The PaintSmart Trayz is an easy to use roller paint tray that is designed especially for use on a ladder and as a regular roller tray that also has other handy features.
Ease of Use/Performance: 20/25
Convenience/Storage 20/25
Appearance/Design 23/25
How much I enjoy 23/25
Total: 86/100
The PaintSmart-Trayz is a simple plastic paint roller tray that has a large handle, two back ladder hangers and two paint brush hooks on the front. The PaintSmart-Trayz also has a drain spout with a plastic cap that has an inner rubber O-ring to seal the cap in place when using the tray.
The PaintSmart-Trayz comes with the paint tray with drain cap, a roller handle with cover and a 2 inch brush that are pretty good quality. The roller cover is a plastic tube inside instead of a more fragile cardboard one and the brush is a good quality that you would definitely reuse several times with washing.
The PaintSmart-Trayz is available from the internet at PaintSmart-Trayz.com and at select hardware stores in Florida, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Bermuda. The PaintSmart-Trayz cost about $13 not including shipping which on the PaintSmart-Trayz website costs $10 for one or $14 for two trays.
The PaintSmart-Trayz is made from a flexible plastic that is thick and the handle is a nice hand sized one that is comfortable to use. The tray is designed to use as a roller tray for painting on a ladder or for use on a flat surface like more common paint trays.
The tray has the two ladder rung holders on the back so you can hang the tray over a ladder rung or use on a flat surface like a table or the floor. The tray holds about two gallons of paint but I used a gallon at a time when I was painting walls with the tray laying on the floor in my hallway.
My main use for the PaintSmart-Trayz was a volunteer job at a county fairgrounds where we painted some walls inside the 4-H fair building. The PaintSmart-Trayz worked well while painting the wall from a ladder while I painted the top half of a thirty to forty foot wall.
The PaintSmart tray worked well holding about a gallon of paint but when using the tray upright on a ladder it can easily hold more. The tray can be used for those touch up jobs while painting and you can hang one or two paint brushes using the hole in the handle and the two hooks on the PaintSmart-Trayz.
The quality of the PaintSmart-Trayz is very evident when you look at these two hooks, instead of just poking a hole into the plastic and screwing the hooks in they molded a screw hole. These hooks will not be breaking out of the plastic wall of the tray due to the screw hole molded into the plastic body that is deep enough for the half inch of threads for each hook.
In between both the hooks and the handle ends are the hollow for hanging your roller brush when you need to take a break or work using a brush. The PaintSmart-Trayz really is handy for roller work and does have three zigzag patterns inside for the roller to squeegee out the paint.
The two hangers for holding the PaintSmart-Trayz are not molded out of the same piece of material that the rest is but is created separately. You can tell the hangers are bonded into the paint tray using probably two pieces and snapped into place or melted together.
You can push and pull on either hanger and the entire back of the tray moves slightly but I cannot perceive any movement from the hanger itself. The hangers are solidly bonded to the back and the entire PaintSmart-Trayz is a solid tool for use by home do-it-yourselfers and home owners.
The PaintSmart-Trayz is a handy tray while working on a ladder but the paint brush hanging down can get in the way, I wish they would have put one hook on the side and the other on the front. The tray hangs easily from many types of ladders and can be used on a table or floor as well but like I said when you lay the tray down you may not want it full with two gallons of paint.
The PaintSmart-Trayz was very handy and made climbing my ladders quite easy, cleanup was nice because of the handy spout as well along with the paint resistant plastic. The spout has a cap with a rubber O-ring inside which keeps the cap sealed nicely but the cap is also the same size as a pop bottle cap.
If you do lose the handy cap you can easily find a replacement in a delicious drink and not have to worry about finding the old one or some odd cap with an unusual size. The drain hole is nice when cleaning up to be able to pour the paint back into the can as well as cleaning up the tray.
The tray is made from a slightly flexible plastic that does not allow paint to easily adhere to and is pretty thick so that the tray will last for years. The tray takes a lot of abuse and I have really been using it a lot recently with home improvement projects and painting the county 4-H fairgrounds building.
The PaintSmart-Trayz won the Innovation Nation Most Innovative Product February 2011 showing that I am not the only one who thinks this is a great product. I highly recommend the PaintSmart-Trayz as a perfect roller tray for use on ladders and occasionally elsewhere.