Late to the party here, but Ill chime in since I own the 22" planer.
For starters, no Im not gonna justify my cheap purchase. I had a 15" wide board that I needed to face and I just dont have a way to do that with power tools. I'd like to say I spent 30$ on this tool (yes 30$), I wasnt expecting much, I just wanted this board flat.
When I got it, it wasnt ... "flat". Like, someone took a garage sale yard stick to it and called it good "flat". I blued it up and it had maybe 30% contact, severe high spots on the outsides and no contact at the blade. For a jointer thats just totally not usable of course; but also not "unfixable". Lots of emery cloth working up to 3000 grit on my surface plate took it to perfectly flat. This is actually a lot more delicate than it seems because you have to keep the face completely 90 to the sides ideally. This process took a few hours if I recall correctly. That all said and done, it was pretty good and flat, and the body of the plane is really solid and had no obvious defects I could find.
Next up? The handles. They use rosewood handles (or they did at the time, CITES might have a cow now), but it was finished in this god awful applied lacquer( epoxy?? It was really really thick). But being solid wood, they refinished really nice. The frog and capstan were incredibly solid and the action was really smooth all around. So for the guts it was turning out to be a pain, but really nice bones.
The iron. The iron is TRASH. I think mine was over tempered, because while it sharpened real easy, the tip of the edge just curled out. It was totally unusable and I emailed grizzly and they just sent me a new one. The new one was ... not great either. More usable than the other, but Im not sure what kinda steel it is, but it wouldnt hold an edge. So I got fed up and I had invested so much time in it at this point, I decided to get a hock blade replacement. Just drops right in, no problem. Im FAIRLY Sure I got the O1 blade? Im not super positive, it was on sale for 20$ so I jumped on it.
My verdict? If i spent 150$ on this, I'd be quite upset. I see them crop up on amazon around that price lately and its definitely a hard pass. HOWEVER... for 30$ (+ replacement blade), if you have the capability to flatten the sole, set it up properly, take the time and get it "just right", yeah its mad decent.
Its on sale for 40$ at this website, I have no affiliation to it. If you're incapable or unwilling to do the work, its absolutely a hard hard pass for sure. I dont hand plane much honestly, so I really wasnt looking to spend 300$ on a nice #7 for something Ill use twice a year maybe. So for the like 75 bucks shipped for everything, and a few hours of elbow grease, I am quite pleased with the performance and feel of this plane.
https://www.larrycloth.com/grizzly-22-inch-plane-smoothing-h7568
Admittedly, I dont have a huge repertoire of hand planes to work with, but I do own a vintage stanley #4 ish?, a WWII era corsair scrub plane, and a Sargent again somewhere around #4 as well. (I got all 3 for 15$ to refurbish, quite the bargain). I know the stanleys are quite well regarded, and the corsairs seem to be hidden gems, but I honestly say they are all very similar in quality at this point. The sargent has the best frog, and the corsair has these weird handles, but nothing strikes me as diminished quality in the grizzly? Ive had it for a couple years now, shes getting a little rusty, but still performs just fine. Maybe the adjustment isnt as nice, but I dont fiddle with it much after I set it anyway. As I said, I really dont handle plane too terribly much, just oversized boards.
Ive had the misfortune of owning kobalt and harbor freight hand planes. This isn't even nearly as close to as bad lol. Out the box, its a paper weight, but its definitely serviceable and once tuned up is quite nice over all. And boy is it HEAVY.