My old stumpy was a 2009, so not really a fair comparison, but here’s my honest opinion off the top of my head
Covert pedals just aswell on flat and climbing, when it gets real steep and techy the covert front gets light, but its not really a problem, I just shit my weight forward a bit. I could of gone for dpa pikes instead of my solo air, but I wanted the ability to experiment with the tokens, which you aren’t able to with dpa, so glad I did as I love how the fork rides, which I’m sure you are all aware, its awesome, I run my bars quite high as I suffer from shoulder/neck ache with them too low, so the forks are at 65psi with 2 tokens in, small bump compliance is awesome, they ride nice and high in the travel and absorb big impacts comfortably, 3.5ft to flat I’m around 5-10mm off full travel, I’m not sure how its going to react to a big drop to tranny, there isnt any in my village 😀 my old kashima ctd forks were awfully linear, the 2014 damper wasn’t much better. I have some volume spacers coming for the rear shock to get it matched up to the front.
Stumpy with fox 32’s with qr both ends, covert has pikes with 15mm and 12×142 rear, so stiffness is another level, you aim and shoot through rock gardens.
The longer wheelbase and slacker ha took a little getting used to, but oozes confidence.
I noticed at the hope line at gisburn it seemed to get air very well, so my local park has a few little gap jumps built, about 1.5bike lengths so not massive, but I used to go on the stumpy a fair bit to muck about and used to manage fine,went on the covert, set off and overshot the landing ramp and landed to flat, man does this thing jump well.
So to sumerise, I’m absolutely overjoyed, it descends like a beast, pedals like a sub 30lbs bike and makes me want to go out and just ride everynight, what more do you want:D.