Customer Reviews

Wagner 0525002 Power Painter Max with Optimus

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've been using Wagner Power painters for nearly 30 years now and have yet to be disappointed, this one seems to be no exception. I bought the power painter MAX in spite of reading all the negative reviews about the MAX and the PLUS. Almost all the negatives seemed to deal with inexperienced operators in my opinion. I bought this one to replace my 4th power painter that wore out a year or so ago and I haven't had a need for one until now.
I had an old aluminum awning I was throwing out but a neighbor down the block asked if he could have it. I figured that would be a good test for the power painter because if the paint job didn't come out OK, the guy getting the awning could repaint it. Well, with the negative reviews in mind, I dug out a 12 year old can of Glidden Gripper primer. A very thick exterior primer, and mixed in some equally old and somewhat chunky Emulsabond. Emulsabond is a primer/conditioner to enhance a paints ability to stick to weathered and chalky surfaces. I set up the sprayer and tested it with water. I always do that with airless sprayers. In case it hadn't been thoroughly cleaned or something the last time it was used it gives a chance to work out the problems without wasting expensive paint and also eliminates the mess. I dumped about a quart of the old, unscreened paint in the cup and gave it a couple of 30 second bursts but it wouldn't prime. I added about 3 oz of Floetrol, another conditioner to aid spraying, and tried again. It primed in about 15 seconds. I shot the underside of the awning and about half the top side and got a couple of globs come out. I pulled the motor off the cup and scraped the "floaties" off the pickup screen, topped off the cup and finished painting.
Bottom line was it went very well. All told, it took about an hour and a half to pull the awning up to a work area, break out the power washer and clean it up, put the power washer away, set up the painter, paint the awning, clean up the painter and put it away.

THE PROS
-Very quick, moves a lot of paint in a hurry so you need to keep moving. Remember 7.2GPH is a quart in a little over 2 minutes. You can empty a 1-1/2 quart cup in 3 min.
-Decent pattern, although this job didn't offer much opportunity to try to many variations.
-Overspray was a lot less than I expected. For the most part paint went where I wanted it.
-Easy assembly/dissassembly and clean up. tip - ignore the "easy garden hose cleanup" procedure outlined in the manual. It was written by people who want to sell the things. IMHO, that method will not get the unit clean enough and you may never get a second use out of it. I just get a bucket of warm soapy water and take the sprayer apart, throwing all the parts except the motor in the bucket. I turn the cup upside down over the paint can to recover the leftover paint and wash all the parts while the cup is draining. Then I wash the cup and reassemble the sprayer with a few drops of oil down the pickup and overflow ports.

THE CONS
-Noisy, kind of the nature of the beast.
-Heavy and the vibration can be painful. I am not a large person (5'6", 160 lbs, 67 yrs old) and after about 10 minutes continuous use I was glad I was done. I only use these "buzz bombs" for small jobs, less than a gallon of paint. If you want to paint a house or garage, I would recommend a Spray-Tech or Grayco, easier to use and much easier on the body. I have a Spray tech for the bigger stuff.

Just a couple of more tips on airless sprayers.
-Make sure to follow the directions about using a few drops of machine oil in the pickup and overflow tubes. Greatly aids in the sprayers ability to prime.
-Always check it out with water first.
-Use a paint conditioner such as Floetrol or Wagners brand (don't recall that name) instead of water to thin latex. The conditioner contains surfactants which allows the paint to flow without watering it down. To a point, to much of a good thing seldom is.

After reading the reviews I was convinced the folks who gave this sprayer low marks were not familiar with spray painting, or with paint sprayers in general. Now I'm convinced I was right. I went ahead and bought it, and have used it constantly for a month now and can tell you it's great for small jobs. It fits the need for someone like me, a general contractor doing renovations and additions. I use it for spraying Sherwin Williams Pro Classic Latex - which is a paint that absolutely requires spraying to get a good even finish - on pieces of trim or molding or baseboards, before installation. You can lay out five or six pieces, fill the cup, spray, and clean it up in ten minutes.
This sprayer is NOT for a person who wants to paint their whole house. They should buy a good airless sprayer. I have an AirTech and use it for big jobs. The kind where you stick it into a five gallon bucket and spray for several hours.
And though this sprayer comes with a backpack bucket and an extension so you can hook up to a big bucket of paint six feet away, I threw all that in the garbage can. You use this sprayer with the cup for small jobs. Period. And forget all the power settings. You'll put it on number four, the highest speed, and turn the volume up to the max. That way you are taking advantage of the 7.2 gph power to get a real fine mist, especially with latex, which is what makes spray painting look good.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you want to paint things that are laid flat on a worktable, or between sawhorses, you must fill the cup completely so that you can tilt it down. If the suction tube sucks air it sends big blobs of paint out. So you have to work with it a bit to know when to stop and top off the cup if you are doing work where you are essentially pointing down. If you are painting horizontally it's not as bad, but unless it's something where the paint isn't going to run down the wall it's better to paint things that are laid flat. At least with gloss paint that you have added Floetrol to. That's another thing, always put Floetrol or an extender in the latex paint to keep it running smoothly and let it flow out into a gloss.

For the price and the ease of clean up it's a winner.

A tip for clean up - I spray the entire unit with WD 40 periodically. Plastic and all. That way the paint doesn't adhere as much. And after a month of using it every other day it only has a couple of specks of paint on it. But you have to spray and then pour the leftover paint back into the can and then go and clean it right away. Otherwise the little parts inside get gummed up.

