impressed with Suntek....ex Madico

For what its worth ive used madico for the past 12 years or so both flat glass and cars. I have started my own business and have been using Suntek initially attracted by price. I am impressed with the way the auto films shrink and the resiliance to scratching when being applied.
Prior to using madico i used Llumar for over 12 years also.
In the Suntek F/G range their SYDS-15 is almost identical to the SL180 Madico (just a little lighter)and the SYDS-25 can be butted up against the SL280 Madico, its so close. I found the Madico film to have a short life both F/G and Auto.
The NG35 or the NG20 were purple off the roll and looked very dated when put up against the opposition, ie:nightvision series films. This went for most of their film range, it also used to incur a lot of tunnell spearing if it was precut and rolled up for more than one day. Suntek film has lasted a week in a box before applying it and it was perfect.
I tinted my vehicle just four months ago with the Madico Onyx series and the front doors have already started banding especially visible across the top edge and its definately going purple all over.
I had at the same time fitted Suntek HP to my wifes car and its as good as the day it was fitted.......
All in all i'm really impressed with the Suntek product and put it up along sidewith LLumar for quality and ease of installation.
And their price structure means the window tinter can now make a dollar fitting the stuff.
Just my opinion.
techguy

I thought about switching due to a small problem I didnt think was going to be able to be resovled, but Donna fixed it today and got everything straightened out. thank you Donna, as always great customer service. to me right now they are the best film on the market

food for thought. suntek will never be in the same league as lulu , madi, and at times solar gard as bad as some of there films can get. the big 3 hold the majority of the market.
suntek,johnson, mmm, huper,hanita,global,vkool,sun gard, are all fighting for 4th place, no matter how good some of the there products are.
the koreans are now producing film that are just as good as all of them. some of the independent distributor are already reboxing them.

i'm not saying lulu, madi, and at times solar gard are the best, but we have to be smarter. i had an account with all the manufactures and used them for my advantage and i would recommend that you do the same. know what type of film your competition has and find something to else better or different(specs,looks, any advantage). i had dealer manual(3 ring binder with all their films) of all or most manufactures and kept them updated.

in my area no one really uses madi-they have one rep for ca. and bray group is more interested in some windshield protection then tint in the north and suntek reps kick back in the office.
i 've use both and madi sunscape is by far better then any suntek. not close.
look at other manufactures to see what other types products you can benefit from.

this is just an opinion,

i respect yours

tint star

Both companies compete against us all for commercial work at an unfair pricing advantage.

There are just a few good Korean films... the rest have dye in the adhesive, or dye in the hardcoat... and some still buy components from CP Films.

are they manufactures or independent distributors?

Bray is a Dist... but Long Beach and Woburn have commercial direct programs.

SunTek is a little shadier... Their Dist in Glendale is also the ASWF dist and the same owner of both companies owns a retail business in the same building. Oh... and his CA contractors license is suspended.

yeah i know, i just didn't want to say it here, but since you did, oh well. i spoke to some guy in charge of sales in mass about this and he blew me off. he was hiring another salesman to do more direct sales. that f!@#$r. i hate manufactures or distributor doing direct sales. someone know a lawyer, i think it's against the law. i remember bus law 101 in coll.,
doesn't this fall under the "anti-trust act" to protect guys under this situation.

i think madi is repositioning themselves to a different market. they are minimizing there manufactures distributor and are having more independent ones. they haven't been in sema in a while or any film expos. i feel sorry for cesar in huntington beach if they close that one.

suntek is shady. they have an old oak tree in front of there office. i call the suntek rep. eddie haskel from leave it to beaver. he just doesn't understand.

bray is so screwed to deal with that there is literally no one up here using madico. why doesn't madico boot 'em and do something different? i'd love to try more madico but not if it means going through bray.

call cesar(huntington beach) he might be able to help you out. don't let the office girls know where your from though, they'll direct you to bray group.

They'll just make him buy from Bray... and Bray is known for selling retail in Sac.

i think i have another connection i can try

I tried that one when Donna was there Suntek Didn't the carbon have color in the hard coat a few years back

Hmm... sounds like another "big 3" I can think of that many people would have thought in times past would never be surpassed. Now General Motors is struggling to stay alive.

