Our entire flat needed painting and lazy little me that can't be bothered with all the bending and paint pouring decided this was the best option for us. After all, we had 5 rooms and a hallway that needed painting and I could see my back hurting before I started. Was I impressed? Sure. The shop took it back without a single question as if it had been returned a million times! No wonder it had £20 off when we bought it.

~~ The Product ~~

I think most people by now have seen the adverts on TV for the revolutionary Dulux Paint Pod that requires no pouring of paint into tubs and no bending down to refill your roller. It is basically a big machine that sends the paint through a tube, into the roller and out onto your wall via a little trigger that you control. Sounds easy right? Wrong!!

~~ Price ~~

I thought it looked a little bit pricey at £60 considering each pot of 5l paint is £25 and you can only use the Paint Pod paint with it because it's thinner and flows through the tube easily. However, when I saw it at B&Q for £39.99 and the two pots of paint for £40 I thought we might aswell give it a try. Value for money? No way.

~~ First Impressions ~~

I was actually impressed at the instructions and the way the product was packaged etc to ensure everything arrived to the consumer in one piece. I took it all out, read the instructions thoroughly so I made sure I was doing everything the right way and assembling it correctly. The paint slotted in nice and easily and there was even a little storage point for your roller if you needed a break or to set it down to paint the edges.

It came with a little tub that you could pour some paint into via the tube and a cute little edging brush that I just knew would come in handy for my other half (I hate edges with a vengeance and end up painting half the ceiling!).

So I toddled off to start in the smallest room - the bathroom. Oh what a surprise I had in store for me.

~~ Using it ~~

Well using it seemed simple enough in that you pressed the trigger and paint came out onto the roller and you simply had to use the roller as you usually would. Here was my first problem - paint was only coming out of the left side of the roller and the right side was wondering why it was there at all when it stayed a pretty white colour. I turned the roller around wondering if i'd been holding it an an angle or doing something wrong but still no paint on one side. I started rolling that side into the paint that I'd put on the wall and the roller did change colour eventually... but it still didn't paint anything. Not an ideal start!!

Pressing the trigger was more hard work than anything should be as if you pressed it for too long there was paint piling up on the wall (in no particular place just randomly and annoying) and if you didn't press it for long enough nothing came out. I thought oh well just got to keep trying cos I'm sure there's a nack to it. One wall later and I felt like screaming at the thing and throwing it out the window.

My other half was calming using the little edging brush and marvelling about how well it was doing the edges and what a fantastic idea it had been to buy it. A marvellous idea to spend almost £100 buying a roller and paint all so he could use a cute brush?!!!

The roller action was easy on the wall but I would actually say a normal roller is easier and a million times less hassle.

Anyway, by this time my hand was cramping but holding the roller so tight and I forced him to swap. Much to my satisfaction Mr I can do anything couldn't figure out why the paint was only coming out of one side either!! I'll say one thing though, he was right about the fantastic little edging brush!

~~ The Paint ~~

Well you would think for all the hassle I'd been through painting the wall it would have looked brilliant - it certainly didn't! It dried a horrendous colour that looked nothing like the pot (a sort of odd greyish thing, for my bathroom? eww!) and there were more streaks than I could possibly tell you about. Silly us hadn't bought another roller so were forced to finish the bathroom using the paintpod and it took us a good 4 or 5 hours to do when normally it would have taken 1 max. I'm sure it would have been quicker to abandon it and go and buy another roller but when you've spent so much you want to give it a good go and be sure it's not you at fault.

~~ Cleaning ~~

One of the main attractions of the paintpod for me was the so called self cleaning feature. Place the roller into the slot and press the clean button and away you go. Or do you? Our first attempt stopped after about 40 seconds and we sat looking at it wondering why it had stopped when the instructions stated the cycle would take 5 minutes. We had put things where they were supposed to be, filled up the paintpod with the warm water you were supposed to use and could only feel like we had eyes laughing at us the entire time. Time for attempt 2.

We cleaned out the water, filled it to the line again and pressed the clean button. It ran for the expected 5 minutes and couldn't have been much noisier had it tried. I'm sure our downstairs neighbour was cursing us by this time as it was 11pm and probably all he could hear! 5 Minutes were up, the machine stopped and hey presto, there was still paint everywhere!! The tube and roller looked slightly cleaner but they were a long way from being clean so attempt 3. Empty dirty water, fill paint pod with clean warm water and pressed the clean button. Attempt 3 went the same as attempt 1 and off we went to change the water... AGAIN!!

Attempt 4 took some of the paint out and by this point we were cursing at each other more than the damn machine!! Did we ever get it clean? No!

~~ The finished product ~~

The streaks stayed and the colour didn't improve much to my disgust and the next day we admitted defeat and trailed back to B&Q with our less than delightful paintpod in tow. We went straight to customer services who appeared to be less than surprised it was going back and asked us the minimum of questions and happily took it back reporting a fault with the roller (the paint only coming out of one side). Usually stores would argue with you and do the whole are you sure you're using it right routine but we had the impression it wasn't the first and definitely wouldn't be the last to go back.

~~ My Verdict ~~

Would I ever recommend this to someone? Sure, but only if they wanted a very slow and painful death and had a never ending supply of warm water to use. But seriously, would I give it to my worst enemy? No way. The paint was awful, the machine was even worse and we ended up painting out wall 4 times with ordinary paint and rollers to remove any trace of the paint from our bathroom. All I can say is thank god we started with the smallest room!!

The cleaning fiasco was the biggest joke of all and it would probably have been two hours quicker to clean the roller ourselves.

I will add the smallest of confessions though and admit that we forgot to put the fab little edging brush back into the box and I used it happily knowing I'd at least got something for my inconvenience. It was a genuine mistake and I'm sure everyone else would do the same :P

One sentence to round it up? Stop being lazy and buy a cheap roller that you can bin if you really can't stand cleaning it.

Can Dooyoo add a no star rating? I feel cheated having to give it even a star!!