As mentioned above, I sent my CED M2 to the US - took 4 weeks from posting to receiving. To my embarrassment, they couldn't find anything wrong with the suspect sensor - I can only think it fixed itself somehow, in transit perhaps, because the problem was clearly following the sensor when I switched either sensors or switches around. Anyway, top marks for their service - they even put a spare sensor in.
Just to make sure, I did some testing today, about 25 shots in tandem with my trusty F1 Chrony. Once I figured out a few finer points, I had excellent agreement between the two. The last 20 shots showed minimal difference between them averaging 6 fps with max difference 9fps and minimum 2 fps. What this says is that BOTH chronos are consistent to within 7fps and if I use them in tandem, the average will probably be better than 4 fps. So for what I use them for, which is measuring velocity variations for a given load, they are plenty good enough.
I mentioned some finer points - I had very poor comparison results (up to about 60fps

!) before making some changes to the setup. Unfortunately I didn't do what you're supposed to do and change one thing at a time. However even if I had, I couldn't be sure which chrono was the erratic one. Firstly I allowed them a short period of warming up, and secondly I moved them further from the muzzle. If I had to pick a likely culprit, it is that the CED didn't like being too close - why? - because with those bad results I got, the CED reading was much lower than expected and the F1 result seemed about normal. And also because the CED people had asked me to increase the distance to "20ft" during the initial testing before I sent it. So from now on I will go at least 7m.
Any other experiences on warm-up or distance from muzzle?
Alan