Meguiar’s Hybrid Ceramic Spray Wax: Amazon / Ebay
One of the modern day conveniences for those who want to apply protection on their car’s paint is spray wax. And even more recently, we’ve seen the development of hybrid ceramic spray waxes as well. Both spray waxes and hybrid ceramic waxes come in a spray bottle form, but some hybrid ceramic formulas are intended to be sprayed on and rinsed off as compared to a traditional spray wax that should be buffed or wiped off.
Meguiar’s Hybrid Ceramic Spray Wax is one of the more popular ones in the hybrid ceramic category that makes it easy to apply a protectant on your car’s paint. Because of the easy spray-on-rinse-off application, it caters to those who may not have as much time or those who don’t want to go through the trouble of the application and buffing process. Meguiar’s provided me with this product to test and review, which I will do my best to offer my honest opinion on, as well as my experience with the product.
Meguiar’s states that the ceramic wax protection is delivered via the “Advanced SiO2 Hybrid Technology”, which is the same kind of technology used in Meguiar’s Hybrid Ceramic Wash & Wax product which I’ve also reviewed. I really enjoyed the Hybrid Wash & Wax product as it had excellent hydrophobicity and it would last for many months at a time. It also applied very easily by wiping it on (with the wash mitt during the washing process), and then removed by drying it off.
As for Meguiar’s Hybrid Ceramic Spray Wax, I was very interested in testing it out because of two main reasons. The convenience and the time savings. These days, I have a family and a busy schedule, so trying to set time aside to wash and detail our personal cars on a regular basis can be a challenge. Sometimes, I don’t even have more than an hour at a time to wash the cars, let alone do a full detail or even apply protection like a wax, ceramic coating, etc.
The great thing about this product is that you don’t have to go through the intermediate step of wiping on the ceramic wax after you’ve sprayed it on. The Hybrid Ceramic Spray Wax is applied simply by spraying the vehicle with a strong stream of water after spraying the product on. You also don’t need to buff off, as you just dry the vehicle down like you normally would after washing it.
So after you’ve washed your car with your car soap of choice, you can simply use the Meguiar’s Hybrid Ceramic Spray Bottle and spray the product directly on your wet car. It sprays on pretty easily and the product spreads evenly with a fine mist. It has a scent that could be described as a sweet-smelling blueberry. You can coat an entire car easily with less than half a bottle as you will find that a little product goes a long way.
After you spray the product onto the entire vehicle, you’ll see that the product is blue and begins to run after the spray application.
This is where Meguiar’s suggests you have a strong stream of water that you can spray onto your car, which enables the hybrid ceramic formula to be spread on the vehicle. Sometimes, a second rinse of water will allow the product to really grab onto the vehicle’s paint surface. You probably don’t want to leave the product on your vehicle for too long as it might cause staining. I would recommend just spraying the entire vehicle with the product and then immediately rinsing the vehicle down with water.
As you can see, after spraying a strong stream of water on the car a couple times, it leaves behind some water beading. You will also see the water running down the car’s paint exhibiting its hydrophobic properties.
The kind of beading you see above is good, but I wouldn’t call it extraordinary. If you had applied a proper ceramic coating or even a traditional wax in the form of wiping it on and buffing it off, you will likely get better hydrophobic results than what you see here.
Perhaps after drying the vehicle, it would help spread the product around some more and maybe distribute the product more evenly across the paint surface? From what I could tell, the product is mostly rinsed off already from the initial water rinse of the product. Drying the vehicle doesn’t seem to improve the performance of the product; after drying and spraying water on the surface again, the hydrophobic behavior appears to be unchanged.
When wax is applied by hand and buffed off, you will usually see better performance. So I wanted to see if applying the product by microfiber towel would make a difference compared to simply spraying it on and rinsing it off. After spraying it onto the microfiber towel, wiping it on, and then wiping it off shortly after, I rinsed the panel again. The water did seem to run off of the vehicle a bit better than the earlier spray-on application, but still, the water beading left behind was similar to before.
As I had said at the beginning of this post, Meguiar’s Hybrid Ceramic Spray Wax makes it a lot more convenient for those of us who don’t have a whole lot of time to wash and protect our vehicles. The hydrophobicity isn’t stellar, but it’s pretty amazing for a product that you simply spray on and then rinse off. I challenge you to find another product out there that allows you to apply a hybrid ceramic wax on your vehicle quicker and easier than this one.
