Penn Battle 8000

I picked my new Battle up from Dan at Keiths Sports in Saltburn and loaded it with braid before taking it swiftly to the beach. First impressions are of a well built, smooth and solid reel, exactly what you'd expect from Penn. I'll start off with what the reel doesn't have. It has no reverse ability, in other words the reel is in full time anti reverse mode. I would suppose this would eliminate weak points in the gearing for a function that isn't required while fishing on the beach or off the rocks. Secondly the spool has no line clip, I found this a bit irritating as the line spilled slightly from the spool in my bag but its nothing an elastic band wouldn't fix and on the other hand it removes any point that line could get trapped behind. My biggest complaint is that the reel doesn't come with a spare spool but these can be bought separately, whilst roving around its worth having the ability to be able to quickly change lines to suit the conditions that you come across.
Although the spool was half an inch shorter than my Vega it didn't seem to affect casting distance and the line lay was very level and smooth due to the slow oscilation  of the bale arm carrier.
I don't think I could expect much more of a reel to fish the North Yorkshire coast, solid, no frills and businesslike. Very Yorkshire.