I had great service from Raymarine. New X5 Wheel Pilot would give me an intermittant 'No Pilot' error message and fail to come to life. It appeared to get better with time and came up less often so didn't do anything about it. Finally, after a year, the 'No Pilot' error message became more ubiquitous so I sent it in for repair. Got the A/P back in less than a week and that was a roundtrip to the right coast and back to Hawaii. Note said they couldn't duplicate the problem but had swapped out some component in the A/P brain. A/P has been fine ever since. I couldn't ask for better service as they turned it around in no more than a day after they received it for no charge.

One thing Raymarine doesn't do is support old technology. Bought the X5 to replace a 4000+ Wheel Pilot. Thought I had a bad control head on the 4000+ and tried to buy a new one. Despite being less than a year out of production, they no longer had any parts for the 4000+. Turned out it was just a bad wire connection in the motor which a local Raymarine dealer fixed. Now have a 4000+ wheel pilot that's been throroughly checked out by a marine electronics technician if anyone wants one.

The X5 is better technically than the 4000+. The X5 has a learn capability and more adjustments to meet various heading and sea state conditions. They didn't just replace the 4000+ for marketing purposes. The 4,000 series wheelpilot had remained pretty much unchanged from the old Autohelm 4000.