Aqua2Go PRO Smart Pressure Washer Review
So you’re going on a weekend bike ride. You’ve got sandwiches, lemonade, an action-camera and the €219.95 Aqua2Go PRO Smart pressure washer packed. WAIT - WHAT? That’s right, there’s now a cordless portable pressure washer with its own water storage, so you can wash down the bikes at the end of the ride. We’ve been on a mission to find out if it’s a bit silly or actually quite a sensible invention?
Design
Sharing a similar hard plastic exterior to many outdoor garden products like rugged watering cans and wheelbarrows, the Aqua2Go Pro is certainly a durable product fit for use outdoors. It’s also smaller, at 50cm (H), 34 (L) & 23 (W), than a typical pressure washer and has novel roller-suitcase-styled wheels and a pop-out handle. Despite the onboard stored water being pretty weighty, you wouldn’t know it when rolling the washer around, plus this weight keeps it grounded when in use.
In an inventive design move the entire pump unit can be removed by the flip of a latch and if desired it can be powered from a car's 12v lighter socket. This is so the pump can be used whilst connected to a direct water supply - like a normal pressure washer. Fixed to the pump is a removable (very bright) LED flashlight, which acts as a useful handle when carrying the washer up and down steps or into the boot of a car. Cleverly, it is this luminous green flashlight that holds the battery for the Aqua2Go Pro.
Battery Life
With the simple press of a latch the flashlight containing the battery for the Aqua2Go pops out for charging at our leisure via a wall outlet. We squeezed roughly 30 minutes of continuous spraying out of the battery; it didn’t overheat or have any issues with flow. What’s more the flashlight has a USB 2.0 out port, so it can be used as a backup power solution for charging your devices when away from the mains electricity.
Accessories
Aqua2Go have supplied a fair amount of spare parts (hose connectors, springs, washers, etc) in the box, as well as sturdily built easily interchangeable accessories. These include a 12 volt cable for connection to a car cigarette lighter, a 6 metre hose, a multifunctional spray-gun and a brush shower-head. All the accessories neatly tuck away into a back net on the washer and we particularly admired the fact that the hose can be kept tidy thanks to velcro straps.
Cleaning Performance
The first and foremost thing to do before engaging in the act of cleaning is to fill Aqua2Go Pro up with water. Whilst the design looks quite compact, it can store a deceiving 20 litres of water within its reservoir. The company claim this will be sufficient for 30 minutes of continuous usage on their website, but we think they were mistakenly referring to battery life, because with a flow rate of 2.2 litres per minute, we struck 9 minutes of continuous water output from 20 litres of water; which nonetheless, we thought is still quite impressive. With this in mind we regularly use the shower-mode on the spare gun to water plants. The benefits are we don’t need to mess about with a hose-pipe or refill our 5L watering can repeatedly. What’s more it rolls over lawns without much issue to get to our flowerbeds.
With 145psi/10 bar performance we could rinse down a bike in 3-4 minutes. The jet proves useful to rid hardened mud and grime from the frame, but the brush is still imperative for a spotless clean, as it is thin and tracks its way into the nooks and crannies of both spokes and frame. More elaborately we set out to see how well, when used in jet mode, the Aqua2Go Pro, along with the use of the brush, could clean a dirty car - granted a smaller car, being that it was a MINI Cooper. It took roughly one and half tanks to wash the MINI from top to bottom. The pressure washer's performance was absolutely sufficient for the task but, of course, it’s not in the same category as our 110 bar mains pressure washer for power or soap dispensing abilities. We found we needed to stand closer to the MINI to make the most of the pressure effect, but we really enjoyed being able to wheel the washer around the car without worrying about a cable knotting or getting trapped under tyres. This means that a useful application for this product would be for owners of cars that don’t have a private driveway, allowing vehicles to be washed with junior pressure-washer performance without the restriction of having to drag a hosepipe from a mains water supply. It just takes a little longer.
Verdict
It works! We were very intrigued by the concept because we know how mucky bicycles can get after off-road riding sessions. If left, the mud eventually dries off the bikes and leaves itself where you don’t want it. The intelligently designed Aqua2Go Pro is a genuine solution for this problem, with plenty of pressure to remove the muck from bikes and cars, and it is a brilliant plant watering solution too.