Quick Review

This is just a quick review documenting my first (short) experience with this sprayer.

I just bought and tried this sprayer and so you understand, I know very little about these. The reason I bought this particular sprayer was cost and I figured that the outboard turbine would be more powerful that the ones with the turbine built on the handle.

I have previously owned an airless sprayer and it was useless except for jobs where quality wasn't important. The previous sprayer would constantly spit and I had no control over the spray pattern. I wasted a lot of paint painting a fence with it. Moving on...

I am getting ready to paint some rooms in my house and figured that I would try this sprayer to get an idea of how to use it before I got serious with it. I was using latex paint straight out of the can with no thinning... I was curious about how that would work. There are only three adjustments on this gun... air flow, paint feed, and spray pattern. I set the air flow at its lowest setting, pulled the trigger, and nothing came out. I kept increasing the air flow until I got a spray, which was (for the material I was using) near maximum output. Paint delivery was smooth and consistent, although the amount of paint coming out was less than ideal if you were painting a wall. I was only painting a door and frame. I tried the different spray patterns and they all worked as expected. Since there were no "stops" I was curious about where to turn the spray head to get the desired pattern. As it turned out, it was easy. You could "hear" and "feel" the air change as you turned the nozzle. The spray patterns were fairly tight and over spray was minimal. After I was done, clean up was a breeze compared to cleaning brushes and paint trays.

Three more things about its use... being a sprayer, I envisioned this cloud of paint being shot around the room getting on everything. That did not happen. I was also concerned about this being a non-bleeder type of HVLP, as "bubba" mentioned. The air never stops coming out of the nozzle, even when the trigger isn't being pulled. It didn't smear the paint and the air was free of paint when the trigger wasn't pulled. I also tried it with water with interesting results.

As for the door and frame... It looks great, much better than the last time I painted it with a roller and brush.

As I said, this is a preliminary review and I will report back after I finish the house. All I can really say is that with un-thinned latex paint and a small job, this product met and exceeded expectations.

What I have gleaned from this experience is that getting a good spray pattern is determined by the amount of air and the amount of paint being drawn into the air flow. If this is off, the results will be less than perfect.