Editors’ Choice 2024: Worx HydroShot 56 Cordless Pressure Washer

The Worx HydroShot 56 has been a game changer for me, and is genuinely useful. Put it to the top of your new toys shopping list.

TLDR: This will make you not hate cleaning bikes. With the added extra ‘short’ lance, this becomes even more useful than it already is, as it will then fit in a bucket for easier packing. Being on a water meter has put me off traditional hoses and bike washers, but with this ‘fill a bucket’ option it’s much easier to monitor how much water you’re using. It also saves a world of faff with hose reels, turning on taps etc. Plus, away from home you can use any available water source, making it a handy addition at races and weekends away. My husband and I once even heated up some water, put it in the bucket, and had a warm ‘shower’ in a bike park car park. I only hope they don’t have security cameras. Easy to charge, with a battery that will also work on other Worx items if you want to mix and match. Makes bike washing (almost) fun.

• Brand: Worx
• Product: HydroShot 56
• From: Worx
• Price: £129.99
• Tested by: Hannah for 7 months
• SQUIRREL_TEXT_13115332

Whether you’re cleaning up at home or looking for a race-ready portable option, a pressure washer is a handy piece of kit. This Worx HydroShot 56 is the more powerful of the Worx cordless pressure washer options, offering a 220L/h flow rate and 56bar max pressure (38 bar rated pressure).

Pros

• Very low-faff bike cleaning
• Totally portable
• Enough battery life for cleaning six or so bikes

Cons

• Bit faffy to store
• Too loud for late night washing
• Shorter lance as standard would be preferable

The pack we have on test comes with a wand, 5-position nozzle, hose, adapter for a bottle, washer unit, plus battery and charger. That’s everything you need to get started – if you’ve already got another Worx product, you might be able to opt for a ‘bare’ kit, and save a bit by skipping the battery and charger. The Worx piggy-back system means that even if what you’ve got is a more power-hungry item like a lawn mower, the batteries may still be the 20V version used by this pressure washer.

There’s also a whole array of add-ons and accessories, one of which we should have bought but didn’t. Not realising it was an ‘official’ option, we bought a short wand as an aftermarket item on eBay. This is useful if you’re looking to make the Worx Hyrdoshot a little more compact for travel – but the off-brand one we bought doesn’t fit well and takes a wrench to get it on and off, rather than the simple twist and press that it should be (and no doubt would be if we’d bought the official Worx version). If you want to get into tight spaces – under a car wheel arch maybe – you’ll probably want the short wand to make access easier.

The 5-position nozzle offers 0°, 15°, 25°, 40° and shower settings – everything you could want really. If you want to use the shower setting to wash yourself (post race, or #vanlife maybe) you’ll want a partner in grime to do the hosing – pointing at anything other than your legs and feet would require a fair bit of contortionism. With the short lance fitting, it is shorter than an arm length, but you’ll need to keep holding the trigger in.

There’s enough power there for jet-washing the patio should that be your need – you’ll want the long wand for that to get it close to the ground for max power though. For bike washing, you can stand at a distance and still do a decent job of blasting off mud, or just rinsing away soap. One battery should be enough to clean you six moderately dirty bikes. Fewer if you’re an absolute clean freak, the cow-pats are dried on, etc.

The water bottle fitting is to my mind not that useful. Perhaps if you were very briefly washing down a bike with a 2 litre pop bottle of water before you put it in the car… but it’s kind of cumbersome. You need more like a 10 litre bucket for a really dirty dried on bike, 5 litres for a wet and muddy one. I did try using it to apply a soapy mix using a 1 litre bottle, but it ran out very quickly and the soap made it slippery and very tricky to undo the fastening.

The hose and filter arrangement is excellent, and allows you to use any water source to wash your bike. I’d not recommend dunking it straight into a river or pond, because you should be far enough away from them so your run off doesn’t take bike oils and suchlike back into the water and harm fish, pond creatures and so on. Instead, dunk a bucket into the stream – or water butt at home perhaps – and use the hose clip to keep the hose in place. Remember to clean out the filter from time to time – it’s easy to do – especially if you’re using water that has lots of bits in. I’m on a water meter at home, so hate using a hosepipe where you’ve got no sense of how much water you’re using. With a bucket and the Worx HydroShot, I feel like it pushes you to be quick and efficient but without being so restrictive as to be annoying. It’s easy to keep track of how much water it takes to clean a bike – or jet wash your patio. The hose is 6m long, which means you can move around while cleaning without having to move the bucket.

I find that the bucket set up is much less faffy than other systems I’ve used where you need to attach to a tap via a hose. There’s no connect everything up/walk back to the tap and turn it on/clean everything/go and turn the tap off/go back to the washer to release the pressure/go back and disconnect back and forth. Our bike mechanic friend tried it out and immediately wanted one – the set up being preferable to the plug-in system he has, that creates trip hazard and security risks within a shop setting. The Worx HydroShot is also a lot smaller and lighter then reservoir versions – which I’d struggle to fit in my van with all the bikes and camping gear that a race requires.

It would be nice if it had some sort of cunning packing/storage solution. There is a Velcro strap for keeping the hose looped together, but that’s about it. I’ve ended up leaving the short lance on and the bits I use all tucked in a bucket – but it does sort of feel like it’s missing the neat storage that you get with, say, a vacuum cleaner, where all the accessories clip in to each other for safe keeping.

The Worx HydroShot 56 doesn’t feel like it’s too loud – I’ve previously felt like some big pressure washers for patios are worthy of ear-plugs, though it’s loud enough that your neighbours will not thank you if you decide to clean up after a night ride.

Overall

Because of my water saving needs, I’ve not previously had a jet washer at home. Now, as well as having clean bikes, I’ve got de-algaed patios, de-cobwebbed fascias, and much cleaner riding shoes. It’s easy enough to use that you do actually use it – arguably, using it borders on fun, so satisfying is the removal of dirt from wherever you’re directing it. The Worx HydroShot 56 has been a game changer for me, and is genuinely useful. Put it to the top of your new toys shopping list.

This product was selected for our Editors’ Choice Awards 2024

In the Editors’ Choice Awards we highlight our standout bikes and products from the past year. These are the bikes that we’d like to have in our sheds. These are the components and clothing that we still use long after the nominal test period has expired. This is the good stuff.

To make the cut, each thing must have proven itself out on the trails. They’ve got to have been reliable and ride-enhancing. We don’t do technology for technology’s sake. Nor are we overly swayed by showy, high price tags and bling materials. That said, we don’t prioritise anything solely because it’s cheaper than its rivals. Nor do we penalise a genuinely great product if it is conspicuously expensive. Performance is what matters in Editor’s Choice.

This was a star performers of The Class of 2024.

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