WARN 101570 Handheld Portable Drill Winch with 40 Foot Steel Wire Rope: 750 lb Pulling Capacity , Gray

I have a rural piece of land and I’m cutting lots of trees and dragging the rounds uphill in carts. I have all kinds of winches: one on the truck, one on a UTV. But access is a problem. Sometimes it’s hard to get a vehicle mounted winch in tight places. So I got this drill winch.It works great! I literally take a cordless drill, tree strap and this thing and just walk in to any lifting situation. It’s light, portable and I can get creative. It’s pretty durable. The working bits are steel, and only the carrying handle and outside are plastic. Plus, the Warn brand is respected and I felt like it would be well built(even though I have no illusions, it’s probably not made in the USA). Still, it’s well built.The good:1) It’s light weight but pulls 750lbs…which is enough. You could probably pull more with pullies mechanical advantage but I wouldn’t for safety. Think of it as like having 2 strong buddies to help. It’s not for recovering cars. But it’s strong enough for manual tasks.2) The nylon rope is light and strong and easy on the hands(no sharp wire frays to cut you). It’s very small, compared to full car recovery (10,000#) nylon rope at about 3/8” thick or smaller. I don’t know where I’ll replace it when it eventually wears thin. But I understand the trade-off to make it light and portable. It’s 40 feet long, and small because it’s only rated to 750lbs.2) I use a Dewalt Impact driver that has a speed chuck with a socket attachment and 8mm(5/16”) socket to drive it. The manual recommends a standard drill with a regular chuck, but I found this awful. The regular chuck kept loosening and it’s an akwardly tight space to tighten the chuck. It kept loosening. Plus, my drill speed was much slower. The impact driver was much faster, smaller and made a better connection with the socket attachment.All in all, I’ve found a new favorite tool. I keep looking for other uses. Who doesn’t need more power from time to time? Especially because it’s so portable.

If you're sitting on the fence between this and the pullzall - This totally outperformed the cordless pullzall for firewood retrieval. I had them both and returned the pullzall. The spool out function and 30' wire were the biggest features over the pullzall. I was using a Dewalt 996 20 volt drill in 3rd gear (2000 rpm) for most pulls up a 45 degree incline 175ft to the bucking and splitting station. I heat entirely with wood and live on the edge of a steep hill full of firewood. I had previously used a rope and pulley system, but this winch made this season a whole lot easier. The single line pull is good for 500 pounds, which I exceeded a few times and had to switch to a snatch block system. I have three 4 ah batteries, two 5 ah batteries, and three 2 ah batteries. It usually took a combination of about 6 ah of battery to pull my logs up the 175ft incline. It performed 32 full pulls without any obvious signs of wear. When I got close to the 500 pound limit my Dewalt drill performed better in 2nd gear (1300 RPM). I tried my Milwaukee Fuel 12 volt drill and it worked okay, but drained the battery a lot faster (almost one whole 2 ah battery for 30ft of loaded pull). This makes sense because a lower voltage would require more amperage to perform the same task. A lot of the review videos you watch about this product show people using this with the time sped up, I was concerned that this thing would be terribly slow. It isn't slow, but it depends on your drill. The average corded drill spins slower and has less power than the 996 (which is the most powerful 18 volt class drill you can buy right now). The winch can be run all the way in within about two minutes with a medium load on high speed. There is a window in the top that allows you to watch the spooling of the wire. The handle is convenient and well balanced for carrying the tool. I did notice one drawback, after about 6 pulls, the free spool was more difficult to pull all the wire out. After the winch cooled off, it would spool out easier until it got several pulls on it. I assume this is due to expansion and contraction of the metal. I put a lot of heavy use on this tool very fast, and I expected it to fail at some point in my operation. I doubt it is rated for that kind of duty cycle, but it performed extremely well.UPDATE: 8/4/18 Still been using it a lot for work pulling pumps out of lift stations and I used it recently to pull about 200 ft of 6" pvc up a hill on a project. Have started using it again for firewood this season and it is still working great. It has been helping position 20" diameter 6ft long oak logs to the main drag line to the tractor. If it broke, I would buy a replacement immediately. It is a tough little winch that is perfect for general purpose. A lot easier to use and faster than a come-along.UPDATE: 5/7/20 This thing still continues to impress. I am using multiple times a week now to pull 200 pound loads virtically. Still working flawlessly

I looked at the advertisement and the photos and thought that this looked good, but maybe a bit gimmicky. But it's a Warn, so it's worth a look. It arrived today and I took it to the garage to see what I got, and it's all good. I set my ramp and emulated a situation where I needed to load my non-running snow blower up the steep ramp and into my vehicle for service. I powered it up the ramp using a 20 year old two speed cordless drill - on high speed. No strain at all. It's faster than I expected and a variable speed drill is a wise choice. Of course we have to be able to lower what we lift or pull, and contrary to most accounts, this little winch works fine in reverse to lower the snow blower down the ramp safely. When you're done, you'll want to wind your cable on the drum neatly and the view window allows for monitoring of the cable lie on the drum. Of course this is day one so I can't comment on the durability yet, but the frame and all attaching points are all steel. It's a well made piece. The plastic cover and hand grip are substantial feeling. The clutch engages and releases with a positive click, as I'd expect from Warn. Judging by the way it pulled my 24" 2 stage blower up the ramp, I know it'll do what I need. This will be a back saver.Know that it is NOT sold as a lifting device. It's a winch, not a hoist. But I'm not here to tell you what to do with yours. I know that the winch speed is very controllable and practical. It lifted my 220 pound blower a few inches so I could replace a wheel and the dynamic brake held the weight with no slippage. And then with the drill in reverse it set the blower down gently. I have not tested this to the 500 pound limit and my tasks really don't deal with that much weight. It is certainly the right tool for me.