3M vs Avery Dennison

3M is a very respectable and large company with a very long history in the business with the highest quality products on the market. I doubt 3M can be inferior to any other similar available product.

 

IMO the 3M "Aero" is an excellent product. Without knowing much about the Avery, I'm sure that they are offering better deals that's why other's are using it. If I were the Veyron owner I would insist on 3M but I'm sure he doesn't even know that he's getting Avery.

 

3M, Avery, and Bekaert's Clearshield all exhibit quite a bit of orange peel texture that makes the film stand out especially on darker colored vehicles. he orange peel texture makes it much easier to install as it hides quite a bit of installation flaws. Some of the clearer films such as Venture & Aerospace are more difficult to install due to its clarity, but allows the factory paint to shine through without the excessive orange peel texture. Next to film, it is also very important to note that installation is the key. With the clearest film, it is a useless product if not properly installed

 

Hey Bob, was the guy you spoke with Josh or Mike? I know the the guys and the car you are talking about. It was Silver and Blue. They are great installers and the most knowlegable people i know in the Paint Protection Film biz.

I install PPF and mostly use 3M. I have used Avery, which has a top coat similar to 3Ms clearcoat. It looks great on dark colored cars. Everyone who installs PPF will tell you the film they use is best. No one film brand is perfect, but they are imho.What is good though is the different companies are constantly improving their film. If you ever want to speak with them, let me know.

Christopher

 

OK Here what we found in our tests

Two best Clearcoated products 3M SGH (not aero), Avery Clearcoat, Next Beakert, Clearshield. Non Clearcoated Products Llumar, Ventureshield are prone to dirt ingress into pores of film. also Venture is prone to scratching from valeting which is well nigh impossible to rectify.

The new clear coated film from Venture is completely unproven and people I know in the US who have tested it tell me it is just as prone to scratching (swirl marks etc) as their non clearcoated variant.

As far as I know from our testing 3M SGH is the ONLY film which you can remove swirl marks and scratches from easily and quickly. There is another thread around on here which tells you how to do this.

You CANNOT do this trick with Avery as it removes the gloss (useful if you want a matt film for mat painted cars tho)


Cheers

Tom

 

Just want to clarify your first sentence. The 2 best are 3M SCH and Avery Clearcoat. Correct? The other 4 you list are not that good, in your opinion.
Thanks, Al

 

Hi in our opinion The SGH And Avery Clear coats are the two best all round films right now, the clearshield is not bad but its quite old technology now and really in our opinion could do with a re-work. The benefit to our customers with the SGH is the ease with which you can remove swirl marks and other minor scratches which you will pick up over time depending on where you live.

And how much you clean the car


Cheers



Tom

 

The Avery is more expensive than the new 3M. I used the older version of 3M film for about 5 years until they totally changed the product. I don't what happened to 3m's quality control but I went through 4 rolls before I said enough is enough. I'd been using the Avery on dark colors and 3M on the rest but since the new film came out, I totally switched to the Avery topcoat film.
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I would echo some of Davids comments on the quality control but this was an installer problem primarily, as no defective product made it on to ANY of our customer cars. I do like the Avery film I must admit BUT here I differ from Speed, about the only place I do (we know each other fairly well), is in the ease of maintainence of the 3M product, in the long run where the likes of Swirl marks are concerned.

At the end of the day, Either one of these products will look great on your car, and will do a fine job of protecting your vehicle, but the SGH just noses in front IMHO on post install Maintainence.


Cheers


Tom

 

Make no mistake the Avery Product is good But as I said in a post above the SGH just has the edge IMHO. The fact is that a lot of the installers (including US) have had their fingers severely burnt by the film manufacturers and they are all "pants" when it comes to dealing with issues, it is not that long ago Avery were having Massive problems with their non clearcoat and from what I was told by US installers, their after sales service sucked. We just removed some NON clearcoated film today from a car at a prestige manufacturer in the UK, according to their advertisements the film wont yellow and wont leave residue behind when removed MORE BS It is definitely yellow (about 6 Months old) and left all the Glue behind (Yes we do know how to remove all kinds of film) Bottom line is find a reputable installer that has a proven track record of dealing positively with clients when a film issue arises (and they will from time to time) and stay with them. As with everything in life you get what you pay for and its the quality of the installer that will make the difference.

On the whole we have not had any consumer cars come back with issues on the 3M film and on balance we see no specific reasons to change over at this moment. However as with all things who knows what tommorrow will bring? At least to date 3M have never deliberately mislead me, or lied about their product to my knowledge (unlike others in the industry) and that is good enough for me.

Once again Aero product is naff, its not for cars, don't use it don't accept it on your cars

Cheers

Tom

 

For better or worse, I have Avery on my cars. It has held up with no issues in Las Vegas, and the install was excellent (Mike @ Pro-Tect). Clear film has been applied to five of my cars, including Silver, Red, Yellow, Marine Blue and Black. For me, hardest to tell on the yellow and silver cars, but in general, it does looks like orange peel, sometimes more or less, depending on the light. At the same time, I was more concerned about protecting the paint for all the crap that is on Las Vegas roads. I value that over the pure looks aspect.

Attached photo - my Carrera GT at SEMA at Avery booth. Entire exterior was clear-coated - artful and beautiful install IMHO.
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Nice GT, Give my regards to Mike Mayall when you speak to him next tell him Tom from Paintshield says HI

Nice looking Job on the GT but as he trained my Trainers I would expect no less

Cheers