I bought this winch back in August, dropped it into my LOD Mid-width bumper on my JKU, and went wheeling. Personally, I haven't had to use it to free myself, mostly because I don't particularly care for getting axle deep in mud with my doors off, but that's just me. I have used it to free multiple friends though, and at that task it performed admirably. In total, I've probably used this winch 5 times with a weight of over 2 ton (not counting resistance from circumstances) each time it has worked flawlessly.The wireless remote is super convenient, and is included in the original purchase price, not an add on.The winch is IP68 rated.The synthetic line is awesome.The speed is great - not painfully slow, and not so fast you can't control it.The winch looks good.The price is untouchable for a winch with these features and this weight rating.Like some of the other reviewers, I was unable to use the center mounts for the solenoid, they just didn't seem to fit right, so I used the included offset mounts instead. No big deal as far as I'm concerned, but if it's important to you, be aware.You'll hear a lot of crap about Smittybilt, and a lot of people saying that WARN is the only winch worth anything... I don't use my winch every day, and I'm not made of money... spending 1/3 the cost of a WARN for a winch that does the same thing just made sense to me.As a fun aside: One of my recoveries was a friend of mine whose WARN winch broke while attempting self recovery. Nobody makes a 100% perfect winch ;)*** EDIT: NOV 25 2018 - 3 years in, the winch is still on the Jeep, still chugging along. I'll probably need to replace the synthetic rope sooner rather than later, but that's to be expected. The wireless has decided it doesn't like to work anymore, but that's alright, because it interferes with my radios anyway, so we end up running on the wire. We go wheeling from April to November just about every weekend, and every time I've called on this winch, it's gotten me out, gotten trees off the trail, gotten friends out, flipped jeeps back on their wheels... I'm very happy for the money I spent on this winch, and would do it again.