DS6 had a horrible experience with a subset of the DAS 2 (even refused to do whole sections), but I fully believe that this had more to do with the fact that it was his first testing experience, he finds testing stressful, and he had terrible rapport with the school psychologist. I believe Aimee Yermish, a psychologist who specializes in giftedness and gifted testing, likes the DAS 2 a great deal.
I believe that the specific strength of the DAS is the ability to test a very wide range of ages, but I have no idea how this stacks up against other tests for overlapping age ranges. I consider them all to generate approximations anyway, and after reading somewhat conflicting information on which tests are better for what reasons (SB5 being better for "mathy" kids, SB5 non-verbal subtests being polluted with verbalishness, etc.) I can't venture even a layperson's opinion. However, I do think it's significant that the achievement scores are in the same ballpark.
However, if I
were to venture that opinion
, it would be that I'd expect rough equivalence throughout the normal range of the tests. They are normed against fairly large sample populations, and have the same or similar standard deviations, and are intended and designed to test the same things. I think that for very young children (if I recall correctly the DAS 2 can be administered as young as 2.5) the younger the child, the fewer long-term conclusions one could draw from the results.
