I've used many brands: Toro, Hunter, Rainbird, etc. and Rainbirds are by far my favorite brand. For large spaces you have to use rotators: Rainbird makes maxi-paws, mini-paws, and gear driven rotators. Gear driven rotators are kind of a pain to adjust and they don't cover as well as the maxis and minis. For tight spaces and for flowers and shrubs you should use the sprayers, sometimes called "misters". You can choose the correct nozzle to spray an arc of 1/4, 1/2 etc.. Thus, you avoid spraying water in places you don't want to get wet.
Ideally, the misters and rotators should be on separate zones, but I've seen them work okay all mixed together. The goal should be 100% coverage. If the coverage is not 100% and there is a drought, you'll see brown streaks. You can adjust the sprinklers accordingly.
If the water pressure is low, the Maxi-Paws have a tricky adjustment that lets you customize it for low pressure. This is only necessary if the heads aren't turning due to low pressure. If the heads still aren't turning after adjusting this spring, you have too many heads on that particular zone.
As far as maintenance goes, for rotators, you have to pull out grass and weeds each spring or they won't turn. Sometimes, you have to change the spray or the turning arc, but that's simple. The misters have a little screen that plugs up and sometimes the nozzle gets plugged. A little awl or screwdriver will unplug the nozzle. Make sure that none of these sprinklers are above ground level when they are in the lowered position or you will break the heads with lawn mowers, snowblowers, etc. That's the major maintenance, and you can avoid it. If a maxi or mini-paw head does need replacing, there is a special wrench that lets you spin out the old head and screw in the new one without having to do any digging.
The maxis and minis, can be plumbed up using a 1/2" connection on the side of the sprinkler housing or a 3/4" connection from below. It all depends on how deep you want to trench in the poly tubing.