Army painter dip.. is it that good?

A while back one of the long standing gaming buddies waffled on to me about "army painter" I'll be the first to admit that I turned my nose up at it, after all that wasn't "painting" in my eyes...

So fast forward a couple of years and with the recent black powder French that I painted using the tried and tested technique of normal three stage highlights and inks I was quite chuffed with the actual results and the amount that I got done in a fairly short space of time was overwhelming.

Now with Hail Caesar just round the corner I picked up a box of warlord Celt's to have a play about with painting wise and see if I could muster up the mental enthusiasm to actually paint another 150+ models!

After chatting to Lee once more I decided to give the army painter dip a crack, I bought it to do the french but resisted as I didn't have the balls to try it!

So remembering Lee's final words... "don't highlight your models just paint them in the final highlight stage" I went for it!

So yep I'll admit that they look like they've been painted by a "noob" but keeping the painting tidy and doing most of it in the GW foundation paints was a welcome change, mainly because the paint dried so quick that I was able to get these blasted out in a couple of days,

then came the actual "dipping" I was advised rather than going for the dip and flick method to actually paint it on with an old brush, now it took me longer to get hold of some white spirits and a glass jar than it did to actually paint the models!

yep it looks shit still!! 

So after leaving them for about 20 hours I based them up the same as the french previously and went a bit arty farty on the bases with shock horror "multiple" flocks being used! something that I've not done for ages.

ok so looking better as they are 99% "finished" but kinda remind me of some old toys done by a company called Britain's from when I was a kid.

So I cracked open the "anti-shine" that army painter do and blasted away only decided on one coat as they are plastic so should be fairly tough when coming to wear and tear

A massive difference in my eyes...

So as the title suggests is it really that good??

the pictures personally speak for themselves and IF you don't have a great deal of time to paint due to real-life and all that jazz then this is the stuff for you, ok so you won't win a golden deamon but if you wanna do that Guard, Nid, Orc, Skaven, Tomb Kings or in fact any large fantasy or 40K army then this is a life saver!

for stuff like malifaux, infinity, necromunda stuff that you only need a dozen models for personally I wouldn't bother but hey its what ever floats you boat!

Golden question...

Would I recommend it & use it again?

Yes to both!

but what are your thoughts on it?