Review of Garmin force T-motor

My thoughts on the Garmin Force.

Unit came packaged very securely. Installation was fairly straight forward. The unit is loaded with features. Pairing with my two ultra units was no big deal though Garmin makes everything a little more complicated than it needs to be. First thing I noticed is how quiet the actual motor is, and how noisy the servo motors that turn the unit are.
The good.
The display on the motor is nice and easy to read.
The motor is very powerful and can get my 16’ crestliner storm fully loaded over 3 MPH.

The ability to network and punch in a waypoint and have the motor take you right to it is nice and it does it very well.
The integrated GT 54 transducer works perfectly.
The Bad
The motor wants to jerk when turning. Weather using gesture control, foot pedal, or fob, Not near as smooth as my 20 year old Terrova.
The anchor lock is a joke, the thing jerks and spins constantly weather in wind or dead calm water. Constantly turns to its limit and quickly spins back.
Heading hold does not take you in direction you set, at times turning 90* for a period then tries to get back on course.
Noisy servo motors.
I’ve been in the phone with Garmin and did all the recommended “ fixes” that resulted in not much improvement.
The foot pedal is laid out that accidentally pushing anchor lock and heading hold is easy to do.
Bottom line is this motor is a huge disappointment. For 3500$ you should get a motor that works perfectly out of the gate, not have to spend hours on downloads and updates, recalibration, reset servo zero, etc, etc, etc.
If you run Garmin electronics and are considering this motor, the built in compatible transducer and ability to network is not worth the inferior performance of the rest of the motor.

"Heading hold does not take you in direction you set, at times turning 90* for a period then tries to get back on course."

Thanks for the review. I have a Minn Kota 55# Power Drive. It has that same issue with taking a hard turn away from the auto pilot direction I set. I wonder why they do that.

Billy H said:

My thoughts on the Garmin Force.

Unit came packaged very securely. Installation was fairly straight forward. The unit is loaded with features. Pairing with my two ultra units was no big deal though Garmin makes everything a little more complicated than it needs to be. First thing I noticed is how quiet the actual motor is, and how noisy the servo motors that turn the unit are.
The good.
The display on the motor is nice and easy to read.
The motor is very powerful and can get my 16’ crestliner storm fully loaded over 3 MPH.

The ability to network and punch in a waypoint and have the motor take you right to it is nice and it does it very well.
The integrated GT 54 transducer works perfectly.
The Bad
The motor wants to jerk when turning. Weather using gesture control, foot pedal, or fob, Not near as smooth as my 20 year old Terrova.
The anchor lock is a joke, the thing jerks and spins constantly weather in wind or dead calm water. Constantly turns to its limit and quickly spins back.
Heading hold does not take you in direction you set, at times turning 90* for a period then tries to get back on course.
Noisy servo motors.
I’ve been in the phone with Garmin and did all the recommended “ fixes” that resulted in not much improvement.
The foot pedal is laid out that accidentally pushing anchor lock and heading hold is easy to do.
Bottom line is this motor is a huge disappointment. For 3500$ you should get a motor that works perfectly out of the gate, not have to spend hours on downloads and updates, recalibration, reset servo zero, etc, etc, etc.
If you run Garmin electronics and are considering this motor, the built in compatible transducer and ability to network is not worth the inferior performance of the rest of the motor.

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Sounds a lot like the Terrova that I bought in 2023. It’s called post covid quality. The manufacturers don’t care if their products work as advertised.

Motor Guide xi3 : When deployng the motor, it drops into a couple of slots. And it can be rotated 180° and dropped in to the slots.

If dropped into the wrong slots, it will reap havoc on anchor lock, motor will spin quite a bit. Assume heading lock might would also be off. Alignment calibration or rotating motor will fix this.

I always do a compass calibration at the beginning of the season, so not sure what it would cause.

InSaneFisherMan said:

Motor Guide xi3 : When deployng the motor, it drops into a couple of slots. And it can be rotated 180° and dropped in to the slots.

If dropped into the wrong slots, it will reap havoc on anchor lock, motor will spin quite a bit. Assume heading lock might would also be off. Alignment calibration or rotating motor will fix this.

I always do a compass calibration at the beginning of the season, so not sure what it would cause.

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I have the Xi3, but don’t think it maters which slot. On its third season and can’t believe we have gotten that lucky on every deployment. We do point it forward after aligned in the slots. Just in case it was last on a higher speed setting. I would think it would be keyed for only one position if that was the case. Ie one wide slot one narrow slot.

As far as I know, there are no servo motors or tach to read within the steering motor. Just the digital compass in the head unit.

The gps receiver is in the base unit. Connections to the control board but nothing direct to steering.

We are planning the first fall outing for next week. I will do the compass and orientation calibration and test the 180 slot engagement. You made me curious!

I've had mine for 2 years now and haven't had any of the issues you speak of. I fish in really heavy current in the spring and my heading hold and anchor lock work great. My dealer set mine all up on the water and I would bet once you get your sensitivity and other settings dialed in you'll feel differently.

flatheadsteve said:

I've had mine for 2 years now and haven't had any of the issues you speak of. I fish in really heavy current in the spring and my heading hold and anchor lock work great. My dealer set mine all up on the water and I would bet once you get your sensitivity and other settings dialed in you'll feel differently.

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I hope you’re right, I’ve jumped through lots of hoops and wasted combined hours of fishing time on the water trying to get this thing dialed in. I’ve have found a pretty much endless amount of complaints and nightmare stories about this motor. Shoulda did that before I bought. My bad!

I’d be very frustrated too! I hope you do get it dialed in soon and get back to fishing.