First salt water ready is an excuse for it to be plastic but that's not even my gripe. This must be some sort of safety thing. IF you squeeze completely down you get a slow low pressure stream HOWEVER if you can hold the handle just half way down you get a string stream like you would expect with the handle all the way down. It is extremely difficult to hold the handle half way down. STUPID STUPID STUPID!! Whoever designed this is a moron. I constantly squeeze too hard and lose all pressure took me 20 minutes of cussing my low water pressure to figure this out. Who would think don't squeeze it so tight???