Cleaning – nobody likes to do it, but we have to. From the mud on your car to the dirt on the driveway to the mildew festering on the patio furniture, all that unwanted gunk will need to be dealt with at one point or another. It’s plenty disheartening seeing your car dirty and disheveled when you drive to work in the morning, after all. Same with tending to your backyard garden in the morning and being treated to a sight of mold and mildew all over your house’s sidings.
There was a time when cleaning out this kind of filth will require a bucket of soapy water and a seemingly interminable amount of elbow grease. Fortunately for us, that time is long gone. Electric pressure washers have made cleaning this type of filth a much easier affair, allowing you to simply blast through erstwhile stubborn gunk using a highly-pressurized water stream. And if the mechanical action of power washing isn’t enough, many electric pressure washers also let you mix cleaning products into that water, supplementing the mechanical cleaning with some good, old chemical warfare in your heated battle against dirt and grime.
Why not consider gas-powered pressure washers? Much as we appreciate the powerful cleaning action of gas-powered models, fact is, they’re way too noisy for residential use, especially when the best electric pressure washers can handle, pretty much, any household cleaning task without producing nearly the same amount of ruckus. Not to mention, they tend to be lighter, more affordable, and overall easier to maintain. Of course, electric pressure washers can be a bit difficult to use, since you need to be tethered to both a power outlet and a water source, which can create complications when you’re cleaning fixed structures around the house.
These are the best electric pressure washers to clean your car, your driveway, and all sorts of stuff around the house.
Wen PW1900 Variable Flow Electric Pressure Washer
Yes, it looks like a tire inflator. However, this is an actual electric pressure washer that can handle most household cleaning jobs. It’s not the most powerful tool for the job. In fact, even though it has a listed max PSI of 2000, the actual PSI rating is only 1,300, so this offers milder pressure compared to the most powerful washers out there. Certainly, it’s a big downgrade from the 3,000+ PSI you normally get from its gas-powered counterparts. In practice, though, the 13-amp motor still produces enough pressure to adequately remove dirt and grime from most anything we tested, which is pretty amazing for something so compact. It comes with a detergent bottle that you can attach to the nozzle, allowing you to mix cleaning agents into the water as they stream out to your target. Because it’s so compact, there’s no integrated storage area in the device for the hose or the nozzle, so you’ll have to figure out a way to tidy things up on your own.
Black + Decker BEPW1850 1850-PSI Electric Pressure Washer
This is probably one of the least powerful pressure washers we’ve tried, at least judging from the strength of the stream coming out of the nozzle. Despite that, it still took out mud from the car tires and wheel well without much resistance, while walkways, driveways, and sidings definitely cleared out after a bit of targeted cleaning. Like many of the products listed here, it comes with a detergent bottle for mixing the water with cleaning agent, which definitely helps a lot, especially when you encounter tougher dirt that won’t just come off with the lower water pressure. It features large six-inch wheels and a telescoping handle that lets you tow it around the yard, while the included 35-foot power cord and 25-foot hose lets you move around pretty freely in most open household spaces.
Sun Joe SPX3000
We love the fact that this electric pressure washer comes with two detergent tanks, allowing you to carry a pair of cleaning solutions to mix with your water during use (you can only choose to use one of them at a time). Equipped with a 14.5-amp motor, it produces a maximum 2,030 PSI and a 1.7 gpm water flow, which makes it powerful enough to let you clean out most common cleaning jobs. Again, the PSI listed is the maximum it produces, with the actual PSI rating likely a lot lower. From our testing, though, this definitely feels more powerful than the first two power washers above, so it should clean everything short of jobs that will require a more commercial-grade machine. Features include detachable nozzle tips for spraying at different angles, built-in hooks for winding hoses and cords, seven-inch wheels, towing handle, and an included 20-foot pressure hose.
Ryobi RY1419MTVNM Wheeled Electric Pressure Washer
While not as portable as the Wen model above, this electric pressure washer is still plenty compact, making it just as easy to stow away when not in use. Even better, it comes with integrated sections for winding your cables and hoses, so it’s much easier to tidy up during storage. A wide handle on top lets you carry it around, although it also comes with wheels and an extendable handle out front if you’d rather tow it from one spot to another. While rated at 1,900 PSI, actual sustained cleaning runs it at about 1,500 PSI, which is actually a pleasant surprise, since we were expecting much weaker pressure. As such, we were able to clean most anything pretty easily, while focusing the spray on more stubborn dirt did clear them up after a bit. It comes with a detergent tank, three nozzles, and a 25-foot pressure hose.
