(Review) Harder and Steenbeck Infinity – 1 year later

Reviews are obviously useful when you are looking to buy something and you want to know if it’s worth your money, or if you should pass.

The one downfall to reviews is that they generally first impressions by the reviewer and don’t come back to the product after a month, let alone a year to follow up and give further impressions.

So that being said, I am returning to talk about my Harder and Steenbeck Infinity CR Plus 2 in 1.  To make this re-review easy I am going to follow a tried and tested method of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” and give you a layman’s perspective of what you can expect from this airbrush after a year of use and hundreds of hours of use.

To give you an idea of what I think I will start by saying that before I owned the Infinity, I had 4-5 airbrushes. 1 for primer, 1 for metallics, 1 for fine detail, 1 for base coats, and assorted other ones for various duties.

I now have 2 airbrushes.  My Infinity with 0.15, 0.2, and 0.4mm needle/nozzle sets and my trusty Badger Xtreme 105 – but that sits mostly unused…do you sense where this is going?

The Good

This brush is incredibly well made. I would expect no less from such an expensive piece of kit, but a year later and it still looks and works as when it was new.

The tolerances are still tight and there are no obvious signs of wear on the external body.

The trigger action is still smooth as silk and there is no hesitation when spraying correctly thinned paints (enter foreshadowing here).

Because this brush offers nozzles from 0.15 to 0.4, you can pretty much spray any medium you want.  It is this flexibility that has basically let me abandon my collection of brushes and move to this one only. I am not sure if H&S offers a larger needle/nozzle set than 0.4mm, but I can’t see a use case where the 0.4mm wouldn’t shoot anything you can throw at it  

The last thing I really love about this brush is how easily it breaks down for cleaning. With a quick turn of the waist nut, this bad boy breaks down into its components and is easily cleaned. Added to this is the fact that almost every seal is Teflon, so you can use whatever solvents you want to clean this. I routinely spray regular paint thinner through my brush to clean out the accumulated paint and I haven’t had a seal fail yet!

I lied – the last word I will put here is customer service.  I had a small issue with the chrome coating on the INSIDE of my colour cup! It was cosmetic only and didn’t in any way impact the performance of my airbrush.  I emailed H&S, showed them the colour cup and I received a quick response and a priority package from GERMANY!!! the same day.  To say that I am impressed is an understatement.  This company stands behind its product and I appreciate that!

The Bad

This brush does not like un-thinned paints. I know that this sounds like a no-brainer, but I am talking about Vallejo Air or Mig paints that are specifically designed to spray straight from the bottle.

Even with the 0.4mm nozzle installed, I need to thin down my Vallejo Air and Mig paints to get them to shoot consistently and I really need to watch the pressure.  This could be a full stop point for causal makers who just want the ease of dropping in a paint, spraying, and then moving quickly to the next paint.

With the Infinity, you need to have a constant eye on your paint viscosity and make sure you are consistent with your thinning ratios.  For me, this is not an issue as I always thin my paints to get the evenest coverage on my models, and after a lot of practice, I don’t find that it takes me any significant amount of time or effort to thin them down and I can now do it by eye vs by drops.

The only other bad thing that I have to say is that with the guard installed, this brush tends to suffer more from dry tip and accumulation of paint on that horned tip.  This has led to some unintentional blobs of paint being loosed towards my unsuspecting surface!  I have learned to become a “guard removed” painter and while that does increase the risk of a bent tip, but luck is on my side so far.

The Ugly

I debated this in my mind before I wrote this. Surely any piece of kit should have a real shortcoming.  No product is perfect for every person.  So what I say is more of a caveat and a warning for those who are considering dropping some serious cash on a quality piece of kit and then not caring for it.

This brush does not like to be dirty!!! If you do not have the time to make sure you clean it out at the end of a spray session or don’t want to take 1 minute to properly flush between colour changes, this brush is not for you.

In the beginning, I treated this brush like my old 105…drop some cleaner on it, give it a quick back flush and spray it out and put it away.  That won’t work as well with this brush. Because it has such tight seals and tolerances, you need to give it a good flush and then pull the needle forward and clean all the paint off that. If you don’t get it all off, you will essentially weld the needle to the internal seals and have a heck of a time getting it loose!

I feel like that really isn’t an “ugly” thing, because this is a precision airbrush, but if you are not ready to put some time and effort into keeping your gear clean, pass on this brush and get yourself a 105 or a cheap Chinese airbrush and replace it when it breaks.

If you are willing to keep this thing clean, thin your paints properly, and learn how to spray properly, you will not go wrong with this airbrush. Over a year later, and this is still the first airbrush I reach for.  I considered selling my 105, but it cost me next to nothing and it will be a backup just in case I break my Infinity (doubtful).

So there you have it. A year later and I am just as in love with this brush as I was when I got it. I have 0 reservations about telling people to get this airbrush and if you are serious about making an investment in better painting, this is the airbrush for you!