Great reel while trolling or casting. Confident sets and smooth returns.

I have 3 of these reels and all of them are smooth as butter! It cast great and has great drag as well! Will be buying more.

I have never left a 1-star review in my life but I have to do this so other people will not waste $200 on a complete piece of shitaki reel. I'm a military veteran and would never waste time with a bad review unless it could help steer someone else in a better direction. So here's my honest review:
I started getting emails about this reel almost a year ago and was so excited about it. I loved the look of the spool, thought the design was cool being able to see through it. So when it was finally released a couple months ago I bought the GXS 2500.
I waited with anticipation for it to arrive so I can put it on my new St. Croix rod, but from the second I opened the box I was like, this looks like a cheap, lightweight trout reel. It weighs almost nothing and is so cheaply built, it looks like it's made of plastic. But I said whatever, it's almost $200, the most I've paid for a fishing reel so it has to be good.
Well, I used it twice so far and I'm ready to throw it in the garbage. Turns out that cool looking see through spool was a terrible idea. I had to remove the spool 5 times already to get the line untangled from the post. I've had dozens of reels throughout my fishing years and I have never had to remove the spool because the line was wrapped around the post underneath it.
No kidding here, 5 times using it over two fishing days (maybe 300 casts at the most) I had to remove the spool, cut the wrapped up line from the post and try it again. After the 5th time doing this today I had to write about it. Do not buy this reel, it's the dumbest spool design idea ever!
I used my local fishing store to get quality fluorocarbon line and had them put it on like all my other reels (so it's not the way the line was put on the reel) as all of my other reels are fine. Having good line put on turned into a waste of $40 because 150 yards of line is now more than half way gone from cutting it away from being wrapped up under the stupid see through design spool I thought was so cool.
Another thing that happened as I started fishing today, there was a plastic piece on my deck and when I saw VII I was like oh, something fell off my expensive reel already. It's only the piece at the end of the handle so not a big deal but FYI, whomever built this POS, that cheap plastic handle piece doesn't stay on.
I've bought a dozen St. Croix rods throughout the years and I expected this to be a high-quality, top notch reel. Turns out, it's an epic fail and I probably can't even return it at this point. I got burned out of $200, so don't waste your money, you will be disappointed. There are so many reels out there for half the price that are well built and perform so much better.
I caught a dozen or so fish with it and the drag is ok, nothing any different from my other reels. So at the end of the day, this reel has been a complete disappointment. I'm so upset I waited several months for it to be released. I wasted a good amount of money on it and I hope others don't make the same mistake. Please do us all a favor and take this product off the market, it's junk. I have quality rods from St. Croix, but this reel, it's St. Crap!

Smooth and good price