Chemical Guys EQP408 ProFlow Performance Electric Pressure Washer
Another power washer that resembles a tire inflator, this is definitely one of the strangest models we’ve seen in the category. Despite that, this electric pressure washer makes a great choice if you want a really compact one that you can keep in the boot of the car. The 14.5-amp motor produces a maximum PSI of 2030 and a GMP rating of 1.77, both of which sound nice. During use, though, we found the device to leak unusually hard compared to other power washers, which definitely affects its water pressure. As such, it probably delivered the weakest pressure of all the devices we’ve tested. Still, it produced enough pressure to adequately clean cars and dirt bikes, pretty handily removing caked mud nearly anywhere we aimed the nozzle. It’s also possible there’s something that can be done with the leaking, which should immediately improve pressure, but we never quite figured it out. Features include a 35-foot power cord, 360-degree rotating casters, and dual pressure wands (one compact, one extended).
Craftsman Electric Pressure Washer (CMEPW2100)
We’ll admit: we thought this was a gas pressure washer when we first saw it. We mean, it literally looks like it has a gas tank. Plus, it has all the design elements found in those petrol power washers, including the large 10-inch wheels and the hand truck frame. Turn out, that gas tank is actually the tank for the detergent and this thing is powered by a 13-amp electric motor that produces a maximum of 2100 PSI and 1.2 GPM. In actual use, it delivered sustained pressure that actually comes close to that PSI rating, making this a really powerful pressure washer, all while making just as much noise as lower pressure machines we’ve worked with. Seriously, we can’t imagine it not handling any cleaning job short of commercial projects. Features include swappable spray tips, removable soap tank, hooks for hoses and wires, integrated storage for the spray wand, and a 25-foot high pressure hose.
DeWalt Jobsite Power Washer (DWPW2100)
We’re big fans of compact electric pressure washers, as they really make accommodating one in your garage very convenient. This model does it even better by accommodating everything within its rectangular frame, from the hose and the power cord to the spray wand that breaks down into three pieces and stashes into its own integrated compartment. It also has discreet wheels and a retractable handle, so you can tow it around when needed. Despite its size, the device actually delivered close to its listed 2100 PSI pressure (similar performance to the Craftsman model above), even stripping off some old stains on concrete that we thought would require a commercial-grade washer. While we were initially apprehensive because it’s so expensive compared to other pressure washers with similar PSI ratings, using it definitely cleared up how much better it actually works.
Karcher K5 Premium
If you want an electric pressure washer that can hold up a long time, it’s best to narrow your choices to those with induction motors, which have proven to be more durable over many years. It’s pretty powerful, too, delivering a rating 2,000 PSI at 1.4 GPM. In our testing, pressure was consistently strong, with the stronger water flow actually helping boost the actual cleaning process. As such, it, pretty much, got rid of any filth and grime we hit with the water right on contact, allowing us to cover plenty of area in pretty short order. Features include a 25-foot high-pressure hose (with an integrated hose reel to really tidy things up), a 35-foot power cord, a removable detergent tank with adjustable flow, and three spray options (one for general purpose cleaning, one for hard surfaces, and one for gentler cleaning).
Ryobi 2700 PSI Electric Pressure Washer
Another electric pressure washer that we initially thought was gas-powered, this machine delivers intense 2,700 PSI water pressure at 1.1 GPM, which puts it at the higher end for home power washers. Powered by a very durable 13-amp induction motor, this washer breezed through every job we tried it on, even stripping some paint off concrete like it was a hum-drum chore. It takes on a traditional power washer design, with a hand truck frame and large 12-inch wheels, which does require you to clear some room for storage. For the cleaning power it delivers, though, it’s definitely worth any space it will take up in your garage. It comes with a 5-in-1 cleaning nozzle, a turbo nozzle, an onboard detergent tank, and a 35-foot high-pressure hose.
Greenworks 3000 PSI TruBrushless
As far as looking like a gas-powered machine, this has all the previous ones beat. Seriously, you can tell people it’s a lawn mower and a few might actually buy it. It just looks the part. This beastly apparatus, however, is an extremely powerful electric pressure washer, which delivers a whopping 3,000 PSI at 2.0 GPM for cleaning power that rivals what you can get from gas-powered models. Even in actual use, the performance upgrade here is very noticeable, so much so that we were actually dumbfounded seeing an electric pressure washer actually produce that much power. We didn’t think it was even a thing. Basically, this is the machine to get if you have cleaning jobs you’ve always thought required a gas-based power washer. Features include five included spray tips (all of which store directly on the hand truck), a 25-foot rubber hose, a 35-foot power cord, and an onboard detergent tank.
