I’ve been riding a 130mm 29er Stage for 10 months and I think it is a brilliant fork. No reliability issues and it feels very well made (all metal construction). No stiction from new. It matches the ccdb inline on my Phantom perfectly. I must admit that I haven’t ridden a pike or new 36 though.
The ramp control is a brilliant bit of innovation and allows you to change your fork feel for different bits of trail (basically an on the fly version of rockshox bottomless tokens, it also acts a bit like having adjustable high speed compression damping. By balancing air pressure and ramp control I can have an excellent fork for smooth trail to high speed chatter to chunky tech with a few twists of 1 dial). Each of the other adjustments have a noticable effect on performance. It is also a bit shorter in axle to crown for a given travel so you can usually run a stage with ~10mm more travel than RS or Fox. My 130mm stage is 2mm longer than a 120mm pike.
The thru axle is one of the best I’ve come across (some reviews seem to slate it for some reason, I can only assume they don’t have opposable thumbs or double digit IQs). I’ve seen a few comments about how you could accidentally hit the air release valve (and enduro mag do seem to have do idea what it is for). Having tried to deliberately press it I can confidently say that they are talking out of their arse! I had to use a 2.5mm allen key to press inside the hole. No chance of it depressurizing by accident.
EDT – looking at that enduro mag review I have no idea how they assessed the forks and came to those conclusions and grades. Seems to be almost entirely random!