"Minelab is not going to put a detector on the market at $799 that outperforms its higher priced units. "
Exactly!
They can put out a unit that detects gold in a different way.
After all this is just a single frequency VLF machine. The frequency of the detector isn't all that important if you can't defeat ground mineralization better than what's already out on the market. Pick a frequency 19, 30, 45, 71. That's been done. They all work on gold.
Hopefully Minelab has done that with this Detector.
I still think it needs a threshold