The folks worrying about the gearing were the mud wallowing crowd from High Lifter, so that is a very specialized application.

Ideally, if one needs a "work" quad, they would pick an SRA machine and not an IRS anyway. Honda kept the 420 fairly sporty, and perhaps that was their goal with the AT....hope so....so ultra low gearing wasn't that important.

I do wish both machines were 50 pounds lighter. Obviously, Honda wants to keep the price down, so they don't use an lot of alloy parts. Even alloy weels would help for starters....