Hi all ... kept working on this with the following result:
I looked around and found EZAutomation.net and they had a very wide variety of sensors.
I picked up on with a 10mm sensing distance and 70 deg C spec. (EZ-M12-NPNNC-NMW-TS).
This is an NPN sensor which is normally closed (NC). You may need something different depending on
how you wire it. The main thing is the longer sensing distance. It cost $24.99 with $11.79 in shipping (kind of ridiculous shipping cost !!!)
Honestly, I don't know how much better it is than the $8 ones the above sensor is, but at least the spec's are better.
Results:
It was a wire-color compatible drop in ... wired it in/mounted it and ran the G28/G29 sequence with a cold bed ... perfecto !
I heated up the bed and ran it through some more paces ... no issues at all ... I couldn't get it to trip because of heat like the old one.
After fine tuning the offsets, it seems to be working great. I have run a few test prints so far ... it's so cool to see the Z-axis move slightly
to compensate for the (very) minor bed tilt. First layer beads look really nice.
I'll report if anything goes bad, but looks good so far.
Thanks to Tom Sanladerer and his YouTube video on this topic !