With a mist you lose more to evaporation and wind. I use that type of sprinkler for germinating seed where you only need to keep the soil and seed moist. Outside of that they really don't work well for watering the lawn because they are extremely inconsistent and will over water one area while barely watering others.

+100 about inconsistent watering with rotary sprinklers. I can never get those things to water evenly. Since the 60s I have tried every type of sprinkler, twice. I have finally settled on the turbo type oscillators as giving the most consistent and even amount of water to the lawn. The linkage type oscillators are crap, so stay away from those. They can break after one use. The turbo type last for years if the plastic doesn't break. They work perfectly at low flow, too.

+3 for droplets and another vote for turbo sprinklers; I sled-mounted a Hunter lawn sprinkler and use that for spot watering. :-)

I do find that the Gilmour Pattern Master sprinkler is one of the best impulse sprinklers I've used--if you must have an impulse. With (considerable) fiddling, you can get it to be pretty even across its range and the droplets are large enough to tolerate modest wind.

Thanks everyone! Also, what is a turbo sprinkler? You mean one like this?

Yes. The mechanism that makes the sweep back and forth is enclosed inside the device. The old style had a linkage on the outside. Those things always jammed up. Also the turbo reverses direction much more promptly. They used to call them turbo, but now they don't.