I have not owned my Apex for long and I'm still in the midst of really learning it, but I'll speak a bit about my thoughts so far.
Very well made. Very light and easy to swing. It's a simple to use machine, but it has enough adjustments available to successfully hunt in most conditions. Very good in wet salt sand (use the MS mode). The Apex is NOT waterproof, but it is considered weatherproof so hunting in the rain should be fine (don't dunk it under water). The headphones (wireless) are excellent. I can discern no lag and I find the sound to be very good.
The Apex is a fairly "fast" machine - as in it separates quite well. I don't pay a lot of attention to the VDI numbers, but they do seem to bounce around a bit when the target is a bit deeper or there is nearby trash. I do not know how deep the Apex is, but I am fairly certain that it can hit a 10 inch quarter in my soil (fairly mild soil). It may well go deeper than that, as Keith Southern did a video where his Apex was just barely getting a dime at 10 inches (buried) and his soil is almost certainly more of an issue than mine. Thus far the deepest decent target I've dug is a 7-8 inch Ford vehicle key - it gave a great tone.
I have dug good targets with trash (bits of rusty square nails) in the hole.
I generally use zero mode or relic mode. If using zero mode do NOT also use iron audio - it does something akin to moving the iron tone up the scale and mid tones will give iron grunts. Zero mode is hear all anyway, so you'll hear the iron in zero mode (adjust that volume with iron volume).
The iron volume can be adjusted so you hear the iron or not. For me level 2 (iron volume) seems to work best.
I do like the tones, but wish the Apex offered the ability to set the tone breaks as the user wished.
I pay no attention to the depth gauge, so I can't say how it works.
Pin Pointing is very accurate.
The Apex has something like 175 ground balance points (it can be ground balanced pretty precisely).
I have two coils - the Viper (stock) and the Ripper (5X8). I like both, but the smaller coil will be the most used since I mostly hunt in trashy areas.
The Apex (in MF and MS modes) uses multiple frequencies at the same time. Garrett has said that the highest frequency (in multi frequency mode) is much higher than 20mHz, but wouldn't say exactly what that highest frequency is. In single frequency, the highest frequency option is 20mHz.
I like the Apex quite a lot. I think it is a lot of machine for the money, and a very good purchase on my part.
Best of luck with whichever machine you choose.
