[tunanorth]

The Torque 300 has more "cranking power" while still maintaining the 6.3 to 1 gear ratio.
I caught a 95-pound yellowfin with mine with a 50-pound topshot, and while fighting it I used the rail, sat on the rod, the whole 9 yards.
Also got 2 yellowtail over 40 pounds on the surface iron with a 9-foot rod and 50 pound line, which took a lot of cranking power!
It doesn't pull quite like a 1.6 to 1 big game reel that's been popped into low, but it does feels like about a 2.8 or 3.0 to 1 as far as power, which is pretty good.
Because of the disengaging pinon gear, it casts a bait, jig or wahoo bomb great.
It's more precise than the Baja Special, a little heavier and of course much more expensive.
The Baja Special gives that "old school" satisfaction while still having the modern internals.
You can also put the Torque's metal drag star on the Baja Special if you want.
It wasn't pinon gear issue, but a few Torque 300's did exhibit a problem when the angler over-loosened or over-tightened the left-side bearing adjustment to far beyond the normal 3 to 7/1000's.
This allowed the spindle to rub, ultimately deforming it after a few fish.
The simple engineering fix was to put in a positive "stop" on the bearing adjustment threads to keep it within the operating range.
This only happened on a half-dozen reels, and Penn took immediate care of it.
I have used both reels in a variety of ways on 700M's, 700H's, 765L's, 900M's and 900H's with 30, 40, and 50 mono and even straight 80 spectra in Alaska.