Although I understand what you are saying, my point is take nothing for granted. Many things change faster than anyone would imagine;

Berlin wall
Soviet Union
General Motors struggling to survive
Black US president
cell phone use
China as a growing economic power
etc. etc.

H

i know lulu does the same thing, but they give the job to one of there local dealers per greg-if he's still around. greg understood not to cross the local dealers because he use to own a tint shop.

so these TOPLINE BILLING for manufactures or distributors should model theirs like what greg has done. thats greg mckay. does anyone know where he is @ now? colorado?

I have used both as well, but I think the above statement is exaggerated. If you are comparing ST HP to Madi Onyx, Onyx is a better film. I used ST for 3 years, and switch back to Madico b/c of how short the ST HP film lasted. I saw a car I had tinted 2 years prior and the film was in bad shape. The onyx I installed on my dads 2 fronts in 01 still looks good, but it has faded. I did my moms two fronts in 02 with onyx 20% and it looks good clarity wise but it pretty purple. I loved the ST architectual films, and never had any problems with it, and still dont. Ive driven by the places I installed ST and it still looks good.

Suntek is a good product, I agree, but in my opinion its not better than Madico. Just like there are films out there that are better than Madico, by the numbers at least. All films will tunnel if it isnt left on the core...ST will too. SYDS is in no way in the same range as the SL series. I dont think they look alike at all.

The Suntek rep stoped in the shop for the first time ever last thursday and was really trying hard to get me to try there products! Filmslayer who now works for me told the rep strait out that there film was ! I'm the type that likes to try different things just to see what's out there because i've used llumar and Johnsons and Madico and about everything else but i have to admit i've never tried Suntek but got sent 2 40inch x 20foot rolls of there Hp 20 and 30%. Today we have a few cars that i'm going to try Suntek out on and i'll give an update latter today what i think about there film! I really like Llumar and Johnsons window film, so if it's not compareable to there film then i probably won't like it!

I removed Solar Gard hp film off my truck and replaced it with the sample of Suntek carbon 6 months ago. Solargard's film was going bad after 2 years, yea more bad SG film. So far so good.

I think you'll like it. I've tried llucy, madi, global, advantage and some others and suntek is still my choice out of all that i've tried. I personally like the hp better than the carbon but they are both good.

He's still around... I think he covers the 4 corners and AZ.

i really don't know why int shops still use solar gard auto film? it's crap. too thin,delam,orange peel,turning purple on defrost lines and so on.

i bet limotintlarry didn't even use it.

they should stick to flat glass film only. get rid of their auto film entirely.

i have personaly seen the suntek HP adheisive start to go bad after 9 months ! then again the FL sun is harsh and i believe our humidty plays a big roll in adheisive failures ...

Same here filmslayer...tell TA to use Carbon instead of HP. Ive yet to hear ANYTHING bad about the Carbon line. The HP line is junk...but it shrinks so sweet.

It must be a nasty climate where you guys are cause it gets hot as crap in NC too and i have had the hp line out there for 3 years myself with no problems that i've seen or heard, not even any color change, see alot of them regularly that look as good as the day i installed it Knock on Wood

Well here's my update after Filmslayer and i installed Suntek hp20 on a 99 Malibu. I like the color and like TJ said it shrinks sweet! I can't really say anything bad about it after 1 car but i can see where tinters would like it. I guess one could only say something bad about a film if they used it on a regular basis and had problems that they didn't like. I didn't see anything bad about Suntek hp series, like i said it shrinks like god and it looks good and has a good feel when applying but i don't know the longevity of this product. Only time will tell!

Might have changed the dye... Goes purple, at 3 years you're due.... If it were color stable don't ya think they'd be pushing that trait?

