Originally posted by Just1MoreDave I conclude that Pentax thinks SDM now works just fine and won't hurt the sales of this lens. The 18-270 is a mass-market lens and they plan to sell a lot of them. If they didn't think SDM would work, they face massive warranty return and repair costs. If they thought consumers would be scared off by the SDM label, they already had an alternate technology and label to use, but they didn't. Pentax has always acted like SDM issues were solvable and wouldn't hurt sales. Are they right? I have no idea. They are the only ones who know.
Nonsense that they work fine, as evidenced by lord knows how many people on their third and fourth 250+ dollar/euro repair.
Pentax is playing the Mercedes game and throwing parts at the problem and using the repair business to subsidize the company.
I always wonder who the people are on every forum, no matter the language, that tells everyone that there are new, improved parts that aren't as failure-prone, but when pushed for proof, they vanish. Even on the German forums, they've concluded that they're using the same, failure-prone parts, with people giving up after their fourth repair, meaning about 1,200 euros in repairs to keep them running.