“My job has a lot of pressure.”
I was talking to my wife and the dad joke landed with a thud. I’ve been testing and reviewing products since 2001, running Gearadical since 2020 (a great time to start a company, to be sure), but the reality is that there isn’t a ton of pressure — unless I’m under some tight deadlines.
Today, the pressure was coming from a Craftsman Electric Cold Water Pressure Washer, and all I was seeing were a few eye rolls. “Must be rough washing your BMW, huh?”
Now, for clarity — the BMW is a 2010 model and it has 146,000 miles. I love it. In fact, I even try to wash it once in a while, and the pressure washer was working wonders.
Balance of power and usefulness
I have to say this is the right balance of power and utility for me. At 1,800 max PSI, this specific model (the CMEPW1800) costs about right at $139 and does the job. However, it’s not going to peel back the laminate encrusted onto cement from decades ago or eradicate hard-packed paint. It’s for cleaning and washing, which is a more common chore at my house anyway.
A few notes about what this model is intended for. First, there’s a soap cannon, but it’s for foaming and doesn’t run continuously. I’m okay with that, especially for car washing, because the concern with any powerful pressure sprayer is that you will leave marks. The soap cannon allows you to foam up a floor, the side of your house, or your car and then do a wash. It foams in the sense that you can easily cover an area with soap, then switch the nozzle to rinse.
I’ve used many pressure sprayers where you can use a setting to spray with soap continuously, and while you may be able to clean up a deck faster that way, I’d rather soap and rinse to avoid marking up the surface accidently. And, I tended to use a lot less soap (the concentrate for that, available at places like Lowe’s, is a bit spendy if you use it up often).
Rinse and repeat
As far as the rinse, you can point the nozzle up close to what you are cleaning and it does pack some serious power. I cleaned a gas grill and sprayed away all the grime and grease quite easily. I was surprised how easily it worked. I also sprayed moss on my driveway and, up close, the sprayer had enough power to strip away the moss but not harm my driveway.
I also used the Craftsman Electric Cold Water Pressure Washer on plenty of other surfaces, including some rocks (again, to clean up the moss and dirt), my garage floor, and some tools and other gear I had laying around that needed a nice cleaning. I own a John DeereX350 lawn tractor (I am closely buying all the products I liked the best over the last 23 years of testing) and managed to get the thing stuck in the mud at the bottom of a hill behind my house. The sprayer took care of the mud and I had what looked like a brand new 2018 mower.
Overall, the Craftsman Electric Cold Water Pressure Washer is a champ. It uses a 35-foot electric cord, so you have to plan where you plan to do the work. I don’t recommend using an extension cord and plugging directly into an outlet with a breaker. The sprayer hose is 20-feet, and I wished it had been just a touch longer. Wrapping everything up isn’t exactly a pain, but between the garden hose, the sprayer hose, and the cord, there’s a lot to wrap up when storing the unit. The unit comes with the soap foamer, the high-pressure nozzle, and then a low pressure nozzle. It was fun to test out and is a top pick for cleaning projects.