Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel review - around £200 here in the UK

Caveat - I wrote this review a few weeks ago, but out of the blue the other day the anti-reverse failed on this reel. Daiwa UK kindly repaired the reel for me and it’s all working fine now, but it obviously shouldn’t have happened and I don’t know why it did. Wear and tear is the obvious one, but this soon? I was going to completely rewrite this review to reflect what happened, but I had a bit of a think about it and I actually think it might be more useful if I left the review as it was. Not because I want to pull the wool over your eyes, rather what happened I hope goes somewhat towards illustrating how tricky it is to review reels especially. Did I simply get unlucky? I believe I did because these reels work so well for so many anglers over much longer periods of time, but how long do you give a reel before you review it? Too long and there’s every chance the frigging thing gets an upgrade so the review is out of date, but too soon and there’s the argument you can’t tell enough about longevity and so on. I thought you should know so please continue on with the review with this in mind……………

I don’t want to repeat myself too much here so I would urge you to read my initial impressions sort of review of this roughly £200 Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel which I put up midway through last year. I stand by everything I said and/or speculated upon in that blog post, in that this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel is a truly fantastic bit of kit which I like more and more the more time I spend with it. I have to compare it to the similarly priced Shimano Vanford spinning reels and how good they are, and via a lot of fishing with this Daiwa reel now I feel entirely confident saying that it’s up there with any of those Vanford reels I have fished with.

Indeed there is at least a reason or two which could sway me towards this Daiwa over the equivalent size Vanford 4000 or C5000 reels, but there is also one rather glaring reason which could point some anglers in the direction of another similar reel. It doesn’t personally bother me because I am not into stripping spinning reels right down - I don’t understand them enough to do so - but you need to know this. The unavoidable fact is that if you want to or indeed need to remove the side plate and get at those internals of this stunning Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel then you can’t actually do so, because to do so requires a specialist tool. On all Daiwa monocoque designs, the circular side plate requires a dedicated tool to remove the plate and tighten it back down upon reassembly. This is not a conventional tool and it isn’t the same tool each time either, because reel sizes and side plate designs effectively differ.

I can easily remove the side plates on the Penn Slammer and Authority reels I fish with - not so easy on any Shimano I have come across (doable though) - but apart from the odd “let’s have a look at what’s going on inside and quickly close it back up in case something important springs/jumps out!”, to be perfectly honest I leave these parts on a spinning reel alone and simply do what I do before I fish with a new reel and again if/when it might sound a little raspy (check this blog post out for these details). But I need to make you aware of the fact that you would need to return your reel to Daiwa for a full strip-down kind of service or if something has gone wrong within that side plate, but with how much I like this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH and how flawlessly it is behaving it would not remotely put me off owning these reels. I guess that various non-Daiwa reel engineers might have access to these specialist tools as well, but I don’t actually know for sure.

I think the Shimano Vanford reels are seriously special, and I feel very confident putting this Daiwa reel into that category as well. Every single thing about it feels good when I am casting and fishing with it. I really like that this Daiwa reel doesn’t have any of that magseal “technology”, and I also like how there is a bush and not a bearing in the line roller - less to go wrong if you ask me, especially in a saltwater environment. I haven’t done anything more to the reel than when I first got hold of it and did my usual thing, mainly because nothing sounds remotely raspy and in need of any more oil or grease.

With how I hold a reel when it’s on a rod, I do prefer the slightly less chunky design of the reel stem on this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH. Maybe it’s me and how I fish, but I do notice on the more recent Shimano spinning reels especially that I can slightly feel the reel feet catching a bit on the knuckle on my little finger. The reel feet seem to be a bit shorter and fatter these days, but of course the Shimano designers know exactly what they are doing and as with the specialist tool requirement for this Daiwa reel, it’s not remotely anything that would put me off. But I do prefer how the stem on this Daiwa reel feels when I am fishing, as in it never feels like it’s remotely in the way.

Reel handles are very personal things of course, and whilst the handle on this Daiwa reel is fine - t-shape - I do prefer a round knob overall. If the (round) Penn Authority reel handles are the best I have ever lure fished with, then the (round) type of EVA handle on the Shimano Vanford C5000 (same size as the 4000) comes a pretty close second for me. So I shelled out £18 for the (awesome) Gomexus Power Knob EVA handle which fits this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH, and I think it’s by miles the better reel for it. You may well not, but this Daiwa reel with this exact Gomexus handle on there does it for me. Note that this specific Gomexus power knob also fits on the Shimano Vanford 4000 etc. as well. Not strictly necessary of course, but I wonder if most anglers are aware that you can sometimes customize your spinning reels a bit.

As I said at the start - please go back to that initial impressions post about this reel. Out of interest I would love to see the slightly smaller Daiwa BG MQ 3000D-XH as well, but with how this BG MQ 4000D-XH sits on the various lure rods I have strapped it to I reckon we have a seriously good saltwater lure fishing reel here. I am not going to put it through what I would expect a Penn Slammer IV or Penn Authority to go through in the surf, but if money was no object I’d be interested to see how this Daiwa reel held up to accidental drownings and gallons of raging saltwater washing over it. I have a hunch it might do rather well, but if you don’t need to be worrying much about saltwater intrusion with the fishing you do then I would urge you to have a good look at these Daiwa BG-MQ spinning reels if you are in the market for a new one. Consider me massively impressed because this thing is fantastic to fish with.…………

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