I am running Mile Markers and have been for a couple of years, Warn are also good. The older HB ones are getting pretty hard to find, but you can always get auto replacements at most junk yards because the HB, Pathfinders, Frontiers, and X all used the same ones.
The key is maintain them after you get them, Keep them lubed up and use them once in a while. For the most part the people that I know that complain about one being signifficiantly better than the others, only do it out of something that they saw a buddy go through, or heard about from some unknown source.
Usually the buddy never maintains his junk, so it does not work rite when he wants to use it. The manuals that I have seen fail on the trail woould have failed no matter what brand they were. When you drop the weight of a truck on a hub it will break. When people break them under more normal conditions it is because they were not fully engaged, so I would put that back on the ownerfor not properly maintaining them.