution to have to much variable, and often exact same targets could read very differently from each other. In that respect for example avoiding pull tabs while digging rings was an impossible blury mess of numbers to me, and I could tell no real difference in audio quality of junk versus rings with it's much more processed/shorter response than my GT.
All that being said, I'd rather own an Explorer than pretty much any other machine on the market, save perhaps a T2 or F75LTD or an Etrac. We'll see how the AT Pro pans out."
