Sticko, I got the freshwater and if you are not fishing saltwater that is what I would get. Reason being is that it has the universal sonar transducer built in just like the terrova. I believe most of the freshwater xi5 come with hand remote and foot control but not sure. I bought mine online from digital oasis getting lowest price I could find anywhere, free shipping and no tax. Also the description on the website is very descriptive of exactly what you are purchasing. I got the 60", 105# thrust with foot pedal, hand remote, and the pinpoint. I think there are some of the lower end models without pinpoint gps but I would definitely NOT get those.
Do you already have a Minnkota with ipilot and if so do you use the foot pedal or the hand remote? When I had mine, I only used the hand control. I tried the foot pedal which I purchased also but did not like the lag. I haven't really even used the foot pedal currently but as I mentioned previously, I had a buddy try mine out and he liked it alright enough to buy one himself. I will say he does not like the remote foot pedal as much as his previous cable steer trolling motor when he is bridge fishing but I didn't ask him the specifics of why that was the case.
Initially I had my trolling motor transducer interfaced with the 688 humminbird graph I had on my bow but after looking at the potential of being able to link it to an lowrance hds unit on the bow I went ahead and made the investment to put a touch hds 7 on the bow and linked it with the nmea 2000 kit and the gateway link. Think it was like $250 for both parts online. The combination has been nothing short of amazing for fishing brush piles and timber. The hds internal gps is far superior to that of the 688 I had. When you drop a waypoint it is spot on. Other upside with the touch screen is that when you see brush pop up on your sonar, you can scroll back to it, drop a waypoint there, then come back to it on the gps screen and you are on it. I have the hds unit right by the xi5 head so there is no variability in the exact gps location. I no longer have to use a marker buoy at all except when fishing/graphing submerged timber and see that tree loaded with fish to give a reference point. However, when you ease back to the buoy and the tree shows up on the sonar, you just hit the anchor lock and it keeps you right over the tree, period. The 8 presets on the hand held remote are also beyond belief. There are a couple of submerged trees I have found out in the middle of nowhere that always hold a couple of big fish. Put them in as presets and when we get within 100 ft or so, just hit the preset button and it puts us right over the top of the middle of the tree every time. Also some bigger brush piles seem to have a consistent sweet spot and have put those in as presets so we don't have to look around, it just takes us straight to the exact spot.
Another thing I absolutely love about this motor is that wind is a non issue until it gets to where it is just too dangerous to fish. I have a 22' center console that I originally got to be able to fish open water for white bass/hybrids and the 105# thrust will hold it dead on spot even in white caps. This last week wind got up way above what was predicted but the rougher it got, the better the fish bit.
I did look at the online reviews on bps site and there were definitely some bad reviews of the xi5 but most seemed to address the wireless foot remote. Once again, I only used mine once with the initial calibration. The last thing I will add is that if you don't do every step of the manual gps calibration it will not perform as well as it should. There was one step I left out when I first started using it, and while it worked way better than my terrova ever did, there were some quirky things it would do when on anchor lock on calm days and with the presets. Those things are non issues now.
Hope that helps and let me know if you have any other questions.
