I’ve been very impressed by how well the Kärcher K3 eco!Booster has been blasting seagull droppings from my car
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Small and easy to stow away -
Flat jet lance saves time and water -
Enough power to tackle tricky jobs
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eco!Booster lance jamming on the job -
No space to hang the high-pressure hose
The temptation when buying a pressure washer is always to go bigger and more powerful. However, for many people, a compact pressure washer might be all they need. They’re lighter, easier to manage, easier to store and use less water. What’s more, being less powerful makes it harder to tear through tarmac or soft stone or damage your vehicles.
All this is true of Kärcher’s new K3 model, which is designed to clean smaller outdoor spaces, patios and driveways, and is just as good at removing grime from cars and bikes. Indeed, it goes one better than previous K2 and K3 washers by including Kärcher’s new eco!Booster lance: a new flat-jet nozzle aimed at rapid cleaning of large areas with a less intensive, water-saving jet. I’ve been testing it around my home to find out whether Kärcher’s latest can clean with less water, and if it’s versatile enough to tackle the full range of household jet-wash jobs.
What do you get for the money?
The K3 eco!Booster is a compact pressure washer that costs £160. Its 20 to 120 bar max pressure rating and peak flow rate of 380 litres per hour is much the same as the old K3 Classic and just above the entry-level K2 range, which stops at 10 to 120 bar and 360 litres per hour.
It’s certainly compact. Most of the 780mm total height comes from the handle, with the actual unit around 422mm high. It’s 285mm wide with the wheels attached and only 4.3kg without the accessories connected, so it’s very easy to move around. You need to attach the handle, cable guide and holders for the spray gun and lances before use, but doing so is relatively straightforward and involves just seven screws. Included in the package are a 6m high-pressure hose and the eco!Booster and Dirt Blaster lances.
The controls are simple, partly because there are no real adjustments to be made. You connect your hose to the standard 3/4in hoselock connector on the rear, flick the power dial from off to on, point and squeeze the trigger. There’s no way to vary the intensity. It’s either spraying or it isn’t.
How easy is it to use?
Kärcher has done a nice job of balancing ease of use and handling with all-round practicality. The 5m power cable and 6m high-pressure hose give you some scope to move around without sticking close to your garden extension cable and hosepipe, and the K3 is light enough to carry even when you can’t just drag it around on its chunky plastic wheels.
The two spray lances push, twist and lock into place, and you can switch between them – most of the time – without powering the unit down. With no settings or modes to worry about, it really is just a case of point-and-blast.
How well does it clean?
That dynamic duo of spray lances makes for a surprisingly versatile pressure washer. I used the eco!Booster lance to remove dirt, seagull droppings and mud from the glass and bodywork of my car, and it did a fantastic job. The wide jet really helps cover a lot of surface faster, even if it’s not always as effective on really tough, dried-on grime. I could then switch to the Dirt Blaster nozzle to clean the caked-on muck around the alloy wheels, mud guards and rear bumper. It’s easily powerful enough for that kind of work.
In fact, it’s powerful enough that I had to take care working on areas where the tarmac’s a little loose on my driveway, and I was a little nervous cleaning off some stone-effect paving slabs. I also gave the K3 eco!Booster a serious workout on an area of tarmac behind my house that needed to be cleaned before resurfacing. The Dirt Blaster handled thick moss and ground-in muck without any problems, though it took me nearly as long to wash the splattered debris off the nearby walls (and my legs) as it did to clear the area.
Does the eco!Booster lance save water? Well, I ran it spraying into a bucket for 30 seconds, and it filled it up by 2.1l. Repeating the experiment with the Dirt Blaster lance saw it fill by 2.8l; a roughly 33% increase. What’s more, that’s not counting the increased spray that exploded out of the bucket when I pulled the trigger with the Dirt Blaster attached. Add in the fact that it’s covering a much wider area, and it seems you can clean faster while using less water with Kärcher’s new lance.
What could be improved?
If compact pressure washers have a weakness, it’s hose and cable management. Here you can loop the hose around the guide at the back, but it doesn’t stay put without a fight, while there’s no sensible space left to store the cable. I found it better to remove the hose after use and then store it separately, which is a pain when you need a screwdriver to release the plastic clip that holds it locked in place.
I also found that the eco!Booster lance had a habit of jamming and refusing to spray from time to time. This meant I had to turn the unit off, remove the hose from the lance and then twist and push the nozzle to remove it before I could get it up and running again. This might be an issue specific to my unit, but it was annoying, all the same.
Should you buy the Kärcher K3 eco!Booster?
There are cheaper compact pressure washers out there, including the Bosch EasyAquatak 100 (£69) and Kärcher’s own K2 Horizontal (£75). Yet the K3 eco!Booster makes it worth paying the extra with slightly more pressure and the eco!Booster lance.
It might be small, but it’s surprisingly punchy and versatile, with enough welly to wash your car and clean your patio and paving, plus the wider-angle lance to help you handle the less grimy areas faster. If you need more power at a similar price, look at the brilliant K4 Classic, but the K3 eco!Booster is a worthwhile addition to the Kärcher stable.
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