Graco Magnum 257025 Project Painter Plus Paint Sprayer, Multicolor

As a painter of 45 yrs I have used many graco high dollar pumps for work and many other brand`s , I sort of bought this unit along with another very expensive powerful unit as a toy just for kick`s to see what the modern world is up to these day`s , so I was doing my own home for fun and I was using behr marquee exterior flat paint , if you know about this material it is one of the thickest on the market it is an outstanding lasting paint , I thought for sure I was going to need thinning but I did not do it and went for it straight out of the gallon can , after you do the initial prep cleaning that is needed before you put paint in the machine , this thing can suck the chrome off of a trailer hitch ball , I sprayed 17 gallons over a 6 hour period and the pump did not fail me for one second and I did not even use a strain bag over the intake tube as I always do because I really did not care after only paying 200 bucks for this thing , I still cleaned it up as I always do with a 5 gallon bucket of hot water with a tiny spoon of lemon dish soap in it ran out the 5 gallons of water then a clean 2 gallon bucket of water then I put the pump armor thru her and I fell in love , my guy`s think I am crazy carrying this thing around with me every where like a six pack of soda, it weighs nothing , now here is my bad side of this review , I took another pump into my airless repair shop that most of southern calif uses for over 50 yrs they are outstanding and honest on all pump`s , I was talking about my new toy and how happy it made me as a painter he said oh boy watch out I have had a dozen or so of those come in and there is nothing I can do for them they are actually disposable , I said your kidding me , he was very serious and showed me a few that were in his recycle pile , they all had leaked paint out of the back of the machine from inside the plastic shroud and are not fixable , when you buy this unit you must register it the same day with graco do not hesitate before you touch it , just fill out the paper and send it in and the customer service at graco is out of this world they will simply send you another unit asap if you need it I say buy one for any job it will pay its self off just with the 50 dollar hose and the 125 dollar gun alone and the unit actually coast only as much as a good quality 5 gallon bucket of paint.

Wow!So nice and easy to use. We look like experts, professional painters! Well worth the money. My wife kept trying to pull the sprayer away from me so she could paint lol.

I made a little cart for this using some scrap wood and a mover's dolly that we already had. It holds the machine, a 2-gallon bucket of paint, and some tools and rags. Cut a hole in the top of your two-gallon bucket to slip the suction hose in so you don't have an open-top paint bucket sloshing around. Be sure to use the suction-hose filter. The machine is easy to use if you carefully read the extensive instructions several times beforehand. The extra set of paint-proof, water-proof laminated instructions is very nice.Then, fill up a bucket with clean water, and practice spraying with that. Get used to operating the power switch, priming it, PRESSURE RELIEF, locking the gun, and spraying with the water first. This will really help you to get more comfortable with the upcoming paint job, and you won't be fumbling around for the instructions. The little attachment on the end of the drain tube didn't make any sense - I removed mine. I sprayed 200 feet of five-foot-high concrete wall in two hours. It makes very little noise. It only runs when you are spraying. The spring in the gun handle is not overly stiff, and the gun itself operates very smoothly.They say you don't need to thin the paint, but the Behr Ultra Premium Exterior paint I used was so thick that it was close to a gel. I went ahead and thinned it with about 4-5 oz of filtered water per gallon of paint (they recommended a max of 8 oz per gallon). This made the paint a lot less like gel and much more like paint.Cleanup is made much easier by the fact you can use an included accessory to hook your garden hose into the suction tube and just let the water run through to flush it out. There is a small bottle of Pump Armor preservative included. One part of the directions say to dump the Pump Armor straight in the suction tube, but you will waste a lot this way. Instead, remove the suction tube and use the bottle of preservative and the included short vinyl tube to force the preservative up into the pump (instructions wrapped around the bottle).The negative things are the stiff hose, and the fact that the supplied gun does not have a swivel. No swivel between the gun and the stiff hose means you are constantly fighting with the hose a little.You can get pretty close to the coverage stated on the paint can with this thing. I figured I was getting 300 square feet per gallon, but I was painting very coarse pitted concrete, so painting a normal smooth wall should give you the full coverage of 400 square feet. I started off with the pressure set to full blast -- that was not necessary. Setting the pressure half to two-thirds of the way up used less paint, and produced less over-spray. The supplied tip is a 515, which is the biggest size you are supposed to use with this sprayer. It gives a fan that is 10-12" wide.The last amazing thing was that I didn't get any paint on me, my glasses, my shoes...anything! Cannot speak to reliability, but I cleaned the machine as well as I could and we will see what happens the next time I fire it up.Update 09-08-2023: Have now used it for three jobs without problems.