I've got an XL Broken Road that is 2 years old now, but I believe still the most recent version. Mine was slightly tweaked for me by Neil to be corrected for 120mm forks, have a fractionally steeper ST angle and extra mount holes added. The best of these additions is definitely the top tube water bottle mount (see picture below).
For long legged people, the stack height is great. Means that I can run my 40mm rise bars with a normal stem (7deg/100mm), rather than a stupid long stem (35deg/90mm) that I normally need to use.
When you say vertical clearance, I presume you mean for saddle bags? I use a 13L Alpkit Koala on an exorail with a 150mm PNW dropper and I can slam it without the bag hitting the wheel. I have 35" legs.
I find it is quite a flexible bike. I have had it setup with 29x2.6 on Halo Vapour 35s (Nobby Nics - rather draggy) with a lot of clearance spare, 2.4 minions and currently have it setup with 2.2 Mezcals on my trusty Hope Tech XC rims.
I use Eagle GX 10-50 which I find is a good gear range for everything from winter road stuff to my commute up an extremely step 300m high escarpment on a mix of road and rocky tracks.
For bikepacking, the front triangle is massive... to the point that a custom Alpkit bag is a bit saggy really. It could do with more stiffening.
For general local biking and XC, its good, with snappy acceleration, although I would say that it feels its weight... i.e. it isn't a rocket ship like some bikes I have ridden, but it isn't heavy either and feels efficient
Like others, I have had Jones HG2.5 loop bars on it, but just couldn't get comfy for some reason - made my back really sore. Which is weird, as they are great on my Krampus.
One thing I have found is that bikepacking on rocky paths, being a hardtail, it gets really quite tiring. Mainly because you are constantly having to shift weight, getting your momentum sapped, etc. This doesn't happen on my Krampus with 3" tyres on 50mm rims. Unfortunately that tyre size won't fit in the back of a Broken Road, hence I still have the Krampus. It also obviously doesn't happen bikepacking on a suspension bicycle either.
I can't comment on whether the Ti dampens trail buzz. I honestly can't tell and suspect that 2.6 tyres will do more than metal ever will.
Build quality is excellent, bar a cockup with a bottle mount / cable routing due to my additional mount points. I take it down the local downhill trails (no jumps, but some little drops and lots of chunder. I have never had any reason to question its robustness.
I took a demo one with 650b+ out in the Lakes before buying it, and that was an absolute hoot on really rocky technical trails. I keep toying with the idea of investing in some cheap 650b wheels to give it another go.
On trails, I find that it is very easy to throw around and is also perfectly precise. Being tall, I have never really found 29ers to be vague though - I guess the wheel size suits the frame size better
For negatives: for months, the movable drop outs kept moving of their own accord. Got really annoying until I added some loctight. They are fine now (finally). I personally don't like the rear thru-axle. It only has a 6mm hex hole, which means that you risk ragging it compared to the beefier 8mm hole on Banshee axles. I also find you have to torque the axle a lot to stop it coming loose.
Overall, its easily my most used bike out of my Krampus and full sus bicycle, but I am still glad I have those other 2 bikes for specific uses.
Sonder Broken Road by
chrisp455, on Flickr