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’m happy to try it out and share my experience with it.
As with any other ceramic 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 most time. At a minimum, you should fully wash your car, and chemically and mechanically decontaminate your car. Most of the time, it is recommended to polish the paint prior to applying the coating for the best results.
On my vehicle, I used a combination of a foam gun to do a pre-wash, and washed the car using the two-bucket wash method 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 a chemical decontamination, which involves spraying on an iron remover, letting it dwell, and then rinsing it off. After this, a mechanical decontamination in the form of using a clay bar or clay mitt would be done so that you remove any embedded ferrous particles in your car’s clear coat. Simply spray clay lubricant, and run the clay bar or towel along the car’s paint. Then rinse it all off and you’re done with the mechanical decontamination.
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 up car wash soap that doesn’t leave anything behind which would interfere with the ceramic coating application. An example of this is Meguiar’s Hyper Wash. 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, the smaller one is good for regular-sized cars while the larger bottle is enough 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 40mL 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 as opposed to a more watery liquid. The product is intended to be applied via the white microfiber material side of the applicator pad.
After liberally applying the ceramic 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. The ceramic 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 attempt to wipe off the flashed off coating, it would require a decent amount of pressure and more than several wipes to really get the product wiped off. Applying the product was straightforward and easy, but it’s really the removal that is the more difficult part. I hope that this is characteristic of a more durable product in the long run, but we will see.
After applying the coating, there is plenty of gloss left behind. It’s also 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 just applied (on the left), but not buffed off yet.
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 so that it gives you a good grip; 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. Still, it applied effortlessly and without any problems.
For the bottle, I wish the label was not opaque and covering the entire bottle. While you’re applying the coating, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the level of the liquid to ensure that you have enough product to apply over the entire 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 how much was actually left.
After applying the ceramic coating, I allowed it 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 your paint. After a month of applying the coating, I washed my truck and it was very clear that the coating exhibited very good hydrophobic properties.
As expected, the water 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 car soap, my wash mitt would just glide along the ceramic coated surface. This is the biggest perk of applying a ceramic coating on your car: the ease of washing your car with subsequent car washes. We normally get bee droppings (looks like little yellow round stains) on our cars and it usually takes some pressure with a wash mitt to get it to come off. With this ceramic coating applied, it only takes light pressure to remove now.
Amongst the ceramic coatings I’ve used, Meguiar’s Professional Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating is slightly more difficult to apply (specifically the buffing off after application.) However, it appears to be durable at least for the time being. Because I’ve only had the coating on for about a month, I can’t report on its longevity.
I believe that the coating is 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 that the coating was removed. To me, this is an indication that the coating is relatively durable, as I’ve been able to remove coatings in the past with just a few passes.
The price of about $80 puts the Meguiar’s Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating in the middle of the pack in terms of price for true ceramic coatings. So far, I can attest to its high gloss and slickness. As I continue to use my vehicle and inspect the paint after each wash, I’ll report out on it’s durability when the coating starts to wane.
Meguiar’s Professional Beyond Ceramic Paint Coating M888: Amazon