Try Carbon series and you wont be impressed with it anymore

Sorry OCC, I agree, the Carbon line is a color stable film like my Madico CH line. The HP line just wont hold up. TA, dont do anymore cars with the HP, call them back and get a sample of the Carbon. The prices are great on this film and it should last much longer. I have been tossing around the idea of carrying it for auto use. The only thing that sets me back is that I'm a FirstCut dealer through Enpro. I have to buy FirstCut film to remain a FirstCut dealer, which consists of Enpros' software with plotter.

man i have to go and edit my post I misread that one, the carbon is the best, thats the only one I use

Firstly i understand its also just your opinion but if i could clarify because you are saying the two films don't look alike. With all due respect i fitted SYDS-25 to a house which had previously had SL-280 fitted to it ( myself) and i tinted the rest of the house in the ST even corner windows adjacent to the SL film and neither me or the pedantic customer could pick the difference. I was even up front with him and told him it was a different product. He liked it so much he showed it off to the neighbours, i have now done his neighbours home in the ST. ( at a better price than the SL of course because over here Madico film is double the price of the SunTek film)

Please explain why Onyx goes purple so quickly as compared to others and how this makes it a good film ?


I have done my fathers car in 05 in Onyx 35 and it had faded and gone purple, i have recently retinted it as it was embarrassing for me.
My wifes car had Onyx-20 fitted alround in 06 and its VLT had increased so much that it looked like 35%, and had the distinct purple look which one of my neighbours made comment when i was going to tint his car that "he didn't want the purple stuff like on my wifes car" !!! hence i retinted it 4 months ago now.

Don't start me on NG 35 or 20.

Don't get me wrong I liked using DG35 and the SL sunscape series and also had put up a lot of Kynar external and was generally content with how they performed. I just have recently found other films that give better bang for your buck.

My Opinion.

Onyx has always been made with an earlier generation dye that initially has a really nice, black look. Also it is deep dyed as opposed to Charcool which is extruded (Madico's color stable offering) so it tends to be a bit more user friendly. The simple answer is it never has been touted as color stable. Most of the older generation dyes will change color to purple, as will Sun Tek's HP series.

Madico has offered Charcool as their color stable auto film for a long time (10 plus years). Sun Tek's Carbon, a simple, deep dyed, 2 layer 1.5 mil film made with later generation dyes has been available 6+ years. The TSER numbers they advertise are not tested and exaggerated to give the impression this film is "hi tech".

In today's competative environment, if you choose to use Onyx, ST's standard or HP or similar films you are selling yourself and the customer short. Stick with color stable, non signal interfering films to avoid change to purple, and any possible reception or sensor interference. Upsell to ceramics for best color stability and heat rejection.

SL180 and SY25 should look similar. Both are older technology sputtered dual reflective films. The difference is Madico uses an outside weatherable poyesther and Sun Tek does not. It does not make them perform or look different, and the main differnce will be longevity which is hard to measure. Thus a price difference (should not equate to twice as much). I've got Sun Tek SY series installs that are 8+ years old that have held up fine.

I did say Onyx would't turn purple...it will. You were talking about a span of 4-5 months and it turned purple, which I simply dont believe. Addicted has it right about the film. I only use the CH line b/c its is a non-metalized, color stable film, which is safe for use on ALL applications. Madi even says it can be used as a flat glass film (which I still wouldnt use for fg). The Carbon line is a better choice than the HP line of Suntek. Please, take my advice on this and dont use the HP line. If you think Onyx is bad, just wait 1-2 years after a HP install. NG line does look a little strange b/c it is very purple out of the box, but it works well. Ive installed quite a bit of it on commercial applications, and have yet to have a custy question the color. Most of them love the black chrome look from the outside. Youre right, Suntek certainly has bang for the buck...cant argue with that.

I used the Suntek HP series they sent me samples of and called them this morning and told them i would like to have samples of there Carbon line to try out! They are sending me Carbon 30 and 20% tomorrow! You guys say that the Carbon line is better than the HP line. How long honestly does the Carbon series last? Do you get at least 3 years out of it? As far as using and applying Suntek film i thought it was a very nice film to work with! But like i said i just don't know this product like alot of you do! Is it worth the risk of trying?

Tried and never goin to use it again all cars tinted were calling back for film curling