These two makes seem to be the least expensive yet suitable for the hobbyist. Have you tried either? What is good or bad about each? They are selling for about the same price. I heard the hose on the neotech is harder to handle as you paint. How is the hobbyair hose? Any tips on fresh air respirators is appreciated. Need to purchase in near future.

bhawk my I ask for what reason you are buying a fresh air system?? The reason i ask is just wondering if you just plan on painting your resto cars or painting cars for a living? Dont get me wrong I think those fresh air systems are great but for the guy who is doing one or two cars in their lifetime the fresh air is kinda overkill.

As long as you follow the rules on the masks you should have no problems. Just a few rules are that I recall are No facial hair. Those filters are good for roughly 8hrs of service. When you are done painting remove the filters from the mask and store them in a ziploc baggie-prolongs the life time. The 8hrs doesnt mean 8hrs of painting time it means 8hrs exposed to any type of air,so if you leave them exposed overnight they are now junk. The mask will have two filters, a pre filter and activited filter, when you change one change the the other.

But anyway I do feel that no matter if you buy a fresh air or normal mask spend the extra cash and upgrade to the full face mask. Your eyes are a magnet for those fumes, like an open wound. Just to give you an example few weeks ago I painted just the front fenders for my concorde, by the time I got done clearing both of them my eyes felt like they were on fire. Looked like a crying baby with all the tears I had. My eyes hurt the next day. Now when I painted the ENTIRE car i knew I wouldnt be able to withstand all that clear in the air so I bought a full face mask, man Ill tell you I wish I had bought one years ago. No more hurting eyes and plus I think it seals better around the chin then a half mask does.

If I painted everyday no doubt in my mind would I have a full face fresh air, but for someone is just going to paint a car there and here then the full face normal will do just fine...Eric