Harbor Freight Airless Paint Sprayers: What Users Say About These Tools' Disadvantages

A good paint sprayer can be a handy tool to own, particularly when paired with other useful paint spraying accessories. It doesn't matter if you want to repaint the walls of a shed or house, or if you just want to put a fresh coat on your decks and fences; a quality sprayer can make the work go much faster and smoother than spreading it with rollers and brushes. Pneumatic sprayers (sprayers that are powered by compressed air) have been the standard for a long time. These are easy to control and offer plenty of power, but they can be cumbersome to operate as your tool will need to be tethered to an air compressor. Now, we're starting to see more and more "airless paint sprayers" enter the market, though reviews on them are often mixed.

Harbor Freight has built its business by creating products that are designed to be comparable to those made by big-name brands, and then selling them at a steep discount. It seems that the company has also branched out into manufacturing airless paint sprayers. There are currently four models available, made by two different brands: three electric models from Avanti and one cordless model from Bauer. Before purchasing one of these sprayers, you may want to know more about them, like how the Harbor Freight airless paint sprayers work, what kind of specifications they each have, and, perhaps most importantly, the disadvantages that users have complained about when using these tools.

Harbor Freight sells two standing airless paint sprayers, both of which are made by Avanti. Both of these models have ratings of over four stars, but they've also received their fair share of complaints from customers who were less than satisfied with their performance.

The first and largest of these is the Avanti Paint, Primer, and Stain Sprayer. This is a full-sized sprayer with built-in wheels and a dolly handle to transport it to any location where you need to paint. It has a ¾ horsepower, 1,000-3,000 PSI pump that promises to atomize and spray unthinned paints, primers, and stains. It comes with a flexible suction tube that allows it to pull directly from both one and five-gallon paint containers. This sprayer has a 4.4 out of 5 on the Harbor Freight website, though it has accumulated 139 1-star reviews. Several customers complained of leakage, paint clogging, and dribbling from the tip, but the biggest complaints were about the suction tube not working properly. "We read the manual over and over again to try and get the pump to prime, and it wouldn't pull any liquid through the inlet tube," said one customer. "The inlet had 0 suction, and seemed to be blowing air even. "

The other standing option is the smaller, but pricer Avanti Professional Airless Paint, Primer, and Stain Sprayer. This offers 1 Horsepower and 450-3,000 PSI and also has a flexible suction tube. It has significantly fewer reviews, but has a respectable score of 4.6 out of 5. The more critical reviews that it has received complained of the gun leaking, Harbor Freight not offering replacement parts, and one instance of the intake hose cracking and making a mess.

Now it's time to turn to the handheld models. These require the user to frequently add paint to an attached container, but offer the added benefit of occupying less storage space and making it much easier to set up and move around, making them ideal for small projects.

The Avanti 2.5 Amp Handheld Airless Sprayer is the first of these, with a maximum PSI of 2,000, two-speed control, quick primer, and the ability to use both horizontal and vertical spray patterns. There aren't currently any reviews of this sprayer on the Harbor Freight website. It's unclear why no one has reviewed the tool on the retailer's official site, but there are a handful of comments from users on Harbor Freight's YouTube video from when it first announced the tool two years ago. Most seemed impressed with it, though one user did complain that it has "a ton of overspray."

The Bauer 20V Cordless Handheld Sprayer is built using Avanti tech and comes with Avanti accessories, but is powered by the Bauer battery system. It has 2-speed control, a quick-prime system, and is vacuum-sealed to spray even when it's upside down. This one only has two reviews, both of which are 5-star. The only complaint from either was that the tool is a bit heavy between the battery pack and the paint, but there were no complaints about functionality. The Bauer sprayer was first launched in 2022, then seemingly disappeared from the store's shelves for several months before getting relaunched. YouTuber Brian Wingard tested the new model in comparison to the old one and stated that the company addressed several of the previous model's issues.

I've been using power tools for several decades and have painted more than my share of outdoor projects. To consider the disadvantages of Harbor Freight's airless paint sprayers, I began by examining the company's available options. I examined its inventory and looked at the specifications for what was on offer.

Once I had a good feel for the expected quality of Harbor Freight's airless paint sprayers, I took a look at the 1 and 2-star reviews that customers left for each of these products. I specifically looked for complaints that were repeated by multiple reviewers in order to determine which of them seemed most likely to occur. I also wanted to check sources outside of Harbor Freight's own website, so I also took a look at the issues that customers were sharing on forums like Reddit and in YouTube videos. These helped paint a more complete picture of the potential shortcomings of these sprayers, enabling our readers to be better informed about the kind of obstacles they might encounter if they choose to purchase one for their next painting project.