I wanted to give a brief opinion on my ultrex. I don't have a lot of experience using TM. I had a fortrex before I used about 5 times. Quick thoughts- it's awesome for me. Spot lock worked great. Fishing a submerged bridge I was able to lock on top of the drop off. No getting blown around when landing a fish or tying on a new lure. Not sure of the actual feature name but it has a sort of cruise control. Set a speed and direction and it goes. You can adjust on the fly. I liked how it reacted better than the fortrex. It had a little more noise but I wouldn't trade it in for that. That would be my only complaint.

Why did they not make the deployment on the Motorguide Xi5 as easy as this setup. pita. too much invested in electronics to switch now. Maybe my next boat.

The Xi5 is an electric steer motor like the Minnkota Terrova and Ulterra.

The Minnkota Ultrex is a CABLE steer motor like the Motor Guide X5 and Minnkota Fortrex.
Just has electric power steering assist.

i get that part. I just wish the deployment on the Xi5 was better is all.

The ultrex- to sum it up short- fortrex with spot lock and a little bit more noise.

Isn't it cheaper to have a Fortex AND a PowerDrive with iPilot vs an Ultrex? Haha.

The Ultrex is incredible! The heading system is as good as the spot lock. Jog feature with the spot lock is even better. Honestly, it's going to revolutionize the way we fish. Customer service is out of this world, I put mine on and the GPS would connect first time out, called MK, they had a whole new complete TM to my door in 2 days. Wish everyone would take customer service lessons from them, Power Pole, and Tackle Addict!!

Ive got one on the way on my next Legend, I run Lowrance electronics so Im not sure what all I'll be missing out on by not running birds but I'm looking forward to the spot lock feature.

What benefits are there to link with a humminbird? Not gonna change from Lowrance as my main units but would consider adding a second graph on front if there was enough benefit.

It can follow contour lines and follow way points

You really need the ipilot link, not the ipilot to take avantage of the FF capabilities. If you just want the basic ipilot functions, spotlock, lock in a heading or record and run a course then the ipilot is all you need. With the link you can tell it to follow a contour line, go to a waypoint, use the FF to tell it what to do and it will save all your spotlock locations or trails on the FF rather than limiting it to I believe 3 on the ipilot itself.