All Sovereigns are fairly similar, but there is changes when they got newer. Some changes were for the worst too and the XS2a had a switch to turn off the multi tones so you had a single tone which to me defeated the purpose of the Sovereign. The Elite had a excellent battery set up they still use on the GT, but the controls were changed and put in some bad area to they got bumped and changed, plus many that went from a older Sovereign to a Elite had problems as we knew where each control was. Many of us would turn the wrong control so when the GT came out the controls were in a better position plus a more sensitive detector plus I feel it will ID the deep targets better than any of the other ones. It also has where you can turn off the iron mask so you don't get as many falses on iron, but will not get good target close to iron either. Now some like to try gold detecting and the new GT you can use it too,but not as good as a gold machine as the GT has tracking and you can lock it too where the XS series and the Elite didn't have this. My own opinion on the Elite was many targets sounded deeper than the actually were compared to the older Sovereigns and the GT, but still did real good as far as depth plus it didn't seem to false as much on iron as the GT does, but I feel that is because the GT is more sensitive than any of the others were.
