I have been reluctant to write this.
The Rough As Guts ethos – and a key component of our branding – is that we tell it how it is. We will never be swayed by advertising dollars, or sponsored products, or anything else.
And so, I was a bit concerned about reviewing a Supacentre product, as it may come across as though we were incentivised to recommend a cheap (and inferior?) product.
But, I’ve been consistently surprised and impressed by this product.
And – if I’m going to tell it how it is – this also means discussing cheap products if they’re good. Not just criticising those which I think are overrated.
The biggest issue with this winch, is that it has the dumbest product name on the planet. Being a lover of language, writing “Domin8r Xtreme” disgusts me. It’s an appalling name. Years ago when I was single, I never had much luck on Tinder, and I was told that I came across as too assertive, because I used grammar and full stops. What a world we live in. I believe that you should have to pass the test of picking up a woman at a bar, before “men” are allowed on the dating apps…
My mistake, for a moment I thought we were talking about wenches. Back to winches…
This is not an endorsement of every product from the 4WD Supacentre (or every Adventure Kings product). But, this is an endorsement of their winches and I’ll explain why.
If Winches are “Cheap Insurance”, Why Trust it to a Cheap Product?
I’ve often referred to winches as cheap insurance, even if you’re not planning on doing much serious, technical off-roading.
I’ve stated that they give you more safety and flexibility, if you want to go solo into areas where you really don’t want to get stuck.
So it stands to reason, that if these are your backup, you wouldn’t want to trust it to a product that has questionable reliability?
A few years ago, we were about to set off to make our first 4WD film. We knew we were going to be doing a lot of stupid, gimmicky things while the camera was rolling. I didn’t want to punish an expensive winch with lots of salt water and sloppy clay.
So I bought a Domin8r Xtreme when they were on sale (which is most of the time at the 4WD Supacentre). Don’t pay full “retail” price, because they’ll be back on “sale” within a few days.
I bought the winch, installed it and then used it for the film, with the full expectation that I would replace it with something better, down the track.
I was so impressed with this winch, that I kept it. It never once let me down, even when I was doing very silly things with it.
So when I eventually upgrade my vehicle, I bought another one.
I’m now two years into owning and using that winch and again, it hasn’t let me down.
Domin8r Xtreme Winch in Action | Photo Gallery
Problems With the Domin8r Xtreme Winch
Bad Isolator
When you budget for buying and installing one of these winches, make sure you allow for a good after-market electrical isolator.
The ones they come with are prone to stop working with exposure to moisture. Or, sometimes they may get stuck “on”, which is a fire risk.
This isn’t such a down side, because a lot of winches under $600 don’t even come with an isolator.
The Wireless Controller is Useless
These have been upgraded on the newer MkII winches and I don’t know what they’re like.
One thing that can be said about the 4WD Supacentre/Kings products, is that they do iterate a lot faster than other brands. This can sometimes (but not always) mean that common problems do get fixed with newer releases. Whether this is the case with the MkII winch, I don’t know. I haven’t had the need to test one, because my existing winch has been quite surprisingly reliable.
Slow
To get the 12,500lb rating, that is achieved through very low gearing ratios which inevitably make this quite a slow winch. But – much like the isolator issue – this is not uncommon in the <$600 price range.
You can get fast winches that can still pull ~ 12,000lb, but these are very expensive. You’ll generally be looking at something like a Warne winch for ~$3,000 to get that kind of performance.
One of the benefits of using a winch for recovery, compared to snatch recoveries etc. is the slow, controlled nature of the recovery.
I’ve never had a problem with the winch speed.
Noisy
They make a lot of noise when they’re running.
But, who cares?
