Best hose reels 2022
We find the best car-cleaning hose that won’t wind you up
A hosepipe is a crucial part of any car-cleaning kit. A plentiful supply of fast-running water will not only speed up your wash, but also ensure you minimise possible damage to the delicate paint and retain the very best shine.
You can buy hosepipes for less than a tenner, but they will soon frustrate you. They’ll look tatty as you try to hang them around the tap, and will restrict the flow of water with kinks and leaks.
A reel will make car washing much easier, speeding up your post-clean tidy and ensuring your pipe stays kink-free and protected. All will come with dedicated connectors to make them easy to attach to a tap and swap between accessories.
We put seven top performers to the test to see which was the reel deal.
How we tested them
We wanted a reel suited to car cleaning, so we tried them with the supplied nozzles and with a Nilfisk pressure washer. The ease and speed of reeling in and out was checked, and we measured the flow to see the losses from tap to the end of the pipe. Extra points were given for features that made cleaning easier. Finally, we checked value using the best prices we found online at the time of writing.
Verdict
The VonHaus gives the best combination of functionality and value, and it takes our Best Buy. If you’re on a budget and don’t mind reeling manually, then the Claber Kiros is great quality and very long.
The final podium place goes to former winner FloPro + Cube. The funky-looking self-winder slips down the rankings due to a chunky price rise since the last test, but is still a great product.
Reviews
VonHaus Garden Hose Reel
- Price: around £75
- Rating: 5 stars
- Hose length: 20m
- Contact: vonhaus.com
The VonHaus ticked every box on our score sheet. It’s good value and arrives ready to go, with all the fittings attached and a generous two-metre-long supply pipe to attach to the tap. A hinged wall mount and fixings are also supplied.
The connectors and nozzle don’t have the high-quality feel of the Kärcher or Hozelock, but were leak-free and easy to use. Pulling out the hose needs little effort and it locks into place when you stop, before a sharp tug sets it rolling back onto the reel neatly. Our only reservation is that the hosepipe is more prone to kinking than others.
Claber Kiros Kit
- Price: around £37
- Rating: 4.5 stars
- Hose length: 30m
- Contact: claber.co.uk
If you prefer the simplicity and low cost of a manually winding reel, the Claber Kiros is good value and both the pipe and connectors feel of far better quality that you’d expect at this price.
It comes ready to use and there’s a huge 30m of pipe, or around 28m once you’ve cut a length to connect the reel to a tap. That’s still easily enough to go from a water supply at the back of most houses around to a car being washed at the front. Despite this extra length, the flow rate was among the best.
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FloPro + Cube
- Price: around £90
- Rating: 4.5 stars
- Hose length: 20m
- Contact: amazon.co.uk
If you can get over the distinctive appearance, the self-winding FloPro + Cube is compact and easy to handle. Uniquely, it can be removed from the wall mounting and firmly pegged to your lawn if you want to use it further away from the tap, and still use the winding/unwinding function.
But while we really like the FloPro, it has had a substantial price rise since it came top in our last test and no longer looks like such good value for a 20m reel. The VonHaus is better priced and a rather more conservative design.
Hozelock Autoreel
- Price: around £100
- Rating: 4 stars
- Hose length: 20m
- Contact: hozelock.com
Everything about the Hozelock feels substantial. It’s the biggest – and heaviest – reel here, and you’ll become very familiar with the high-quality hose and fittings as you battle through the complex, lengthy assembly.
Once it’s built, pulling out the hose requires a fight against the strength of the spring. The payback is the fastest flow here, though. There are thoughtful storage slots for the fittings too. But the price has been steadily rising over the years and we find it difficult to justify spending the extra money over the VonHaus.
Kärcher Premium Hose Reel
- Price: around £85
- Rating: 3.5 stars
- Hose length: 20m
- Contact: kaercher.com/uk
This Kärcher is called Premium for a reason – it feels much better quality than most of the reels here, but it comes at a price. The flow rate is the second fastest in the test and while you wind the hose manually, it’s less effort than the other manual reels because the drum is smaller.
It is easy to remove, because it has a dock fixed to the wall rather than just hooks. There’s also a neat cubby for storing accessories – handy if you’re swapping between a pressure washer and a nozzle.
Amazon Basics Auto-Rewindable Wall-Mounted Reel
- Price: around £82
- Rating: 3.5 stars
- Hose length: 25m
- Contact: amazon.co.uk
Looking online, it is difficult to gauge the quality of this self-winding reel. In fact, it feels built to a budget, with sharp edges to the plastics and a brittle feel to the connectors and nozzle.
It’s a good-quality hose, though, and longer than the other automatic reels here, but the connecting pipe to the tap is only 1.3m long. It doesn’t look a bargain either, but the 15m version seems better value.
Titan Hose Reel
- Price: around £30
- Rating: 3 stars
- Hose length: 25m
- Contact: screwfix.com
Screwfix’s Titan brand is at the no-frills end of the market, so you rewind it manually. But the kit includes wall mounts and some useful clips to help keep the pipe under control to look neat when it’s stowed.
It does the job fairly well and the 25m length is generous, but you’ll need to trim off a bit of pipe to connect the reel to the tap, so in reality you’ll have around 23m of hose on the reel. The water flow was one of the slowest too, so we think the Claber (left) is worth the extra money.
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