I purchased this Iwata W101 with a 1.5 tip through Amazon and it was DIRT CHEAP – I figured that it may be some cheap knock off and kind of bought it just to see.

I just wanted a small gun to spray flake through for some of my future smaller projects.

I do have some LPH-80s at home but have never seen a W101 before.

Do you think that this gun is real or not? If it is, wow STUPID cheap, If not, I want to report it to Amazon. It shipped out of China??

It was inspected??

The instructions look a little cheezy? (engineering term)

The price is usually the giveaway but shipping out of China pretty much confirms it.

Have a look at the thread I did about the fake Devilbiss ProLite, here.

If you have access to a known genuine gun then you can make direct comparisons, otherwise it's a bit more difficult, working from pictures on the 'net.

The factories that make these fakes have actually lifted their game to the point where the fakes are very, very close to the originals, yet they persist in including things that give ttheir product away as a fake. I don't really understand this since they obviously have the expertise to create high quality (at least to my eyes) castings and machined parts that are, in some cases, virtually identical to the originals. Just a little more effort and you really wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

I kept the fake ProLite and I use it as a basecoat gun. Not always, but sometimes on non-critical jobs and its performance has been quite good. I'd rank it near the FLG5 except that the aircap gives a pattern something between RP and HVLP. It's heavier too, so on big jobs I find the genuine gun a lot more comfortable.

I guess that some of the components in the fake guns are not up to the same standard as the genuine guns and may become an issue with age/wear. In my case I've tried swapping various bits from my genuine guns and everything fits and works, so if I have to change parts then that may not be such a big problem. In your case this isn't going to be a primary gun so it may last for many years.

I'd suggest that you give the gun a try. If it works for you then all good - you've achieved your intent at a lot less cost. Like I said in my thread, I'm not condoning the actions of the copycats and if they get shut down/charged then I won't be shedding any tears, but in cases where the copy is actually not bad quality I can see that some people may benefit from the cost saving. Obviously, in some cases the copy quality is garbage and these should be returned for refund wherever possible.

Just as an aside, I travel to China fairly regularly and a couple of years ago I went to visit a factory that makes lights, i.e. driving lights. We entered the board room and I was surprised to see a range of Australian lights on the table. When I asked why, the owner of the factory told me that Australian driving lights are amongst the best in the world and they buy them to copy. He then showed me their product(s). Visually there was very little difference but on picking them up the copies were much heavier and closer inspection showed that they were using inferior quality components. Performance wasn't a patch on the originals either but the prices he was talking were mind boggling. I know that he sells vast quantities of these substandard lights to a number of chain type stores and a couple of big online sellers. They retail at maybe 20% of the price of the original, genuine items and they sell huge quantities. When I tell people that they're junk I'm laughed at because they, the buyers, don't care. They can't afford the genuine article but can the copies and that gives them a set of lights to hang on the front of their vehicle. That they don't last is irrelevant. Price is the determining factor. I never bought any of his products because they don't meet the quality standards that we have, but he emails me regularly with new deals.

So, there is definitely a market and someone is just catering to it.

I agree with NFT5 110% - price is usually the dead give-away. i'm by no means an expert here, but I might add, if the chinese are knocking off the iwata W-101's, they're doing a pretty good job of it. chances are slim, but these may be actual iwatas's being sold out of china. one thing to look for - look at the fit and finish. do you see any flaws in the finish? look for any type of casting roughness in the finish, any type of grinding marks, casting seams, anything. I have a couple iwata products, and they are flawless. they are even far superior to my "made in Italy," iwata air-gunsa, which in itself in pretty nice. i have also noticed these fit and finish differences in the devilbiss knock-offs. I would think the same applies to iwata knock-offs. the degree of finish is labor intensive, and that would reflect in the pricing. one thing i'm curious about - IF YOU COULD, post a close-up, detailed pic of the green, hologram sticker on the side of the gun. is it a true 3-dimensional looking hologram, or just a 2-d sticker? also, let us know if there is any identifier on the w-101's fluid needle. i'd be curious if your w-101 has any identifying markers, or it's generic. I've noted, most W-101's are either sold in china or japan. there seems to be a price jump between the two. I have noted that there are several W-101's starting to pop-up on fleabay , WITHOUT any "anest-iwata" identifiers - -- iwata may be cracking down of the fakes using their logo and company name - ???
finally, do you see anything in the owner's manual that states " This product is a JDM product (Japanese Domestic Market)
Japan Usage Item?"

anyway, it's a $50 spray gun. accept it as that. if it's fake, so be it - if it is, it falls in place with the rest of the cheap chinese guns, and, IMO, it does have it's place in the food chain. again, I agree with NFT5, give it a try. If it works for you then all good. if it doesn't, then write it off as lesson learned -

When I bought the gun, I certainly did not expect it to be real.

And now that I have it, I would just like to verify if it is a fake or not as I don't have any W101s to compare it to. I will be talking to a guy that is rep for Iwata in March at a class and will bring it to him to verify.

Amazon and Ebay should NOT allow counterfeits.

Some more photos of it below.

OldFatBald wrote:Amazon and Ebay should NOT allow counterfeits.

I agree, completely.

But.....

When i reported the seller of the fake ProLite to Ebay they were very nice and promised to investigate and then did absolutely nothing. The seller is still on Ebay, listing his fakes and selling them.

Money talks and they make a lot of money from sales of counterfeits. If the pressure is enough they may do something, but only enough to pay lip service to their policy. A while back I saw a video of a whole warehouse of fake spray guns being destroyed. I believe that Devilbiss, Iwata and SATA work together in catching the counterfeit producers, but it's a pretty big job since the factories just reappear somewhere else. They do have pages on Facebook or their web sites encouraging buyers to only buy genuine and not support those making the fakes.

It's sad, but that's life.

OldFatBald wrote:

Air Cap (2).jpg

Air Cap (1).jpg

Hologram (2).jpg

Hologram (1).jpg

looking at the gun's model number lettering, the "W-101," doesn't appear to be as crisp and sharply defined as my "W-400" Bellaria's lettering. I can't definetly say mine is the real McCoy, but I did purchase it directly from an auto paint supplier in japan. if mines a fake, it's a **** good one. looking at your hologram sticker, that sucker looks to be authentic, but the inside of the paint cup looks to be a little rough. most of the paint cups from iwata have a much better finish on the inside. overall, the finish on the gun's exterior seems a bit rough, and not a finely detailed and noticeably different from my W-400. i'm a bit up in the air on this one, but still the pricing says, too good to be true. I would be interested it what the iwata rep has to say. keep us posted.

I would be quite surprised if this gun was not a fake.

That cup just looks horrible, with the scratches around the exterior logo and the condition of the cup interior????

Look at the text and the finish on the handle.

Also one of my earlier photos shows the instructions which are a HORRIBLE print job - surprisingly poor.

I also forgot to mention the lettering on the needle which is 10013 and it is supposed to be a 1.5 tip. The photo of the needle looks very bad, but most of that is the "grease" that it is packed in - none of my other guns had that much slathered on grease.

My class isn't until the March but I am going to try to get ahold of the Iwata rep before that. It seems like Iwata would know about these guns and that they would have a bigger stick with Amazon and Ebay than this old guy (though with as much as I buy from Amazon, you would think that they would send me to Hawaii or at least send me a T-shirt, maybe a frozen turkey at X-mas time...)