Overall, you cannot beat the Propel/American Buffing pads - the blue and white ones are very user friendly. And stay clear of the old-style curved pads, they suck and leave too many swirls/halos.
Here's the scoop on the popular pads:
Propel/American Buffing White, Blue, and Green pads - Positives: very flexible and user friendly. Excellent composition and last a long long time. Clean up/rinse out nicely. Very breathable and thus generate less heat than any other pads out there. The only negative is that the breathability/porous foam is slightly susceptable to splatter if you like to run higher than 1200.
Propel Yellow - Good cuttinig pad. Prone to sling as are most cutting pads.
Propel Orange - ??? I've only used on the PC, but it is very stiff, so will not be as user friendly as their other colored pads.
Meguaiars Polishing pad (yellow) - Fairly flexible/maneuravable. Very durable. Okay in the sling department, but not great. The main negative is that it build up heat much quicker than the the Propel pads.
Meguiars Burgandy - Good cuttiing action, but is similar to a brick and thus isn't very user friendly and is highly prone to sling product.
Lake Country VC (cupped) white 6.5 pad - Great heavy polishing or compounding pad. The single best pad for preventing product sling due the the dense nature of the foam (I can literally run at well over 2200 RPM with zero splatter/sling), yet still accumulates very little heat. Average durability. Firmness of pads allows one to apply a lot of pressure to the pad when more cut is needed. Great for polishing or compounding. Negatives are that they are not verey flexible and thus NOT very maneuverble, and the dense foam is difficult to clean out when done. And they won't finish down quite as well as the Propel Blue or White. (the white pads from CMA are a bit less porous than the white ones from PakShak, but I like both).
LC VC Orange 6.5 - Very splatter resistant. Firm. Medium heat. Not very durable.
LC VC red - good finishing pad, just not as good as the Propel Blue or White.
LC VC Yellow - Okay cutting pad. Poor durability however. Stick with the propel or Sonus yellow.
LC VC Green - Okay medium polishiing pad. Porous nature helps prevent heat build up, but also slightly prone to splatter.
The SFX pads are okay via the rotary (I like them much better with the PC), but they accumulate a lot of heat...so be careful.
Wolfgang white - stay clear. Horrible durability. Too much heat generated.
More later...
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