Best Pressure Washers of 2025: I Tested Six Power Washers on Wood, Metal and More

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Who it’s for:

If you have a big driveway, a building site, or a fleet of cars to wash, the DWPW3000 has your back. However, it’s one of the most expensive pressure washers we recommend, at $529 at full price. 

Why I like it:

The DWPW3000 is a large, powerful power washer that can handle massive cleaning jobs while remaining portable and easy to store. With 3,000 PSI of water pressure and four included nozzles, it handled all the jobs I tested it on without strain, from washing the car to blasting ground-in dirt from rugged concrete blocks. 

The entire setup fits into a compact, portable package: The handle, wands and nozzles are stored in a lidded compartment on top, the power cable is wrapped around plastic lugs on the bottom, and the hose and foam cannon are positioned on top, secured by a retaining clip. That means you aren’t going to leave things behind or lose them: it’s all stored together. Additionally, the wheels and suitcase-type fold-out handle make it easy to move over flat surfaces. It’s a bit heavy to lug over rough surfaces, though, at 36 pounds, but the roll cage design makes it easy to pick up. 
Who shouldn’t buy it:

This is a lot of washer for just cleaning the car occasionally. If the high cost of this pressure washer puts you off, DeWalt offers a cheaper model with the same accessories but a maximum pressure of 2,100 PSI: the DWPW2100.

Who it’s for:
Those who need a pressure washer for multiple cleaning tasks will find what they need for most of them in this flexible pressure washer. At $300 suggested retail price, it’s not the most affordable option, but it’s currently on sale for $200. 

Why I like it:
The SunJoe SPX3000 offers a multitude of cleaning features in a single package. Five nozzles (0 degrees, 15 degrees, 25 degrees, 40 degrees and a soap nozzle that also doubles as a general rinse) and two separate detergent containers enable it to handle various cleaning tasks without requiring multiple setups. Most pressure washers use a soap dispenser that attaches to the wand or the washer, but the SPX3000 holds two of them on the body of the washer, along with a dial that allows you to switch between them and control how much is dispensed. 

Washing the car? Attach the soap nozzle, turn on the soap dispenser and get sudsy. Dial down the detergent, and it’s time for the rinse cycle without having to swap any parts out. Want to wash the deck next? Switch to the second soap dispenser, which is filled with deck cleaner, and so on and so on. It’s a compelling design for anyone who needs a pressure washer to do more than one thing, and it works well. 

The washer itself is large at just over 26 inches tall. But at 26 pounds, it’s manageable to pick up and move around. The large wheels and handle make it easy to drag around on flat surfaces, though, but it doesn’t fold down or get any smaller for storage. The 20-foot hose and 35-foot power cable mean that it can roam around all but the largest yards and driveways. 

One thing to note here: SunJoe doesn’t specifically say that you have to use its detergent, but it does advise that using pretty much any bleach or acid-based cleaner may break the washer and void the warranty. That’s pretty standard, only industrial pressure washers can handle the more powerful cleaning agents. 

Who shouldn’t buy it:
While the SPX3000 is flexible, it isn’t all that portable. If you have to wash a car park full of cars or don’t have access to power everywhere, a battery washer like the Ego Plus Power 3200 or the STIHL REA100 Plus can wash further afield. 

Who it’s for:
Those with serious cleaning needs in out-of-the-way places will appreciate the power and performance of this expensive ($880 retail price) pressure washer. It’s a good option for people who need almost industrial-level cleaning, and it’s currently on sale for $549. 

Why I like it:
The Ego Power Plus is the 3,200 pounds per square inch gorilla of this roundup. It has the highest pressure, the most feature-laden and is the loudest and most expensivest of them all. It’s a monster of a cleaner, blasting away even the toughest and most ingrained stains and marks. This should be used with some caution, though: the incredible 3,200 PSI of the turbo mode tore away the surface of every material I tried it on with the 5-degree nozzle when used without care.

Although this washer is smaller than the SunJoe SPX3000, it’s much heavier: With both of the monster 280 Wh batteries installed, it weighs a hefty 45 pounds. That’s way too much to lift comfortably, but the suitcase-style telescoping handle and the large, wide wheels make it easy to drag around on flat surfaces. All of the accessories also fit nicely onto the case. The nozzles are stored in plastic clips on the top, the pressure hose attaches to the back, and the wand clips into a holster on the side. 

The large wand is comfortable to use, and the rigid extension to the 25-foot pressure hose that connects the main washer to the hose is a nice touch: the pressure hose is less likely to get tangled or twisted around your legs or other obstacles. Switches on the wand also allow you to adjust the pressure level, making it useful for switching between cleaning and rinsing without stopping. LEDs on the handle also show the battery level. 

