I've been doing repairs on my in-ground sprinklers, and preparing to expand sprinklers to areas not currently under a proper watering regime. I have some areas I've moved mobile sprinklers to, which is both annoying and water inefficient; instead of being watered in the wee hours of the morning like my automatic sprinklers, for a fixed and optimal period of time, they're watered in the afternoon from whenever I get around to it, to whenever I wake up and say "gah, I forgot the sprinkler again!".
Trying to resolve some issues with reach on the existing system, I had tested a K-Rain four-inch sprinkler head. I had previously had good luck with a K-Rain 5 inch model that I used on a spike, for a large semi-circle area. The four-inch didn't work well in that location so I moved it to a spike as a mobile sprinkler. I have it watering an approximate 60x30 strip, but this requires me to move it three times for complete watering. I don't like this. Since I was dissatisfied with the K-Rain 4-incher, I bought an Orbit Voyager II to test. Specific reasons for buying it were the distance was rated higher than the others, and the nozzles appeared possibly compatible with the Rain-Bird 42SA and 5000 series, though I haven't verified this yet, and it was cheaper than the Rain-Bird 5000. Again, this is being used above ground for now: I could have bought a gear-driven above-ground sprinkler but I assume I will eventually move these below ground in the near future.
So to this point I've used the Rain-bird 5000 series(older ones, ~ 18 years old), K-Rain 5-inch, K-Rain 4-inch, and Orbit Voyager II. Cost was a primary driver of experimentation, with the exception of one location where I needed different coverage. If I could reduce a $15 head to $10, it would make a reasonable difference if I'm installing a new in-ground section. Here's my experience with each.
- Rain-Bird 5000: great sprinkler. I started replacing them after about 13 years as they began to fail. None of this failure was their fault; the soil-line raising over that period caused some to be sunk under-ground and get flooded with mud constantly. I had coverage issues with one area that was just never quite right, and so moved away from this head in attempts to fix it. I ended up moving the head and replacing it with a new Rain-Bird 5000. They've changed the design of the nozzle in the intervening years but I think they all still interchange. I feel like they've improved these over the years. I recall our oldest ones being difficult to adjust: requiring setting the left-position which is fixed, screwing the cap down, then adjusting the right-position; this is finicky if there's any movement in the sprinkler body itself(as there was with the flex-hose they were attached to the PVC with). With the last one I was able to grip the extended part of the sprinkler and move it as needed, then do pattern adjustment as normal.
- K-Rain 5-inch: Bought for above-ground usage on a spike to test covering an irregular but approximately 55'x25' area. This worked quite well, actually. I'm watering a not-quite trapezoidal area with a semi-circle spray, so it's less than perfect coverage, and truly needs 4-6 heads i think, but since it's a less-than-manicured section it has worked well enough for now. I'd like to use different nozzles but the big-box stores I frequent don't carry them and they appear incompatible with Rain-Bird. If it wasn't for the lack of support from the store, I'd choose these for large coverage areas. They're super-easy to adjust. I do worry about their durability, but haven't had issues yet.
- K-Rain 4-inch: Like their 5-inch brothers, the spray nozzles are hard to find. It seemed to drip a lot more water near the spray head than I've seen with other sprinklers, flooding the area near the sprinkler too bad to leave as an in-ground sprinkler. I moved it to a spike. After less than one season, it stopped rotating properly. I won't buy these again.
- Orbit Voyager II: This seems to have the difficulty of adjusting like the original Rain-Bird 5000s. The distance is better, and I feel like it has possibly better coverage in the middle of its spray range. The apparent inability to adjust the fixed-side pointing after installation means I won't likely use these going forward.
I hate when you spend much effort looking for better alternatives, then find out you had the best all along. After experimenting with the others, I'm back to the good-old Rain-Bird 5000s. They're the priciest of the ones I've tried, but the price difference of the others do not make up for their shortcomings.
