I spent some time researching these before I bought one. The new Smittybuilt looked to me like the best bang for the buck, with lower amp draw/rating and has better reliability ratings than the competition. Time will tell.
Most of the major complaints I looked into regarding motor and solenoid failure related to undersizing the wiring to the winch. Mounted on a trailer, (12 to 15 feet from the battery?) it looks like there would need to be at least 1/0 wire all the way from the vehicle battery to the winch to avoid "browning out" the electrical components. With all the connections and plugs rated accordingly. Even heavier cable if you are running it at full capacity.
The way around this is to mount a separate larger battery on the trailer right next to the winch and then run a charging wire appropriate to the alternator output from the truck alternator to that separate battery. Maybe that was your issue?
