Ryobi Duet Power Paint System FPR200

This is not a good product. Great in concept but the the hose clamps are very flimsy and don't hold, thus the pressure will cause the hoses to come off....this happened when I was painting inside! Paint went everywhere and took a long to time to get it cleaned up. I would highly recommend NOT purchasing this product. I've heard from others that they had the same problem and will only use it outside.

I'm in the process of fixing up my house to sell - funny how it never occurred to me to fix it up to live in it - and there's a fair bit of painting that has to be done. I recall my parents having an old Black & Decker compressor set that came with a powered roller attachment back in the 70s/80s and my recollection was that it really sped up the hated painting process so I prowled around on Amazon and found the Duet. I was iffy since the reviews seem to be pretty evenly split between "wonderful" and "suck-tacular", but I found one for $25 including shipping and figured at that price if it worked just once I was still ahead of the game.It showed up on time as promised and with all parts intact. A few days later - after obsessively reading and re-reading the instructions - it was painting time. I started on a ceiling using Zinsser Ceiling Paint & Primer which to my not even a little experienced eye seems to be noticeably thicker than regular interior house paint, so it seemed like a good acid test. The room is about 11 x 12 and it took about 25 minutes to get the main part of the ceiling. The roller has a drip tray which means there's a half inch or "dead zone" where the roller won't reach so there was another few minutes of edging to be done which I did later with a regular edging pad.Even though the hose was completely filled with paint, it took a little while for the paint to completely fill the roller so for the first couple of minutes I just zigzagged back and forth over the same spot until I started getting full coverage.As another reviewer mentioned pressing the trigger when pushing the roller then releasing it when pulling helps keep the amount of paint from getting out of hand. I completely forgot the dial on the handle which permits you to change the amount of paint, but found the press and release method worked great, and also helped prevent hand fatigue which another reviewer mentioned.The entire ceiling needed less than a quarter gallon of paint and has dried nice and evenly. Being an utter feeb when it comes to painting I don't know if that's good or bad. There was minimal spillage - there would have been less if I hadn't stepped on the pain can lid... Does that count as a spill though?Another reviewer mentioned that there's no mechanism for an extension rod - which is a minor annoyance for me in my ranch style house with ranch style ceiling heights, but I can see where it would be a big problem for people not living in the 1950s.Then came the clean up - dun dun DUNNN!Oh settle down, it's not THAT bad, and subsequent use of the Duet has honed my cleaning skills to fourth - maybe fifth dan levels. The main thing is to have an empty paint can which - since I was using water soluble paint - I filled first with hot tap water and a squirt of Dawn dish soap, then a second time with just hot tap water. If you're using oil based paint the instructions suggest a couple of specific products and since there are who knows what parts inside which will react in who knows what ways with the guts of the Duet, I'd follow those instructions like I was reading the operating instructions for a parachute as the ground is approaching.I taped the trigger on the roller handle down with a couple of looks of masking tape and let it slowly run the can empty into an old 5 gallon bucket. While that was happening I cleaned the roller like any other paint roller.The only tricky part was ensuring that the - for lack of the proper term - "paint applicator panel" was clean. This is a slightly curved panel that rests against the roller. It's got a number of small holes running down its length which are where the paint comes out and onto the roller. To clean it I just held one end under warm running water for a couple of minutes until the water ran clear, then did the same from the other end.Total clean up was about 15 to 20 minutes.I've used the Duet three times since then and it's worked great each time.

Best thing about this product is that it looks cool. It was terrible. I own 15+ Ryoby tools and I really like them. That's why I decided to try this. I can't believe Ryobi would sell something this pathetic. I connected it to a can of Sherwin Williams paint and turned it on. I had a hunch there was going to be a problem when it took about 20 minutes for paint to go thru the tube and reach the roller. Then, it pumped so LITTLE paint, I doubt it could have kept 5 q-tips went with paint. I'm assuming that while mine did pump paint, it was actually defective. Then I had to spend 45 minutes cleaning it to return it. VERY AGGRAVATED TODAY. There's some good reviews out there -- so maybe this one was simply defective. But, for painting -- I'm going back to Wagner

On other sites I read this is a discontinued machine. What a pity, it is a very good machine, and surprisingly cheap. It is easy to use, you just open the 1 gallon paint, place it in the machine and start using it. The design of this machine is different that the similar painting machines. While the others usually pump the paint inside the roller and you need to have a special perforated roller, this one pumps the paint to the outside of the roller. This can lead to drops, but with a little testing you can avoid the dropping issue. Cleaning is a bit more tricky, but if you follow the recommended way, the it just takes a little time. Very clever that the paint tube connectors have some kind of stop mechanism, so if you accidentally unplug the tube or the head, there will be only a few drops instead of a complete flood. It is also not too loud.The only thing I don't like that the tube comes out horizontally from the machine, so if you are not careful enough (like me...), then it is easy to break a connector.

I opened the box and was excited to start using my new power roller because I had large room to paint that was going to take around 5 gallon of paint. I bought the behr paint and started painting. The power roller started just great doing a good job and easy to use but after running about 15 minutes it just quit pumping the paint and the motor started squalling and then just a motor running. Would not pump so I lost the paint in the power roller with no way to clean and had a mess of everything. This has caused me hours to just get the mess cleaned up. This was a piece of junk that cost way more than I had paid for the machine.

We purchased this paint system despite the negative reviews and it worked great. Having read reviews about it coming apart and pumping paint on the floor, I changed the clamps on the hose before its first use. It would still be easy to unintentionally depress the roller handle release which we did manage to do but recovered in time to prevent spillage. Other than that, the system worked exactly as we had hoped. I have owned two Wagner roller systems that worked great the first time they were used but would not work after being stored for a couple of years. At the price Amazon has offered this Ryobi, we will consider it disposable. If it works next time we decide to paint, we will consider it a bonus. The great thing about the Ryobi too, is that it will use any roller. We did not have to buy a proprietary roller at three times the price of a regular roller.