My understanding of the K03s is that its efficiency range starts to trail off after about 16 psi. Of course you can run the turbo a lot harder, I'm not going to touch on what happens with higher boost in terms of gained power, added heat, power lost to pushing the turbo beyond efficiency range, so many theories and ideas on this. Was reading a thread today where someone was spiking 29 psi, but only holding 15...

I'm not sure how a boost gauge compares to logging with vag-com, would be very happy to see some logs that others have done so I can compare.

Could have something to do with my tune and mods.
I'm running APR stage 1, V2. APR is not known to be an overly agressive tune.
As I have improved the intake, dump, TIP, etc I think the flow of air is working better. Hard to explain, but a notion that air movement being more than just how much pressure there is.

Too many factors IMO, I'm not fussed about what my tune is doing specifically with the boost for now as I've been getting great results with advancing the timing. A few PSI more or less does not seem to have nearly the same impact as a few degrees of added ignition timing.