I am just finishing my first year with the silver µmax and have never used the golden µmax. I would have to disagree with alot of the claims I have read about the silver on the net. The realistic depth of this machine is between 5"-7". It is in good conditions like sand, wet, mild ground and the like where this machine has some exeptional depth. I have dug a dime at 10" in wet sand (and no it did not fall from the side of the hole into the bottom), cans and large iron at 2 - 21/2 feet in mild ground, pennies at 8" in damp ground and all of these had weak signals at max sensitivity with the stock coil. The µmax is one mean, mean machine and I don't think I will ever regret buying it. It works fairly good relic hunting with the 10x12 coil, exellent in sand and has great target seperation for trashy areas with the stock coil. However I can clearly see that In the future I will need a tone I.D. machine. It is just way too much work and too time consuming to dig every good sounding target in a trashy area. Also the silver runs at 10 khz and the golden at 12khz. My silver µmax will not pick up the fine gold items with the lower freq. If the silver is a little deeper than the golden I don't think that it is a big issue compared to having tone I.D. especially if you are going to be hunting areas with a lot of trash. best of luck.Golden uMax is a 10khz machine according to the Tesoro website.