As we considered our lower-ranked garage door openers we were still very impressed. The Genie DirectLift Screw Drive is a great product with many of our favorite bells and whistles and all of the essential safety features for any garage door opener.
This is a screw-based garage door opener, which generally means slower but very quiet operation. There is also very little maintenance with a screw-driven unit. There is no chain or gears to wear out and fewer parts in general. If your door is taller than 8 feet you may want to add an extension kit to this opener but for the average door up to 7.5 feet tall, it should work well.
This garage door opener is ready to integrate with HomeLink automation equipment right out of the box. We like that and we also like the 120 watts of power coming from this garage door opener’s lighting system. That should keep you from stumbling and keep the criminals at least discouraged from entering your home.
One thing you might miss with this garage door opener is that the lights won’t come on by simply entering the garage. Many garage door openers offer motion-detecting consoles – not the case here – but this one does automatically light the garage when the door is opening or closing. It will also automatically shut the lights off about five minutes later.
This garage door opener offers great safety and security features. An invisible beam is projected across the door opening at all times. If anything passes through that beam while the door is closing it will reverse and go into the fully open position. If the door touches anything on its way down, whether it interrupts the beam or not, it will also reverse within two seconds of contact.
Those features are pretty standard, but this garage door opener goes beyond the basic safety features with its ForceGuard Control system. This is Genie’s way of making sure you use the minimum force possible to close and open your specific door. The more force you use the more potential there is for injury or even death. There is no sense in using extra force for a light door. Genie also adds Safe-T-Stop to the other excellent safety features. Safe-T-Stop will automatically open a closing door if it has not completed its closing cycle within 30 seconds. This is a great innovation. Even if the garage door opener has not stopped closing because of an interruption in the beam or direct contact with anything, you want a door that will err on the side of opening. Even if the garage door opener system does not know why the door won’t close it will stop the cycle and open the door.
Security features include Intellicode, which sends a different set of numbers from your remotes to your garage door opener with each use so criminals cannot obtain and use the code.
Ease of use features that we like are all included in this garage door opener as well. There is a keyless entry pad, lighted console and multiple remotes. This gives you lots of ways to control your garage door.
Genie offers good customer support and an impressive warranty for this garage door opener, including a lifetime warranty on the motor.
Summary
There is a lot to like about the Genie DirectLift Screw Drive, though you may miss the motion detection light, some horsepower and the alternate power source offered by higher-ranking garage door openers. The excellent safety features really help this unit stand out in its own way.
Brandon Sheley