Cheap winches have always had a place in off roading....winches for those who will be ok w/o a winch.
Essentially, if you need it to work, as in if you got stuck and couldn't get unstuck, you'd be in danger, or suffer a consequence of sufficient concern, that if doing it over again, you'd have either sprung for a better winch, or not gone to where you got stuck.
If you are in a "Mission Critical" situation (You spend the night in the boonies/lose your job on Monday, etc...) then you want equipment you can count on.
If you are hunting rabbits, and your gun jams/misfires, etc...all you lose is a rabbit.
If you are hunting Lions, and the same thing happens, you ARE the rabbit - and you wish you'd sprung for the better rifle.
If you wheel were a winch is handy, but not having one is no big deal, sure, if it doesn't work...so what.
The other cheap winch issue is TIME/Duty Cycle.
Some cheap winches have very short duty cycles...meaning they overheat if you let them run too long....and too long might be 90 seconds, and then waiting 15 minutes for it to cool off enough to pull again.
Some cheap winches are also using deep gearing to get the rated PULL weights...meaning its like your 10 speed bike in 1st gear....lots of RPM to go a small distance, etc.
They can typically pull a line with zero load on it OK....but they bog down as the weight ramps up.
So the 9,500 lb rated winch can ONLY pull 9,500 lb on the first wrap of line on the spool, and as soon as a second wrap is spooled on, they are only able to pull say 9k, then 8k, and so forth,...some dropping to ~ 40% or less of the TOTAL RATING. (~3,800 lb)
Now imagine that you have a rig in the pine bog, sunken to the frame in sucking mud, the kind that pulls your boots off, etc.
Lets say it would take a 80' pull to get you out, and that you'd need to apply the GVWR of the rig to make it move (You'd need more, but we'll go with the GWVR, as everyone was brainwashed to use 1.5 x GVWR to PICK the winch...Bad Dogma)
So if your rig's GVWR is 5,200 lb...you can't recover it....your winch is too weak...DONE. (You could go a few feet, but then the spooled line would have raised the effective gearing too high, and the winch would overload)
We'' make it easier...you only need to pull it 80' it at 1/2 GVWR to get out, so 2,600 lb pull will work.
At that load, you can do 3 feet per minute.
You can pull 90 seconds, then wait 15 minutes.....
OK, its 12 noon -
OK, 80' to go, and you pull 90 seconds at 3'/m = 4.5'
You went 4.5', and have 75.5' to go....and are letting it cool 15 min....(I'll cheat it to 14 min 30 seconds to make the math easier...)
OK, its now ~12:16
You go another 4.5', and wait...
At 12:32, another 4.5'
At 12:48, another 4.5'
(Its about 18 4.5' pulls to get out)
So, ~ 284 minutes after you started, you are finally free!
Its now going on 5 pm, and its time to go home.
Do the same pull with a good winch that can do the entire 80' in one shot at say 9' per minute, and you start at 12 noon -
12:09 - DONE - Wheel the rest of the day.
Now, there are those of my budz that ignore the cooling period that is required, and the winches work a few times once in a while, then burn out...and they take them back to HF, or whatever, and get a new one, and they're ok with that.
I don't KNOW any one right now with a Warn VR that I've wheeled with yet - but, as to make the winches cheaper, the problem is that parts are downgraded to make it cheaper. High duty cycle parts are more expensive...and they are the first to go.
There's nothing magical about the name "Warn", if they downgrade parts to compete with the Chinese junk, but assemble it with American labor, its STILL more expensive...and will be less reliable.
The warranties on almost all the winches are decent enough, the el cheapos fail soon enough that the replacements are almost always under warranty, and the Warns, etc, essentially don't fail, but have a lifetime warranty. (ALL winches fail, its just a proportion thing...)
Of the el cheapos I HAVE been out with in the field, the H2O series seem to be pretty good as a compromise. The water sealing is especially good, and the speed is not as horrible as some for example.
If you have to go cheap, I might look at them.
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