9 Best Pressure Washers for 2023 | Pressure Washer Reviews

Spring is great. Outdoor and yard projects kick back into high gear as the weather turns warmer, but so does dirt, mildew, and mold. All this nastiness seems to collect on any outdoor surface from your house’s siding and outdoor furnishings to sidewalks and driveways. To keep the fun as you get ready for summer and make short work of dirty surfaces, turn to a pressure washer. They not only clean with the mechanical action of high-pressure water, they also scrub with the chemical action supplied from cleaners in the machines’ onboard tanks (some machines siphon cleaner out of a nearby bucket). Bonus: these machines use less water per square foot to clean than spraying with a garden hose.

We tested more than a dozen pressure washers, some powered by gasoline engines and others powered by electric motors. Our goal was to find out which are the kings of clean and, of those we tested, we list only the handful of the top performers below. Read our pressure washer background below, then the reviews, and keep scrolling to look at some recent machines that we haven’t tested (yet) but that we will be moving through our test cycle in the weeks ahead.

The Best Pressure Washers of 2023

Gas Engine or Electric Motor

The pump that provides the high-velocity jet of water out of a pressure washer may be driven by a gas engine or an electric motor. One is not necessarily better than the other, but which you buy will depend on your cleaning needs, budget, and how you feel about maintaining the equipment you own.

Electric: These are best suited for brief cleaning sessions, running from 15 to 30 minutes. They have enough power for general washing of outdoor surfaces. They work well on wood and synthetic decks that need only gentle cleaning, all types of outdoor furniture, single-floor ranch houses, all types of exterior siding, and will clean the undercarriage of a pickup truck. They’re not well suited to heavy-duty cleaning or long sessions in the height of the summer. Their motor, cord, and ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) can get extremely hot. These are much quieter than gas-engine pressure washers, and they need hardly any maintenance. As a bonus, they’re easy to store indoors during the winter.

Gas: These are best suited to heavy-duty cleaning. The power afforded by a gas engine can drive a large and powerful pump, enabling these machines to shoot water to higher surfaces, clean heavier deposits of mold and dirt, and even slice thick deposits of mud from equipment such as farm machinery, trucks, and off-road vehicles. A gas engine is much louder than an electric motor, plus requires maintenance in the form of oil changes, replacement air filters, and a yearly check or change of the spark plug. Not to mention you have to be careful about fuel degradation. Today’s alcohol-containing gasoline quickly degrades and can damage fuel-system parts like carburetors and gas lines. Also, gas engine pressure washers are best stored over the winter in the garage or an outbuilding.

Pressure Washer Safety

All the machines we tested were safe to use, and we encountered nothing in them that caused us any concern. However, pressure washers by their nature demand careful and deliberate handling, both for your sake and that of whatever you’re cleaning.

Both electric and gas pressure washers can damage surfaces. Of the two, the risk is higher with gas-engine machines owing to the fact that they’re generally more powerful. There are some key things you need to know to clean safely and effectively.

• Use a green or a white nozzle for most jobs: the broad spray angle is less likely to damage surfaces. Reserve red and yellow nozzles only for the toughest cleaning. Their narrow spray angle provides more cutting action but is more likely to damage a surface.
• Avoid electrical: Don’t wash outdoor light fixtures, outlet receptacles covers, transformer boxes, doorbells, cameras, or backup generator cabinets. These objects are easily damaged by high pressure water. Also, pressure washing them can, in the worst case, send water inside their electrical box, leading to a corrosion-induced electrical failure.
• Watch your distance, and keep moving: The longer you keep the pressure washer’s stream focused in one place, and the closer it is to the surface, the more likely you are to cause damage.
• Avoid or proceed with caution around delicate surfaces such a shade sails, insulated-glass windows, and outdoor furnishings built from soft materials like cedar or redwood.

How We Test

Testing pressure washers is the proverbial dirty job. We wash concrete and brick pavements, vinyl and cement board siding, aluminum trim and gutters, faux stone, vertical brick, and wood trim. Vinyl fences and outdoor furniture, too. We even very carefully washed some cars (using the white nozzle). One of the toughest tests was blasting clean three large commercial trash cans with bottoms awash in a nauseating soup of summer stink. They looked and smelled like new cans when we were done with them. Aside from cleaning ability, we look at ease of use. Would the washer tip over if you tugged on its hose? Just how easy is it to get the thing up a set of ramps and into the back of a pickup truck? Was the hose easy to tighten onto the pump fitting? And just how stiff is the hose that takes the water from the pump to the gun? Read on for our evaluations.