I've never used an SE, but had 2 Sov's and an Excalibur. What I like about the X70 is the light weight, 4 AA's, faster sweep speed, EXTREME sensitivity to small and low conductive targets, easy to implement/see multi-notch disc., concurrent depth display, and a few other things. I prospect for gold and, from what I can gather on the various forums, both the Sov. GT and SE are simply outclassed by the X70 when it comes to a multipurpose detector that can also nugget-hunt. One thing to keep in mind is that the ability to find tiny nuggets translates into the ability to find tiny bits of jewelry (diamond ear-studs). As I said, I had (and liked) 3 other BBS detectors, but they exhibited no depth advantage, in my ground, and were relatively insensitive to low conductors. ..Willy.