Wagner Spraytech 2439393 Smart Sidekick Power Paint Roller, Yellow

This works great. I painted the hole outside of a 1600sq ft house and 24x24 garage in a matter of few days. It saved me $6000 from having to pay to a painter. Very quick and easy to use. I did go through 3 rollers. And easy to clean.

This definitely saves time once you have the unit up and going. I would say the time to paint a room was reduced by 50%-70%. However, I have a few observations that may be helpful:1) It’s not as easy to clean as indicated. You have to put the input hose into a bucket of soapy water and run, per instructions, about 10 minutes. That requires emptying the bucket at least once or twice. Further, the roller is a booger to clean with the holes that allow the paint to come through. I clean this while letting the unit run, and it always takes me much longer to clean the roller.2) you almost always use an extension handle while painting, so the on/off button on the roller itself is not super convenient. Don’t know how to fix that unless they had a remote on/off they could provide with future models. I just always use an extension rod, and I think most do.3) It is nearly impossible to get all the water out of the line after cleaning - so you will have some come through the hose prior to painting next time. You need to watch that and make sure it doesn’t get in your roller; then stop when paint looks to be coming out before putting the roller on.4) Due to the time to setup, takedown, and clean, this is most useful for a larger area. I once only painted a ceiling of one room with it. I spent 3x the time with setup, clean, and takedown as I did actually painting.5) It slings paint unlike any roller I’ve ever used - probably due to saturation of roller and coverage. I found that I need to cover everything in the room because small specs of paint will fly off the roller as you roll.6) However, it is a very even flow of paint resulting in a very uniform finish - better than I’ve ever achieved with a manual roller alone. For this reason, I still find it worthwhile to use despite the additional time necessary for setup and cleaning. Never have a problem with coverage or an even paint job.7) You are still using the standard nap roller that you choose to use - so you will still need to inspect the wall for small missed spots due to drywall imperfections etc like you normally would. I also find the rollers very hard to get perfectly clean, they likely cannot be reused easily. I have successfully reused only one roller.For the drawbacks I mentioned, I still gave four stars. The end result is very good quality - just need to manage job size and time accordingly.

Works great for What Little machine that it is

I bought this on the recommendation from a friend. I dislike painting but this device doesn't make it so bad. My wife and I are elderly (LOL, almost 60) and wanted to paint our interior after 15 years with the same paint. This weekend we needed to do our stair well and the entire upstairs. We were dreading this large area and the vast walls. This was the first time we used the Sidekick Power paint roller. In a little bit over 2 hours, the first coat of paint was done (we are using a primer so we can go with a lighter color). We did notice a stark time difference when we painted the downstairs, which we broke into 3 separate rooms and each took us all day to complete. We were impressed.Clean up is a breeze. If you are using latex paint all you need is a 5 gallon bucket with warm water and dish soap. Run this through the Sidekick for 10 minutes. Run air through to clear out all the cleaning solution for about 5 minutes. Then hand wash 2 other components which could take a bit more time depending on the amount of paint used.The roller after cleaning looked almost brand new. The knap sprung back up to look like it did when I first began.A few times I had to place the roller on an extension stick. The roller is equipped with a standard handle size. I was so glad that I did not have to keep bending over to replenish the roller paint or refill the paint pan so I can bend over to get more paint. This was a good purchase. It made painting easy peasey. I highly recommend this especially if you have a big area to paint.

TL;DR skip to the "PREVENTION" paragraph below if you're just setting up your machine to stave off problems.The pneumatic control button depends on a single O-ring and a bit of white grease for integrity (see picture), unlike every other pneumatic control (pressure washers, hot tub systems etc.) that provide sealed covers to prevent contamination. Given that the unit has to be washed down with soap and water or mineral spirits, it’s a matter of time before the seal fails and the button assembly starts aspirating fluids causing the controls to fail. For me that time was three days of working on a week-long fence project.Worse, the spring that returns the button is so weak that it will turn on and off almost at random as you move the handle or lean it against things - there is no guard around it to prevent contact. As the control gets contaminated (and the control tube begins to aspirate fluids), it often won’t return, won’t turn on or off or other horrors.The solutions I used:I dismantled both the pump case and control handle and blew wash water out of the control line with a bit of compressed air - pumping it away from the actual switch, which is next to the pump within the main Sidekick unit. If you do this, be sure to unplug the unit, since the whole system is 120 volts in the case (also bad, but that’s for another day).I added a second spring concentric with the original to make the button return (and the control) more positive, then re-lubed the O-ring with synthetic grease and reassembled it.PREVENTION: Finally, and most importantly, I wrapped the control button with several layers of poly, sealed it up with very flexible tape (PVC electricians tape in this case). See the picture - you can use anything that does the job and it seemed to prevent any significant water/stain contact. If I had been using an oil-based stain that required mineral spirits for cleaning, this would have gotten a bit more complicated since it would have dissolved the tape adhesive. You may have to replace this impromptu cover every few days but it’s better than being left with a dead unit.With that, the unit survived the endless fence project and is still working rather well. To be fair, warts and all, it likely saved me at least two days of work.This whole fundamental failure of design reeks of “value engineering” for a product where Wagner dominates the market and has no real competition. At a guess they contracted the whole unit and the distinguished committee that allowed it to carry the Wagner name likely has never actually used it (or much of anything else hands-on). Pity.