WAGNER ControlPro 250R - Airless Paint Sprayer for Wall & Ceiling/Wood & Metal paint - interior and exterior usage, covers 15 m² in 2 min, 110 bar, adjustable spray pressure, 9 m hose

The instructions are seriously lacking, but once mastered, this machine works well. Took me around 3 hours to figure out the quirks, so to save you some time: 1. contract matt emulsion with the correct filter and nozzle (according to instructions) will need to be watered down by 10-20% 2. the pick up / collector needs to be submerged well below the surface of the paint, otherwise the machine loses pressure, the pump stays on and the gun just dribbles. Its clear to identify, and happened repeatedly when the 10 litre paint tub got down to around half full (despite the pick-up being well submerged. 3. cleaning is best done by pulling through clean water for a few minutes (with spray nozzle removed), then give the gun, filter and pick-up a thorough clean. You can avoid wasting paint by catching the watery paint in a container and use the next day to dilute your neat paint. its not quite as messy as I expected, doing ceilings goes everywhere as you might expect, but with walls its not bad, and the spray focus is pretty good. Its a nice bit of kit that will save time if you have a lot of surface to paint. Probably not ideal for the home, but warehouses, commercial premises etc., its ideal. And at this price, cheaper than hiring something similar.

I purchased the 350 M sprayer and it’s brilliant. I am painting out a large workshop area and I started with the roller and brush method - it took me about 4 days to do half of it when someone told me about the airless sprayers - I had never heard of them. I wish I had sooner - what took me 2 days with the roller and brush I did in 2 hours, it’s amazing and really easy to use and it leaves a really nice finish. So the down side is that you must mask any areas you don’t want spraying and cover the floor really well it’s not so much spills but the fine mist will cover anything you don’t cover. Cleaning the machine isn’t difficult but takes a little longer perhaps than cleaning a roller and tray but who cares when it saves so much time. The machine isn’t bulky or heavy and is easy to move around all you need to do is plug it into a power supply. Would I recommend this product - absolutely - it’s already paid for itself in the time it’s saved me.

Painted our large kitchen in a day. The finish is excellent. The spraying was done in the time it would have taken me to paint one wall with a brush - not the ceiling. That essentially is the good thing. The bad is the time it took to mask up, the disruption, the overspray, the fabric that allowed overspray to seep through. In short, making and cleaning was a nightmare. I came away thinking what a great tool it is in the right circumstances. If you have an empty house to paint, this is the machine for you! If you have several large surfaces to paint, it will do it in no time. Getting the paint mix right was relatively easy. The gun was fine, easy to use... but hard to clean. This is another minus - cleaning the machine and pipework. I wanted it to be spotless so it took a long time. Again, this is all about the amount of painting you have to do - the more the merrier. The less the more miserable. It is that simple.

First time using a spray gun...takes a bit of getting used to! One tip, don't start on a low number, the amount of paint that comes out seems to be the same but not dispersed as well as at higher pressures! After not reading the manual and figuring it out solo, this gun gave great results but you either need to be spraying an empty room with no flooring or spend a ton of time prepping to cover everything. I cannot express EVERYTHING enough! I made the initial mistake of laying a few dust sheets...you need to weigh them down as the spray gun pressure will blow them all over the place and paint will get on the floor Great product though and gave perfect results. Just stand a meter away, high pressure (number 5) and steady / consistent movement to get even coverage

unnecessarily expensive. It is possible to find products that do the same job and are much more affordable. I do house painting work. And you could get into trouble with this machine. I think £400 is wasted. Installation and cleaning are not as easy as one might think. Thank you for allowing me to share my experiences here.

