Hopefully, somebody with more recent experience will comment but I had to put in my 2 pennies.
I have owned 3 Daiwas which were in the 30 to 80 dollar range, give or take, quite a few years back, each one had some kind of major malfunction by the second season.
I went to Penns for fresh and salt, and Mitchells for fresh water fishing and the original reels I purchased 8 to 10 years ago are still in service with standard minimal maintenance.
I had one Penn Slammer that had a foreign object in the drag that gave me some heartache for a while, but after finding the problem it has worked flawlessly for me.