Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this sprayer based on amazon reviews and was not disappointed. There is a bit of a learning curve to setup and clean it, but it worked flawlessly. The written instructions are not the best, but it comes with a DVD that helps. And once you understand it, the steps are easy to remember. It's much better than the kind with a cup and well worth the extra money. It can spray in any direction and you only have to hold a light gun instead of a cup full of paint. I did 5 gallons of outdoor latex paint in about an hour. This one sucks the paint directly from the can. With the cup kind, I would have had to refill it 20 or 30 times. The cup kind are sometimes rated at several gallons per hour, but I'm assuming they are not including the endless refilling. It's much faster and better than brushes or rollers. I was painting a shed with lots of grooves. I had tried painting it with a brush and spent hours trying to get the paint into every nook. Rollers would not have helped. The sprayer did the trick and in a fraction of the time. The cleanup, never fun, was fairly painless. For water based paint, you can hook it to a hose and flush out the whole system. Probably took less time than cleaning brushes would have. I got mine at Home Depot for $299.00. I wish I had spent the extra $100.00 for the XR7 since it can take a 0.017 tip and has wheels. It is better suited for 5 gallon cans. The XR5 is not heavy and is easy to move, but you have to haul the 5 gallon can and XR5 together. It has a 25' hose, so I only had to move it a couple of times.