I use the metal Gilmour impact sprinklers. I use one at each opposing end and a Y off a short hose off the hose bib. I have to set them short and misty, I like that term, to get them to overlap. My front lawn isnt that big so they can overlap and I can water the front in about 2.5 hours.

I have dedicated sprinklers for front side and back so I dont have to reset the distance and stops.

I have different sprinklers for different parts of the yard. A travelling sprinkler does the larger sections. I modified an oscillating sprinkler to cover the long, narrow sections of the yard. I blocked off five holes on each side, leaving only several holes in the center exposed. A regular oscillating sprinkler covers my wife's garden, while other landscaped areas use drip irrigation. I have a lovely brass impact sprinkler but don't have much use for it anymore.

For my yards I've tried both and found the oscillating sprinklers to be more effective, covers more area and quicker. I can lay down 1" in an hour and the impact ones I have took at least 3 times that amount.

The only way to get matched precipitation rates (all parts get watered equally over the same amount of time) is to install a well-designed irrigation system that waters head to head. The design is very important, I saw a new house here in my neighborhood that had one zone in the front with some pop-ups on the outside of the narrow part that only reached to the middle (no head to head) and a big gear driven head in one corner to cover the larger area (different precipitation rate), and this was done by a professional!
That said, you can water without a system like this but you will have difficulty getting matched precipitation rates.

I have an oscillating sprinkler for the rectangular side parts and an impact for the main area.

A finite amount of water is going to come out of your faucet in a given time. Anything you do to confine the flow is going to reduce the amount of water coming out. With that in mind, make sure you have a hose of the same diameter as your water pipe. Also, on the sprinkler itself, make sure the piping is approximately that size too until right at the head. The more time the water spends in a small pipe, the less the flow rate. Sometimes even rather expensive metal impact sprinklers are poorly designed.

weigo,

I have impulse sprinklers too 'cause they cover the greatest difference & I've seen (not measured) that they do the same thing; soaking grass closest to the sprinkler, barely anything at the end of the stream & so-so in the middle of the stream. It's quite frustrating.

I've tried oscillating sprinklers but they don't cover much ground & "freeze up" too fast in our very hard water. I'd have to have 2 hoses off each big with such sprinklers on the ends of each hose going in as many directions to get all of our weird-shaped lawn.

If I even could do that with our low water pressure & at times it's even lower still.

Good stuff. Thanks for the replies.

My front yard is about 1/3 of my 6000 or so sq ft. so I'm strongly considering using some home eq. money and having irrigation installed in the front. From what I've heard from my neighbors, I can do this for ~$1000. We'll see...