Abu Targets Enthusiasts With Their New MGXtreme!

Introduction: Whether they will admit to it or not, Abu Garcia, with the debut of their suite of Revo low profile baitcasting reels back in 2006 seemed to have one manufacturer firmly in their sights, Shimano. Running away with all the Best in Class ICAST awards, Shimano was arguably the top dog in this highly contested market, everyone was gunning for them. These days, there's a lot more parity amongst reel manufacturers and Abu Garcia, having attained their goal of more notoriety in this segment of the market, has been making more and more noise with each passing year. They successfully won over anglers seeking a solid, dependable, workhorse of a reel and now Abu has their sights set on another segment, the Enthusiasts.

Ready for a five ounce reel? Abu is going to the extreme, MGXtreme that is!

Last year, we reviewed the Revo MGX, a 5.4 ounce low profile baitcaster built mostly for finesse, but that we beat up in the Amazon Rainforest. This year, at the BassMaster Classic, Abu Garcia is set to introduce a new, tuned version of this reel. Here's an inside look at Abu's ne Revo MGXtreme!

Preview: We managed to get a hold of the new Revo MGXtreme before its official debut at the 2013 Bassmaster Classic and immediately took it into the lab for some measurements and calculations to see just what it has, or does not have over the original.

The MGXtreme spool is also very light weighing in at 10 grams.

The new MGXtreme is touted at 4.9 ounces out of the box which would make it the lightest, low profile baitcaster built for bass fishing that we know of in the US Market and possibly even in Japan. On our scale, the MGXtreme came in at 5.0 ounces, still the lightest we've seen or felt.

The reel comes stock with round EVA knobs, but there is a spare set of flat EVA knobs in the box. And each knob is supported by 2 bearings too!

The spool weight of the MGXtreme and original MGX are identical, as is their brake systems, IVCB. The MGXtreme's spool, however, is supported by a pair of ceramic bearings, a feature just about unheard of in a stock bass reel and one that should have Enthusiasts very excited.

Like the MGX, the MGXtreme comes with IVCB brakes.