I have two of the orange cable reels, this one is metal so I thought I'd give it a try. the hooks to secure the cable are not well engineered, and the cable, cable ties, string, twist ties kept slipping off. eventually I did a through hole on the side and tied the mid section of the cable securely.
(if you didn't see in other reviews, find the midpoint of your cord, attach that to the reel and reel in leaving both ends accessible.
the spool is smaller and less rigid than my two "orange reels" but seems to do the job on on 100' extension cord. The reels on the orange reels are a bit larger in diameter. Overall this unit is a bit smaller than the orange units, and was harder to put a foot on the base and reel in 100' of extension cord. You will have to help feed the cord onto this reel. It works, and seems to do the job once I overcame the poorly designed cable hooks. If I have to replace it, I'll go with the orange ones next time.

Bought two of these because of the review and pictures by Mistress of Dragons. I cut holes and wrapped about 5 ft. of male end on the outside edge of the reels as described and shown in the pictures. Worked Great! I was also able to get 100 ft of 12/3 SJ extension (Amazon Basics) on one of the reels and put 50 ft. on the other. I was not very careful about winding level on the 100 ft. reel, but it fit anyway. You need to use a lot of pressure to snap the two reel half's together during assembly. There should be no gap.
I would highly recommend it. Thank you M of D.

WILL NOT hold 100' of 12/3 wire! Whoever said it did obviously does not really have 12/3 wire. That is what I bought it for and understood it would be close, but this reel might hold 50 feet of 12/3 at best.

It does seem to be a good quality reel at a good price for 16/3 or even up to 100' of 14/3 (and that is heavy and hard to roll up towards the end) and I will keep it for that, but it is smaller and lighter than I expected and I will have to get another reel for my 100' of 12/3 wire.

My husband is very pleased with this rugged reel. 100 ft. of 12/3 heavy duty extension cord fits with room to spare. He cut a hole in the center spool to allow about two feet to pass through and velcroed it down on the outer face of the reel (see attached photo). Works great with the snowblower purchased at the same time. This handy reel gets him back inside faster and keeps the cord neat & contained.

Everything about this reel is better than our previous cheap plastic crap. The frame is metal, but everything else on this is plastic. But it doesn't feel cheap and flimsy. I have a 100' foot cord on it, and I'm sure it could handle 150', though not more. There is a larger opening on the side if you want to roll up from the male end, and have the plug sticking out. That's what we do, have the male end sticking out a few inches, then attach it to an outlet with another shorter extension cord. I know many people roll up cords from halfway, but I prefer to be able to wind and unwind length as I need it.

The one potential negative of this reel is the small, poorly attached winding handle. You can't even really call it a handle, it's just a very short (maybe 1.5 inches) stub of plastic you use to wind in the cord. It is just attached with 4 small tabs, and it looks like one smack of this handle on something will break off at least one of the tabs. If the handle comes off, this reel will be pretty useless, as winding in the cord would be a pain. If it does snap off, I will update my review.