It is my understanding that Steiner slowed production down significantly and once they have the bugs worked out of the Assembly and Quality Control departments in Germany and are keeping up with demand/production, resulting in the 4-28’s being more consistent, they will then release the 2.9-20. I would not expect it to be released later than SHOT Show 2021 but this is purely speculation at this point.
To expand upon my previous statement, I own three coyote brown M7Xi’s. Two I bought through preorder and the third I bought a couple of months after the first two arrived.
To make a very long story short for now, all three have been replaced for different issues. Several of the replacements had issues which led to more replacements. Somehow, Steiner got confused this last go around and sent me two black models instead of brown. I removed them to make sure the boxes weren’t just mislabeled. While I had them out, I spent some time with them because curiosity took over. I was half expecting to find internal debris, elevation turret feedback issues around the 2nd rev, excessive CA, or poor image focus. These turned out to be excellent. While not handling CA quite as well as my Minox ZP5, these were the closest I’ve seen and definitely better than any of the previous M7Xi’s I had seen. I tried talking them into letting me keep them but they insisted that they be returned.
It took a couple of weeks before Steiner received a new shipment of M7Xi’s from Germany. They then replaced the black units with the correct models that I have now had for three weeks. They are excellent. All in all, over the last year I’ve had nine different M7Xi’s in my hands, soon to be ten. Out of those nine, the most recent four that I’ve seen are hands down, the best copies yet. They are exceptional and identical in every way as far as I can tell. The things I noticed immediately were more crisp and tactile turret feedback, better control of CA, and improved contrast/resolution toward the top end of magnification.
It appears that since slowing down production in November, both quality and consistency have improved greatly. I will add that Steiner has been very proactive and quick in their responses to the issues I’ve experienced and assured that they have recognized where the root problem lies as well as the solutions to be implemented. I am currently waiting for Steiner to ship the final replacement for the third scope. As long as the replacement for the third unit follows suit, they will certainly receive more of my business once the 2.9-20 has been released. I have a strong hunch that it’s going to shake things up quite a bit.