The Ego HPW3204-2 Power+ 3200 PSI Pressure Washer is packed with innovation, convenience, and thoughtful design. We hope its many great design elements become the benchmark for all premium pressure washers.
We can’t praise it enough. Ego’s new cordless pressure washer is, by some measures, the best we’ve seen in nearly a decade of testing in New Hampshire.
But we don’t recommend it. The whole concept of a cordless pressure washer is flawed—there’s no cord to get in your way, but you still have to use a hose. (You can use a bucket, too—but only briefly.) It’s also too expensive and has a disappointingly short battery life.
This is Ego’s first pressure washer, but the company makes a number of other tools we recommend.
The company, best known for its powerful cordless lawn mowers, lawn trimmers, and leaf blowers, has recently expanded its 56-volt battery platform into other areas, such as misting fans, area lights, and mini bikes.
Ego’s new pressure washer is one of the few cordless pressure washers on the market, joining recent models from Greenworks and Ryobi.
We were impressed as soon as we tested it, combining convenience, design, and features to address nearly every minor issue we’ve encountered while testing these tools over the years.
Installation has never been easier. Typically, connecting a washing machine’s spray hose to a spray wand requires fiddling with (and often mis-twisting) some fairly lightweight fittings. The Ego replaces this fiddly step with a quick-connect fitting—just a gentle push and a satisfying click.
The two-stage spray wand also features a handy quick-connect button. Even the water inlet (where the pressure washer connects to the garden hose) is easier to operate than on most other models. The Ego provides a large, chunky chuck that’s easy to grip and screw onto the hose hardware.
The pressure control adjustment on this pressure washer is a first of its kind. With three modes, you can adjust the water volume and pressure to suit the task. This isn’t a unique feature in itself, as you’d expect, and the switch for it is located on the body of the pressure washer.
What’s new is that you can also adjust the pressure at the handle of the spray wand.
Any changes you make are transmitted to the washer via the Bluetooth connection, which means you can adjust your washing style on the fly.
For example, if you’re rinsing soap off a car with a smaller spray head, you can quickly increase the pressure when it’s time to spray the tires. In our tests, the response time from pressing the button to switching the spray head was nearly instantaneous. (There’s also a battery level indicator on the handle.)
The sprayer hose sets a new standard for quality. Almost every other pressure washer we’ve tested comes with a stiff, permanently coiled, and fragile hose that’s difficult to tangle and easy to trip over. In fact, we found that people who take their pressure washers seriously usually swap this stock part out for a higher-quality hose first.
No need to worry about that with this Ego model. Its sprayer hose is as flexible and kink-free as a quality rubber garden hose, which significantly improves installation, use, storage, and long-term durability.
The hardware comes with a premium leather case. The wand holster holds the wand in place when not in use. That may sound like a tall order, but the flimsy mounts on most other pressure washers often fall short. The nozzle is stored on top of the machine, safe and secure, and easy to access.
It’s extremely portable. The telescoping luggage-style handle tucks away when not in use, making it easy to move around lawns or curbs. The machine has a low center of gravity, and it’s heavy enough that it won’t tip over even with a gentle tug on the hose. And of course, you don’t need to plug it in.
It’s powerful. Many times, cordless tools aren’t as powerful as their corded counterparts, but that’s not the case with this one. On its highest setting, the Ego HPW3204-2 was actually more powerful than our top-rated corded pressure washer recommendation, the Ryobi RY142500. Battery life and runtime are of course important, too (more on that later), but in terms of actual cleaning power in our tests, this Ego cordless model performed impressively.
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