Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had purchased 2 of these units, [actually their next up models that had a hose guide] about 10 to 15 years ago and was surprised at their longevity and toughness. I left them out all year long and drained the water from the hose during winter months. The hoses I use are heavy duty 3/4 inch 100 foot long relatively large diameter. The units tended to leak a little but if you adjusted the spool portion on the axel you could either stop or reduce the leak to very slow drip. I reviewed the comments by customers of the new models and even though there were a lot of negative reports, the price was right to try one in a new place on my property with a lighter hose that I had. I did every thing I could to overcome the stated problems the other customers indicated they had, including using many of the suggestions contained in the comments. The threaded plastic hose attachment leaked no matter what I did, it stuck up so high off the spool that it was very difficult to initially spool the hose. The threads on the plastic hose attachments stripped and it was almost impossible to tighten the supply hose to the unit because of where it was situated. An original good product gone bad. My backround is engineering and I took a good look at the differences in the new versis the old model and found that the fabrication had changed to reduce cost. Another company that sacrificed it's product quality for margin.