Meguiar’s Professional Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating M888: Amazon
One of the newest ceramic coatings to come out in the market is Meguiar’s Professional Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating. Meguiar’s has been around for a long time and offers a large line of consumer grade and professional grade car care products for your car. The last time I put a ceramic coating on my truck was about 2-3 years ago, so it was definitely time to put on a new one. For full disclosure, Meguiar’s sent me this product to test and write a review, so I was happy to try it out and share my experience with it.
As with any other paint coating that you intend on applying on your vehicle, it’s imperative to prep your vehicle fully prior to applying the coating. Typically, applying the coating is not the difficult and most time-consuming part, it’s actually the preparation that takes the longest. At a minimum, you should fully wash your car, and chemically and mechanically decontaminate your car.
I used a combination of a foam gun to do a pre-wash, and a two-bucket wash with Detail Armory microfiber car wash mitts. I personally sell these microfiber 70/30 blend car wash mitts, which do a thorough job of cleaning the car’s exterior.
The next step would be to spray on an iron remover, letting it dwell, and then rinsing it off. This takes care of the chemical decontamination stage. After this, a mechanical decontamination in the form of a clay bar or clay mitt would be done so that you remove any embedded ferrous particles in your car’s clear coat.
With the decontamination stage done, I recommend either washing your car again with a car wash soap that doesn’t have any additives. Just a straight soap that doesn’t leave anything behind that would interfere with the ceramic coating application. An IPA (Diluted Isopropyl Alcohol) wipe-down would work as well.
Ensure that your vehicle is fully cleaned and also fully dried. You don’t want any residual moisture on the car while you’re applying the ceramic coating. One thing I recommend doing is using a leaf blower or pressurized air to blow out water from all the crevices on the vehicle and then dry it again with a drying towel.
Meguiar’s Professional Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating M888 comes in a 40mL bottle, along with a tri-layer microfiber applicator pad. I normally see ceramic coating bottles come in 30mL or 50mL bottles, usually the smaller one good for regular-sized cars and the bigger bottle good for larger trucks and SUV’s. After I finished applying the ceramic coating on my Ford F-150 Super Crew truck, I still had about 20% left of the bottle left.
To apply, the ceramic coating is loaded onto the tri-layer applicator first. The coating is a bit more of a thin-gel kind of viscosity. The product is intended to be applied via the white microfiber material.
After liberally applying the paint coating onto the applicator, the applicator is wiped onto the paint in a cross-hatch pattern. Meguiar’s instructions indicate to leave the product on 2-5 minutes before wiping off. Meguiar’s M888 Paint Coating doesn’t provide a microfiber towel for you to wipe the product off with, so you’ll have to supply one yourself. I recommend a low-pile microfiber like these, which will facilitate the leveling and even removal of the product.
I personally found the product a bit difficult to buff off with a microfiber towel. As I would wipe off the flashed off coating, it would require a decent amount of pressure and more than several wipes to really get the product off. Applying the product went quite easy, but it’s probably the removal that is not so easy to do. I hope that this is characteristic of a more durable product in the long run, but we will see.
The gloss left behind is very apparent. As advertised, it leaves behind a high amount of gloss and it is very slick to the touch. Keep in mind that it is not advisable to use this product on matte or satin finishes as it may add unwanted gloss. For regular paint and especially ones with metallic paint, it really makes the paint pop.
Here is what it looks like with the coating applied (on left) and uncoated (on right).
I find the tri-layer applicator to be comfortable to hold in my hand, although I feel it’s a bit unnecessary to have the three layers on this applicator pad. It does have a nice size that gives you a good grip, so I didn’t feel like I would ever accidentally drop the pad on the ground. I’m not sure how I feel about the application surface being the microfibers, rather than something more uniform and smooth. I’m used to using a foam block with a suede applicator to apply coatings.
For the bottle, I wish the label was not opaque and fully covering the bottle. While you’re applying the coating, it’s useful to keep an eye on the level of the liquid to ensure that you have enough product to apply on the car. When I was getting close to finishing, I wasn’t sure exactly how much I had left. Even when I was finished, I couldn’t tell how much was left in the bottle. I finally had to rip the bottom part of the label off of the bottle to actually tell what was left.
After applying the M888 Paint Coating, I allowed the coating to fully cure for a day. Meguiar’s says that as time elapses over the course of a week, it will get harder and harder on the surface of your paint. After a month of applying the coating, I washed my truck and the hydrophobic properties of the coating was very clear.
As expected, the water just runs right off the surface of the paint. It was very easy to wash my car as most of the loose dirt rinsed away with just water. When I used soap with a wash mitt, the rest of the and washing your car during your maintenance washes is extremely easy to do. This is the biggest perk of applying a ceramic coating on your car: the ease of washing your car with subsequent car washes.
My final impression of the Meguiar’s Professional Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating is that it is a very glossy and slick ceramic coating that is slightly difficult to apply (specifically the buffing off after application.) Because I’ve only had the coating on for about a month, I can’t report on its longevity.
I do believe the that the coating is quite durable because I had to apply some decals after I already applied the coating. I used a long throw DA polisher, along with a microfiber pad and compound, and had a lot of difficulty polishing the coating off. I literally had to do about 5-6 passes before I could tell the coating was removed. This is an indication that the coating is quite strong as I’ve been able to remove coatings in the past with just a few passes.
Meguiar’s Professional Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating M888: Amazon
