Mid season update:
I've put in around 30 days on these now and am still really happy. Snow conditions have ranged from firm sastrugi in the alpine to bottomless fluff in the trees and all types in between. Temperatures have ranged from spring-like to near-arctic. Days have been a mix of lift-served and touring on Steeple 108s and Praxis Protests with the majority of the days spent skinning.
My main observations at this point are that the binding skis very well, tours well and transitions well. I haven't dented my boots or had any failures. I have experienced two instances of random icing that have required interventions beyond the usual mode cycles, hitting bases etc that ALL tech bindings require. The first one was after a warm, deep snow day at treeline that involved lots of skis off/skis on/walking around/packing warm snow in every available crevice. The skis spent the night in a cold shop and the toes would not cycle into the step in position the next morning. A quick hit of heat solved the problem, but this would have been an issue if I was winter camping. I have since taken to cycling the toes between modes a few times when I put the skis in the rack for the night and haven't had any other problems.
The other icing issue was in the heel and may have been the result of insufficient forward pressure (which isn't really forward pressure, but there ya go...). Anyhow, the heel wouldn't lock into ski mode at the top of a lengthy skin/bootpack. The heelpiece kept pushing back and not capturing the lip on the heel of the boot. I cycled it, cleared any visible snow etc, but couldn't get it to lock. The fix involved two additional turns of the forward pressure screw. Whether this dislodged some ice in the track or provided enough tension to make the thing work again remains to be seen, but I have since skied a bunch of days and haven't had any further issues. Conditions on this particular day transitioned from spring-like schmoo at the trailhead to all of your clothes on and no exposed skin in the alpine, so that likely had something to do with it, as the transition from warm to cold was abrupt and severe.
Beyond these two instances I have observed the binding to be less finicky than many others in challenging conditions (very deep snow, cold temps, lots of transitions from warm to cold and lots of boot packing). I recently had zero issues while friends on Dynafits and Kingpins were struggling to keep their toes from becoming plugged with snow/inoperable. Ions seemed to fare quite well in these conditions as well, but did seem to have the odd instance of brakes not staying locked in tour mode.
I have had one release of both skis, and was extremely happy with how and when both skis released. One was a lateral at the toe as a result of skiing under a buried tree and the other was vertical from the heel during the resulting cartwheel. Both were smooth and seemed to occur at an appropriate level of torque (RV = 8.5). The lateral was the classic moment where you just start to feel uncomfortable pressure in your ankle and then you hear/feel the reassuring "click" and offer quiet thanks as you tuck and roll. This is the kind of fall that I am hoping these bindings provide some additional margin of safety for, and in this instance they certainly didn't hurt!
I'll post another update later in the season, but so far so good for me.