When looking at painting the whole of our barn conversion, I looked at saving money on paying for a professional decorator to paint all internal walls. As I had so many square metres of plastered/skimmed wall to paint I decided to buy this spray gun after looking in to on-line written and video reviews. The results I've got with this spray gun are little short of spectacular. Whilst the painting is really fast, preparation of the wall and masking up windows and steel girders to protect them from the spray does take HOURS. This is not a criticism as preparation for most things is where jobs can be awful or amazing. I went over all walls with my hand to 'feel' for nibs of plaster and removed these with sandpaper and then took time to mask off window frames. I also found a few great tips and hints to get the most out of the gun, such as ensuring the cable was clear of all items to avoid snagging during spraying... and making sure spray starts and ends away from the wall (to avoid drip regions). I've had quite a few trades in and all have been really impressed with the paint job. I cant recommend this product highly enough. It does need cleaning through thoroughly after each panting session but after a few sessions you get pretty slick at emptying the paint back into the tin and as the diluted paint starts coming through, divert this to a separate tin and use later to dilute new paint. I also found that i needed to really look after the nozzle parts. If I took a break I remove the nozzle and wash it through leaving it in warm water for the next session as this can get bunged up leading to 'spits' of paint if left. The great advantage of this system is (i) quality of finish - I could never get a finish like this with a roller or brush (ii) speed - it seems to apply a few coats at once so although it gets through the 10L pots quickly, its putting a thick coat (maybe equivalent to 2-3 coats with a brush?) in one go (iii) consistency - if you are methodical in applying the paint (you have to keep a constant speed or you'll get light patches or pooling of paint) the look is amazing. I've had NO experience painting with a spray gun before buying this and following the instructions you'll get a fantastic paint finish. I found that the finish i got was as good with 'good' paint (paint shops recommended own brand) as it was with expensive brands (such as Dulux). I don't think anyone can tell which rooms are finished with which paint. I'm sure this is due to the spray gun. I didn't find cheaper paint causing any problems with the spray gun indeed, a 5-10% water dilution (with VERY THOROUGH mixing using a drill mixer) was ideal with all paints used. I've not tried the 'Diamond' Dulux paint through the spray gun (for scrubbable areas of wall such as hallways) but I expect it is just as good. I've had 2 offers to buy the machine after I've finished with it... the results have been that good. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

This is a pro tool and committed DIYer. We bought a house that needed every room painting, top to bottom. So we decided to get a tool to do it and do it well. There are three barriers to using an airless sprayer, room prep (masking everything off), spray technique (not applying too much or too little paint is depressingly easy) and clean up (keeping the tool in good working order requires spanner’s to strip everything down after every usage, it is messy and time consuming). The pre spray setup is intimidating, a lot of things to do, in the right order. Not helped at all by awful instructions and lack of clear labels on the sprayer. If Wagner just labelled the Prime/Spray knob it would make it easier, especially for first time users. The instructions are really bad for putting the filter in, it is too easy to put in upside down which is going to get very messy when you start spraying. Also, the manuals are incredibly bad for working out which spray tip with which filter type. It is only clear if you buy additional Wagner filters and there is a useful guide printed on the back of the packet. It took three attempts over three days before we started getting ok results. Each attempt takes quite a while to setup and a lot of time and effort to clean up. The first attempt we used the wrong tip with the wrong filter, which resulted in a spray volume that wouldn’t have challenged an asthmatic ant. The second attempt with the right filter/tip resulted but a paint dilution/ pressure setting that was too high combined with poor spray technique resulted in over spraying and a lot of dripping/ over painting. The third attempt, and it was a moving target, because we used a Matt emulsion for the ceiling, satin emulsion for three walls and another colour for the fourth wall, but we got an ok/good result on that one, the right tip, the right filter, the right spray power and a better technique worked out giving a good result. We started with a little used spare bedroom, that we are putting built in wardrobes into, so most of our mistakes won’t show. Clean up is made harder by Wagner’s design of the main compressor unit, instead of making it streamlined they made it full of paint traps all over it, requiring a lot of fiddly unnecessary clean up in cracks and crevices. A little bit of thought here would make it much easier to clean up. Or I guess just do as the professionals do, don’t clean the unit at all :-). Overall I can see the value and have seen tantalising possibilities of great results, and I am sure as we will get better as we work through the house. Wagner can significantly improve this product by doing a better job with the manual, labelling up controls ob the compressor and designing the case for compressor to make it easier to clean up. Three stars because Wagner could easily make this difficult to master tool much much easier.

Great product and value