I agree....I got a foam lance and I think it's the product that I've gotten with the least amount of return on the investment (and I bought it for half the price they sell it for here). It looks very cool but it doesn't save time at all; all the contrary, it takes much longer.
Ugh... this was my fear after my first time using it, I was hoping that maybe it was just my technique and it will get better...maybe it's a little of both.
When I first saw people talking about pressure washer + foam lance washes, I thought it was going to be this amazing fast key to touchless washing. Then I read up on it, and realized that- ok, I'll probably still have to use a little bit of the mitt, but very light pressure, still a good amount faster. But after that first time using it, on a car that had been washed a week earlier, and saw maybe 1 or 2 days of light rain, I was not very impressed... After the first time using the pressure washer/foam lance and mitt with l ight pressure, I still had several spots of dust remaining from the rain... and I had to do a second pass with more pressure from the mitt. I thought the whole point was to save me potential swirling etc from touching the paint to much/heavily (and time). But it seems like it didn't solve either of those problems, and if anything took longer.
I guess I'll keep trying it and working on my technique, but I was hoping the improvement would be much more obvious. I'd still rather do a traditional wash though, even if it's just the usual 2-bucket.