I own one of the small ones, thought it would be interesting to see what you get for the $$.
Observations, having fished it for almost a year now and serviced it a couple of times:
-The bearings are ****e, they feel good for a while but give them a sniff of salt water and they'll crap the bed
-The anodizing is not great, comes off easily and then the alloy underneath corrodes really fast compared to other reels I've seen
-The machining is really good, on par with your mainstream stuff, it's all CNC anyway these days so of course it's good
-The gears are solid
-The design is nothing exciting, very standard lever drag setup. I think they all have fairly large carbon fibre drag washers, the drag is quite good really especially if you open them up and grease it properly.
-I've never played with a 2-speed model so can't comment on the shifting.
To be honest if you only plan on game fishing once or twice a year, and you get one of the big suckers like the Poseidon 80 for the price Forlongs was dumping them at (~$300ish?) you do get a lot of reel for your money. But at the same time when you can get a used, serviced Tiagra from Steve for $500 (
http://www.reelrepairguy.co.nz/product/963353) you may as well do that, and then you'll at least be able to buy parts for it 10 years from now.
I'll throw in a warning to anyone contemplating one, the old KAM series Omotos are terrible, it's only the Poseidon series that are even halfway decent.