Also included as a standard accessory is an 8-foot hose and filter that allows you to draw water from a bucket, pond or stream. Combine this with the batteries, and you get a flexible washer that can go a long way away from the faucet. A foam cannon is also included, a soap container that replaces the nozzle and mixes soap from the container with the water. 

The two hefty batteries that are included both store about 280 watt-hours of juice, and a full charge of both offers about 45 minutes of use on the lower pressure settings. Use the full-power Turbo setting, though, and that falls to less than fifteen minutes. Those with a mathematical eye may have also noticed that this washer comes with only one charger, so you will need to charge one battery, then swap it out and charge the other. The batteries are the same 56-volt ones used by other Ego Power devices, so you may already have more than one charger and additional batteries. 

Who shouldn’t buy it:
It’s way more pressure washer than most people will need. If you don’t have big cleaning jobs or off-grid needs, there are many corded and more affordable options on our list.

June 2025: This article is a complete rewrite and overhaul, with all-new products that were tested over the course of weeks. Products we evaluated include the Karcher K1800PS Cube, DeWalt 20V Max 550 PSI, DeWalt DWPW3000 3000 Max, SunJoe SPX3000, Stihl REA100 Plus and Ego Power Plus 3,200 PSI.

Product	Best for…	Price (Amazon)	Power sources	Type	Overall score	Usability score (1 to 5)	Accessories score (1 to 5)	PSI	Gallons per minute	Cleaning units	Pressure hose length	Pressure settings	Included nozzles	Other included accessories
DeWalt DWPW3000	Job sites and serious cleaning work	$520	Electric	Draggable	8.5	4.5	4	3000	1.1	3300	35 feet		15 degrees, 25 degrees, 40 degrees, Turbo	Foam cannon
DeWalt 20V Max 550 PSI Cordless Power Cleaner Kit	General cleaning, with the odd bit of serius power cleaning	$247	Battery (20 V/5 Ah/ 100 Wh)	Handheld	8	4	4	550	1	550	N/A	Low, High	15 degrees, 25 degrees, 40 degrees, Turbo	Battery charger, soap bottle, carrying bag, suction hose & filter, quick connect hose adapter
Ego Power Plus 3,200	Off-grid users, very large cleaning jobs	$550	Battery (2x 56 V/6 Ah/280 Wh)	Draggable	7	4	4	3,200	2	6,400	25 foot	Low, High, Turbo	0 degrees, 15 degrees, 25 degrees, 40 degrees, Rinse, Turbo	Stainless Steel Wand, Quick Connect Lance, Foam Cannon, Filter
Karcher K1800PS Cube	Car washes, cleaning off siding and other smaller jobs	$160	Electric	Draggable	8.5	4	3	1,800	1.2	2160	20 feet	None	Turbo, 15 degrees, Soap	Detergent tank, water filter
SunJoe SPX3000	Deck cleaning and stubborn stain shifting	$200	Electric	Draggable	7	3.5	4	2030	1.2	2436	20 feet	None	0 degrees, 15 degrees, 25 degrees, 40 degrees, Soap	2x Detergent containers
Stihl REA100 Plus	Boldy going where no power washer has gone before	$650	Battery (32 V/8.7 Ah/281 Wh)	Handheld	8	4.5	4	1800	1.2	2160	20 feet	Dial	3-in-1 nozzle (cone, rinse, soap)	Charger, foam cannon

All of the pressure washers we tested for this roundup run on electricity, either from a wall socket or from a battery. Both have their pros and cons.

Battery pressure washers

Battery-powered models are great because you don’t have to worry about a long power cable: They can go anywhere there’s water. Combine this with the water filter features that most offer, and you can even get water from a stream, pond or even a bucket. The downside of batteries is that they don’t last long: All the battery-powered washers will only provide a few minutes of washing from a full battery, which is barely enough to give the car a good rinse.  

Corded pressure washers

Washers that get power from a wall socket will run as long as you pay the bill, but you will need a power cable that can reach as far as you want to wash. This will also need to be a beefy one: larger models can draw up to 13 to 15 Amps, which requires a high-capacity power extension cable. Use a thinner one, and it could melt or catch fire.  

Gas-powered pressure washers

There are still plenty of pressure washers available that are gas-powered, usually with a two-stroke engine like a scooter. Professionals love these for one reason: their long running time. A tank full of gas will last much longer than a battery, and it doesn’t require a wall socket to plug into. It’s also easy to keep a container of gas in the back of the truck for bigger jobs. We don’t recommend these for home users, though. Gas pressure washers are noisy and produce noxious fumes; who wants a smoky scooter running in their yard? 