Graco is just releasing an 18volt cordless cup painter that has a distinct advantage over all these Wagners and other cup sprayers: it has a tilting suction feed cup so that you can spray straight up and straight down and not run dry. In other words, as you tilt the sprayer, the curved feed line inside rotates to the lowest point in the cup. So you can go a lot longer without refilling. But that little puppy is $500. Now, if you can afford it for small jobs, that would beat this model hands down. But for $150 and a little bit of effort refilling the cup continuously it's a lot better deal. And, as I say, if you're doing a big job you want the full on airless, anyway.

For the money I give it a five.

I used the Wagner Power Paint Sprayer, after reading reviews written by several kind souls at this site. Following their recommendations and the sprayer's own instructions, I used the sprayer to apply water based primer and color-coat latex paint to my living/dinning room (walls and ceiling) having a total sq ft of about 1300. (It is a big room) The ceiling is textured (not popcorn) plaster that precludes any use of a roller or brush application.

In addition to following the instruction manual and the recommendations posted on Amazon, I would suggest the following:
1) plan the paint application to avoid any breaks longer than 3-8 minutes--any longer and you risk clogging the unit and becoming frustrated,
2) consider thinning the paint using water or additive, even if the paint says that thinning is not required (I followed the additive's suggestion (8oz / gal),
3) use the back-pack accessory if you need more than a 1/2 gal, the back-back can handle up to 1.5 gal if needed, allows use of both hands, and can be held as an over-the-shoulder (which I found more convenient)
4) avoid the paint-can attachment, while it looks good and seems simple, is not stable enough as the pickup clip slips off the can-lip and air can get into the line, plus the can handle will bite into your hand as you hold it,
5) if stopping for longer than 10 minutes clean the unit,
6) to clean the unit, completely disassemble the sprayer,
7) disassemble the sprayer and allow the parts to soak in warm water as you clean up one part at a time, and
8) as you've read #5,6,7, expect to take 30-45 minutes for each cleaning (hence suggestion #1 to plan short breaks, if any once painting begins), For me clean up was longer than the 10min I found in a Wagner video.

My sprayer has 4 speeds and a 10-click adjustable flow control. I used speed 2, with the flow control set at 3 clicks from the lowest setting. The coverage was manageable with minimal drip/runs. Any time I stopped to relocate the ladder, I wiped the tip with a moist cloth to pick up any paint flowing from the tip.

We bought this to help paint our house. After assembling the product, we tested it as suggested and the instead of a nice even spray, it spit out in globs. The paint was not a paint that needed to be thinned either. Then the suction didn't work. After breaking it down to clean, we put it together again and ran into the same problem. So we boxed it up and shipped it back for a refund, then went to our rental company and rented a professional sprayer for a little more than we paid for the Wagner. It was ironic that after our issues, I ran into at least a dozen people who have had the same problem with Wagner sprayers. I would recommend not buying this product!!!

Sprays blobs no matter what settings you use or how hard you try to work the flow control. Don't waste your time or money with this sprayer!

I purchased a Wagner Power max several months ago to paint several doors. It took 45 minutes to get the sprayer to spray properly before work could begin. When complete I carefully and throughly cleaned the sprayer then put it away for future use toiday I spent 2 hours and the longest I could get a proper spray pattern was 15 second. I tried every trouble shooting tip in the manualto no effect. So now I have lost a day of work and have to start tomorrow with rollers instead of saving time and work it has cost me more. Wagner has no review section on there site nor a simple way to file a complaint so I have to assume product support is not a priority.

A good Quality sprayer! Started off a little rough (spit globs a little at first) but then worked great! I used a very heavy paint for metal and it still worked beautifully!

This product is excellent. It worked exactly as advertised. I painted over 300 feet of fence, 2 benches and a 30x30 foot deck with Behr latex deck paint and had no problems. The documentation that was included with the product is very easy to understand. I used only the paint container. I did not try the backpack or try painting directly from the can.

If the painter has one short-coming, it would be the cleanup time. It takes me 45 minutes to clean the painter. Considering the time it saved me over hand painting, its worth it.

I read the other reviews here on Amazon and the internet before purchasing and decided to buy this product anyways based on being a painter for the past 24 years and figuring I'd be able to work out the glitches other were encountering. I was wrong! Followed the intructions and mixed the paint to the recommended consistency. Got a scrap piece of drywall to test it out before spraying the actual room and glad I did. The sprayer took a few seconds to siphon the paint from the container and started spitting. Turned all the settings to maxium and after running it a bit, the flow started to come out smoother. Started spraying the scrap drywall piece and noticed the finsh was about the same as a light spray-on texture or if I rolled it on with a medium knapp paint roller. Took the sprayer apart, cleaned it, put it back together, thinned the paint some more, re-tested it out the sprayer on the scrap drywall piece and the results only came out slightly better. Cleaned it, put it back in the box and returned it back to Amazon. I have a professional airless sprayer and bought this sprayer with the idea of it doing the small jobs where I didn't want to drag the big one out. The finish this sprayer leaves, the mess it makes and the time it takes to clean it, I am better off just using my big airless sprayer. I can only recommend it if it doesn't really matter the type of finish one has to have or you have an outside project where paint drips are not as much an issue. For me, it did not work as advertised. The only good thing I have to say about this transaction is that Amazon has the best customer service as usual.

this is the second elec. Wagner i have purchased i gave my first one to my father he would not stop bugging me about it so i bout my self this one to replace the other one and it works perfect! i dont no how these other people are un happy with there painter mine works just like on tv!..lol but i got mine at lowes not the web you have to be careful some stuff on the web could be factory seconds etc. wagner has been doing there thing for like 20 to 30 years