How so ?
What modern advantage would I have with the max in the water ?
You mean over the AT PRO?
Cons:
Well, if you are in the water, the wireless headphones are a no-go, so that eliminates that.
It is definitely a chattier machine, and if you want to run it at high sensitivity you will have to deal with that. If you lower the sensitivity the chattiness goes away but you loose a lot of the extra depth. This would make the depth only slightly better than the PRO.
It's still a single frequency machine.
Pros:
It is just as Rugged as the PRO.
It has an All-Metal mode, which the PRO doesn't have.
It has a Back-Lit display, which can be really nice in early morning or evening hunts regardless of terrain.
If you are in saltwater, the PRO is notorious for being pretty useless (or so I've heard). The MAX doesn't solve all the problems the PRO had with saltwater, but it is significantly better at managing it. I have hunted saltwater with mine, and it works with some adjusting of settings.
It is more sensitive than the PRO, and a customer review I read before buying the MAX said that, when he tested it, the max did indeed get significantly more detection depth than the PRO on the objects he tested, even up to the advertised 50% in some cases (At the price of being a chattier machine).
Adjustable Audio Volume (One of my favorites honestly). It was quite loud on the default setting. The speakers on the machine itself were overkill and the headphones were deafening, but being able to adjust the audio to a comfortable level was a lifesaver. I don't know what the PRO is set to, but if you find that it is often too loud, that's probably the reason they put that upgrade on the MAX.
Changed from 15 to 13.6 khz, which isn't much, but it is a slight improvement supposedly.
It also has 44 levels of Iron disc. instead of 40. It's only a 10% improvement, but it's there.
It also has a "Automated Ground Balance Window that simultaneously spreads ground balancing to several different settings for several different ground conditions."
This being said, people that are used to the PRO (that I have seen online) generally prefer the PRO to the MAX anyway. Most of them cited the fact that the MAX uses the AT Gold's tones over the PROs, which they don't like.
As far as "Modern" advantages? Not a whole lot honestly. It has its advantages but not nearly as many as some of the newest machines out there. Is it better than the PRO? In my opinion, yes. Is it more modern? Yes, but not by a lot. Is it worth the extra price? For me it was, for the audio, back-lit display, and a couple other things. At the end of the day, it comes down to personal preference my friend.