Pressure is measured in pounds per square inch, or PSI. The higher the pressure a washer can produce, the more power it has to shift stubborn dirt, gunk, moss and other tenacious stains. Many of the washers I tested produce only a few hundred PSI of pressure, which is enough to shift dirt, remove surface stains from asphalt and concrete or rinse gunk off the siding of your house, but without damaging the material itself. 

Nozzles

All of the washers I tested come with a variety of nozzles that spread the water in an arc to wash a wider area, ranging from 5 to 50 degrees. They also come with a turbo nozzle, which produces a single stream of water sprayed in a spinning helix, producing a cone-shaped spray that offers high pressure for washing, but with less risk of damage to the material being blasted. 

Most of the nozzles that come with these pressure washers are designated by the angle of the fan that they spray: the wider the angle, the wider the cleaning coverage, but the less pressure the water has. They are usually color-coded, with green for the smallest angle, then orange and white for the widest.  As a general rule, use a smaller angle (10 to 25 degrees) for removing stubborn gunk of a small area, then shift to a larger angle, upwards of 30 degrees, to shift the loose debris.

The best place to start is with the makers of pressure washers call a turbo nozzle, which releases a single thin jet of water in a rotating arc, like a rotating lawn sprayer, but more focused. This can offer the benefits of both a small-angle nozzle (focused power) and a wider nozzle that sweeps the dirt away. 

Zero degree nozzles

Zero-degree nozzles, which are red-colored and release the full pressure of the washer in a single, focused stream, are controversial because they can be very dangerous. That concentrated beam of water moving at hundreds of miles an hour can injure you, tear apart wood, strip paint, crack bricks and score concrete. So, many washers don’t include them: in the pressure washers we tested, only the Ego included one as standard. Most other manufacturers offer one as an optional accessory, but I don’t think most people need one.

The SunJoe also includes a zero-degree nozzle, which is colored red (for danger) and produces a single intense stream of water. That nozzle is also available as an optional accessory for several of the other washers. 

As an uncle once told me, with great pressure comes great responsibility. Use a zero-degree nozzle and a powerful washer on your deck, and it can tear up the wood, blasting away the sealant and wood surface to let in water, which can produce cracks and rot. Use it on your car, and it can turn a tiny paint chip into a rust patch by getting under the top layer of paint and lifting it off. Use it on your siding, and it can strip the paint or even crack the panels, causing leaks in your home. 

Material

To illustrate the problem, I attempted to pressure wash a concrete slab, a piece of deck wood and a brick using the 5-degree nozzle on the Ego Power Plus 3,200, the most powerful of the washers I tested in its turbo mode. 

All three materials were marked by the powerful flow, but the wood was the worst, with part of the wood torn away to a depth of nearly half an inch. If that would have been my deck, I’d have to tear out and replace the board. 

The bottom line? For general cleaning of house and car, one of the smaller pressure washers I tested like the Karcher 1800PS has enough cleaning power for most tasks and is unlikely to damage anything. If you want to keep a concrete driveway spotless or prefer your garden statuary to be shiny clean and completely moss-free, get a more powerful model like the Ego Power Plus, but be careful about how and where you use it. 

Having an incredibly powerful pressure washer is pointless if the darn thing is too heavy to move, so consider where as well as what you’re washing. A portable washer like the DeWalt 20V MAX can go anywhere you can, especially as it can use a bucket as a water source. Bigger, more powerful washers like the SunJoe SPX 3000 are bulkier, heavier and harder to move around, although they do have wheels and handles so you can drag them over flat surfaces. 

I ran several tests to ascertain how well these pressure washers performed. These tests are increasingly difficult, testing the power of the washer from simple tasks to nearly industrial cleaning tasks.

1. Rinse dirt and mud off a car.The simplest, but most common cleaning task is to clean my wife’s car, which gets grimy and salty in use here in New England. So, I cleaned it with each of the washers, including getting the wand into the wheel arch to get out any gunk and salt from driving on roads cleared from snow.  
2. Remove loose dirt from a driveway. My driveway is asphalt, with a very low slope, so it accumulates all sorts of gunk over the seasons. I used the washers to sweep all of this detritus away into the gutter
3. Clean the planks of a wooden deck. I love sitting on my deck in the summer, but with multiple people and animals traipsing in and out from the drive and yard, it gets dirty quickly. So, I used the washers to remove all of this dirt, but without removing the sealant that stops water from getting into the wood. 
4. Clean a fence. My garden fence accumulates all manner of poop and nastiness from the various creatures that my dog likes to chase along it, so I used these washers to try and remove as much of this as possible. The poop, that is, not the animals. 
5. Lift stains from concrete blocks. I have a patio made with concrete blocks, which pick up all sorts of gunk and are prone to turning an unpleasant off-green.  

