If you "turn AGC off," then you pretty much need a manual level control and a meter on the screen. Alternatively, I guess you could swap a meter for monitoring functionality. Point is, it's not as easy as just turning off AGC -- using AGC was their way of not needing manual level control, meters, and monitoring, LOL.

I'm not suggesting for a minute they take away AGC completely... it's clearly useful in many situations particularly when using the internal mic.

But it would be very easy indeed (I imagine) to give you an OPTION to switch it off or provide one or two levels of fixed gain. It would then, for example, make it easy to use any of Beachtek's simpler xlr adapters or indeed any other company's hardware that gives you volume control.

Yes.... that could indeed result in bad audio if you don't know what you're doing, it's use would be at the user's risk.... the same as using manual exposure can result in badly-exposed still photos, but they don't force you to use Program-mode-only for stills shooting, so why do it with audio?