Can Cordless Pressure Washers Become the Pressure Washer of Choice in 2023?

Whether you’re looking to clean your patio, driveway, swimming pool or garden furniture, pressure washers always present fantastic options for cleaning your property.

Generally, people are only aware of the two key types of pressure washers – mains-powered and petrol-powered. However, did you know that there is actually a third type, the battery-powered pressure washer?

We love to see this kind of innovation in the pressure washer industry, and we were keen to try some out when they first came out.

This raises the question – can battery powered pressure washers become the pressure washer of choice in 2022? It’s an excellent question, and we’ve done the research to provide you with the answers. Let’s take a look at what we’ve discovered!

The Benefits of Battery Powered Pressure Washers

To start things off, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why we think there is a bright future for battery-powered pressure washers.

You will probably already be aware that many industries are switching to battery-powered products, with the most obvious example being electric cars.

Whereas cars used to be hungry for fossil fuels that pump carbon into our atmosphere, battery-powered vehicles provide a much cleaner solution.

It’s the same for pressure washers – instead of loading up your pressure washer with petrol and contributing to global warming, battery-powered pressure washers can be charged up within your home and used in or outside without any pesky emissions.

It’s clean, safer to use, and most importantly allows you to take a step towards becoming carbon neutral.

The benefits don’t stop there though. If you’re currently a user of mains powered pressure washers, you might not feel like making the swap to battery-powered.

After all, surely there is no difference between charging your pressure washer than powering it directly from the mains? Whilst this is true, we bet you like the sound of cordless pressure washing!

The fact that the pressure washer contains a battery means that you never have to worry about cable lengths again.

You could literally take your pressure washer into the middle of nowhere where there is no electricity, and you would be able to continue to clean whatever you needed.

Essentially, battery-powered pressure washers present the best of both worlds – you have the convenience of using a petrol-powered pressure washer, but with the clean energy associated with mains-powered models!

The Disbenefits of Battery Powered Pressure Washers

We’ve taken a look at the benefits of using a battery-powered pressure washer, so it wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t take a look at the disbenefits.

Firstly, let’s state the obvious – batteries can only contain a limited amount of power, and as a result, they will eventually run out.

Some of the battery-powered pressure washers we have used last long enough for us to get all of our garden jobs done, but other models have not performed so well.

This can be a bit inconvenient, especially when some models take two to four hours to charge up. It does make us appreciate the infinite power that a mains-powered pressure washer provides us.

Another thing to take into consideration is the price. Much like electric cars these days, battery-powered pressure washers aren’t yet manufactured with the efficiency that regular models are, and this can mean that you pay a pretty penny for your model.

There are plenty of affordable options available on the market, but in general, they are a little bit more expensive than gas and mains-powered washers.

Hybrid Pressure Washers – an Excellent Compromise

In our opinion, the benefits of using a battery-powered pressure washer far outweigh the negatives, but it would be fantastic if there was some way to remove their limitations.

We’re hopeful that in the next few years, batteries within pressure washers will charge faster, contain more power, and become cheaper. However, that could be a couple of years away.

Until then, there is an excellent compromise – hybrid pressure washers. These are pressure washers that use batteries whilst also facilitating the use of alternative energy such as mains power or petrol. Petrol hybrids are pretty cool, as they run on petrol yet use batteries to power the ignition of the pressure washer.

This means that the battery greatly reduces the amount of fuel that is required and thus still reduces the carbon emissions of your tool.

However, our favourite option would have to be mains-powered hybrids. These are pressure washers that can run through batteries alone but can also be supplemented with a mains cable if the battery runs out.

This way, you never have to stop pressure washing just because you ran out of charge.

There is one final option – many battery-powered pressure washers are starting to come bundled with a spare battery, with the option to replace additional ones if you choose to purchase them.

This means that you can charge all of your batteries before a big job, ensuring that you have plenty of power. You could even charge your spare batteries in cycle whilst pressure washing, allowing you to swap out the batteries whenever necessary.

It’s a similar approach to that of battery swapping in electric vehicles.

Final Thoughts

Overall, in our opinion battery powered pressure washers have tons of potential to become the pressure washer of choice in 2022.

Sure, they do come with a few minor pitfalls such as limited power and expensive price tags, but there are plenty of ways to get around these issues. We anticipate that by next year, many companies will be able to reduce the price of these tools.

More and more companies are including spare batteries and hybrid solutions, and altogether this pretty much solves the problem.

New innovations always come with issues when they’re first released, but trust us – when you have the convenience of using battery-powered pressure washers without releasing nasty emissions into the atmosphere, you’re going to be glad that you went for the futuristic option!