I also tried various other cleaning tasks around the house and yard as the mood took me. If you’re planning on using a pressure washer regularly, here are a few tips. Know what your target uses will be. Plan your purchase around those. For me, that includes looking at aftermarket tips. There are a lot of options out there to make your life easier. Detergents can help. If in doubt, start with the white 40-degree tip and work your way up. Wear protective gear. Consider other upgrades if you’ll be spending lots of time behind the spray, such as a new wand or high-pressure hose. Also, if you’re new to the game, check out our beginner’s guide to pressure washing.

One thing to note here: I didn’t try stripping paint or other materials: that’s the sort of thing that should be left to the professionals who know how to deal with the possibly harmful or even toxic consequences. See our FAQ for more details. 

Right now what’s on our main list is the full set of six pressure washers we’ve tested. We’ll be sure to update this best list with other tested products throughout the summer season. 

Here is a list of the other washers CNET has previously tested using older testing procedure. These are no longer included on our recommended list either because they’re out of stock or because they weren’t tested following a standard procedure.

• Ryobi 803001 (Update: Discontinued): Priced in the middle of the group with a good attempt at a multi-nozzle tip option, the Ryobi sports the smallest engine specs and otherwise has OK cleaning power, enough to get the job done.
• Greenworks Pro 2300: I tested both the 2,300- and 3,000-PSI versions of the Greenworks Pro electric pressure washer series. The 2300 performs well; about what you’d expect. Very few of the electric pressure washers come with the zero-degree red tip, so if you’re not looking for that concentrated flow out of the box, but still want a mid-tier option, this Greenworks pressure washer is a decent choice.
• Greenworks Pro 3000 (Update: Discontinued): Jumping up to the 3000 from the 2300 Pro series from Greenworks, you can feel the difference and increase in performance between the units. I’m also a fan of the lower and wider body style used here like we’ve seen with Tacklife and DeWalt. There is a bit of a price jump, but if you’re going electric and your pressure washer load is on the heavier side, it would be worth the cost increase.
• Rock&Rocker 3500: This is the lowest-priced option of the units we’ve tested. Although it touts a maximum PSI of 3,500, it doesn’t feel like it operates anywhere near that number (it does list its nominal PSI as 1,850). If you can overlook that, it’s not bad for $150. It has a couple of features I’d like to see more of — namely the built-in hose reel as well as added support for the spray wand. 
• Chemical Guys ProFlow PM2000: I do like these suitcase-style bodies — they’re more actively mobile than the traditional body style, and lighter (also a big fan of the rotating casters). Although this unit isn’t particularly powerful, my main gripe here is with accessory storage. This is the only unit that doesn’t seem to have any type of accessory storage built in, for the power cable, spray wand or hose attachment. It does have a spot for the small interchangeable spray tips, but not for everything else.
• DeWalt DWPW2400: This pressure washer, like most DeWalt products, feels solid enough, but its spray performance did feel a bit underpowered for its stated specs. I have no real issues with its performance otherwise. A solid buy, but one I feel deserves a slightly lower price.
• Craftsman CMEPW2100: Another solid buy at $220 and probably my second-place pick for value buy in electric pressure washers. Good hardware, good performance. Also maybe one of my new favorite features for accessory storage. The spray wands always seem to be loosely stored, rocking about, or falling off. The CMEPW2100 utilizes a tab and slot design to hold the wand securely. I love it.
• Craftsman CMCPW350D1: Here’s another cordless power tool adapted into a pressure washer. It’s lighter than its DeWalt cousin but sacrifices about 40% of the stated PSI power. Like the DeWalt, it’s a solid option if portability is your priority — especially for Craftsman users — and reasonably priced around $129. Bonus: it comes with a handy five-in-one nozzle tip.
  Craftsman CMXGWAS020733 (Update: Out of Stock): This is a good basic cleaning unit at a low price. I especially like its power cord pull location compared to most washers. Still, the lighter-duty feel of the upright form factor, plastic housings and missing yellow tip mark this one down.
• Generac 8874 (Update: Out of Stock): Lowest cost of the gas-powered group with a good wand option. No onboard detergent tank, missing yellow tip, plastic housings, loose spray wand storage and unbalanced wheel alignment prove that you get what you pay for. 
• Simpson MSH3125 (Update: Out of Stock):: One of the higher-priced units, with solid metal parts and a low center of gravity. Otherwise, no onboard detergent tank, loose spray wand storage, and (at least on my unit) more than normal engine vibration.
• Teande 4200PSI (Update: Out of Stock): Looks great on paper and does actually include all five basic nozzle tip types and a neat double reservoir. You have to survive the tedious assembly and still be OK with loose spray nozzle wand storage as a tradeoff. The specified high pressure of 4,200 PSI offers no real-world advantage over the other washers rated at about 1,000 less PSI.