Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are so many things wrong with this (admittedly cheap) hose reel its hard to know where to start. Yes, it tips over as soon as you pull on the hose, but you have to get that far. Your journey begins with trying to thread your hose onto the reel. Everything here is plastic, of course. I tried 2 different hoses and each time it took a half dozen tries to attach the hose without cross threading onto the brittle plastic fitting in the reel. If you get that far, the next challenge is winding the hose. As you can see, the more expensive reels have something that's essential--a guide that guides the hose onto the reel. On this unit, you are the guide and you'd better be precise or you will never get 100 feet of hose on the reel. But the fun is just beginning. While you are hand-wrapping the hose around the reel, the entire unit is dancing around. So, with one hand you guide the hose, with your other hand you hold the box steady and with your third hand, you turn the crank. And by the way, if you're thinking of weighting the unit so it doesn't move and tip over, you can't because they were careful not to allow any extra space so there's no place to put a brick or something heavy. I think I'll stop here but you get the idea. I'm not sure if I want to spend over $100 to get a hose reel that works so I may just go back to dropping the hose on the ground and walking away.