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- Practical design with thought-out storage
- Versatile four-pattern lance
- Enough power to tackle almost any job
- Big and heavy
- Hose can still get kinky
- No pressure control
Kärcher’s upper-tier pressure washers are usually sold on the back of their performance. If you want a pressure washer that can tackle big muddy vehicles or massive areas of paving, these are the models that Kärcher hopes you’ll go for. Yet with the new K5 Comfort Premium, it’s pitching something else: convenience.
Buy this pressure washer and you won’t have to spend time swapping lances, searching for detergent or untangling the high-pressure hose, because this little beauty is going to make all that stuff easy for you.
Really, this comes down to three things. First, we have a new design with a reel for the hose and hooks for your cable, plus a space where you can clamp the bundled detergent bottle and spray cap.
Second, you have that spray cap, transforming Kärcher cleaning fluids and spray foams into ammunition for your battle against dirt and grime. Third, we have Kärcher’s 4-in-1 Multi Jet spray lance, with a nozzle that rotates through four fixed positions to give you four different and useful spray patterns. With all that at your fingertips, you’ve got everything you need to get most outdoor and car cleaning jobs done, without too much fuss.
Does it work out in practice? I’ve spent several sessions pressure washing with the K5 Comfort Premium, to get a good look at how it cleans and discover if Kärcher’s latest innovations work in practice.
What do you get for the money?
Although the focus is on convenience, the K5 Comfort Premium is still a powerful washer with a 145 bar maximum pressure and a maximum flow rate of 500 litres per hour. For comparison’s sake, that’s 25 bar and 80 litres per hour more than the K4 WCM Flex I recently reviewed.
Needless to say, it’s bigger and heavier to match, standing 67cm tall from wheels to handle and weighing 14kg, even without the accessories onboard. The handle and thick plastic wheels ensure that it’s not too much of a pain to transport, but if you need to carry it up and down steps then you’re going to feel it.
I’m not sure anyone buys a pressure washer based on looks, but the K5’s angular design is one of the more eye-catching I’ve seen – and also practical. The reel at the rear keeps the high-pressure hose under control while the washer’s stowed away, there are guides on the side for looping the mains cable, and there’s a clamp on the front where you can store the Multi-jet spray lance. Meanwhile, a recess on the side works with another clip to hold one of Kärcher’s cleaner bottles hooked up to a foam spray nozzle.
Controls are minimal, with just a two-position dial to switch the pressure washer on or off and the four positions of the 4-in-1 lance. This gives you a wide, flat jet, a fiercer, narrower flat jet, a brutal rotary blaster jet and a softer spray for distributing detergent. Meanwhile, the foam spray nozzle has its own sliding control, which adjusts the mix of water and detergent.
How easy is it to use?
The size and weight, plus the extra pressure make the K5 Comfort Premium a little more tiring to use than Kärcher’s smaller, lighter models. However, the 10m high-pressure hose and reel mean you don’t need to move the actual unit as much as you would those models. For instance, I could get all around my car with the K5 Comfort Premium in the same position.
Nozzles twist and push on and off, though unless you need detergent you don’t really need anything beyond the Multi-jet spray lance. I found myself using the flatter jets to cover large areas of paving quickly, then shifting to the rotary jet to remove some baked on seagull excrement or haphazardly dropped cement.
Similarly, I was able to coat the car with foam using the foam spray gun, then switch to the wide jet to rinse, before pulling out the rotary spray to remove hardened muck from the wheels and arches. For some vehicle or decking cleaning jobs you might want a pressure washer with variable pressure, but I think you can get most jobs done with the contents of this bundle, without much fuss.
How I tested the Kärcher K5 Comfort Premium
I follow the same basic process when testing all pressure washers to compare ease of use and performance. I assemble the pressure washer according to the manufacturer’s instructions, then use it in a range of tasks around my home and garden, cleaning areas of tarmac, paving, plastic and timber.
That way, I can see how well it handles different surfaces and different types and grades of grime. I’ll also clean my car, paying special attention to the pressure washer’s ability to remove dirt and debris around the bodywork and wheels.
While doing all this, I’ll use any accessories provided, including foam spray bottles, additional nozzles, driveway brushes and car kits, to see if they make the job easier. Where the pressure washer claims any water-saving features, I run tests spraying into a bucket for 30 seconds, then measuring the contents. This was a challenge with the K5 Comfort Premium, as the fierce spray and extra pressure made it hard to keep the bubbling waters in the bucket and not spraying out in all directions.
How well does it clean?
It’s a hugely effective cleaner. Between the flat jets and rotary spray I was able to clean large areas of paving, some of which had been left untouched for a couple of years, within roughly half an hour. The generous deposits of the local seabirds were blasted away in seconds, as were spots of spilled paint and cement.
If anything, you need to be careful with the rotary jet. Let loose on an old tarmac garden path, it blasted away a section of tarmac before I quickly released the trigger. As with any pressure washer, it makes sense to be careful around soft or vulnerable surfaces, and quickly test on a less visible section before you go hell for leather.
The softer, flatter jets also did a great job of giving my car a clean after a couple of weeks driving around dusty Devon single-track lanes. Again, having wide and narrow jets to work with makes it possible to get the job done faster.
What could be improved?
Not an awful lot. Some kind of variable pressure control would make the K5 Comfort Premium even more flexible, but if you want that you could look at models with Kärcher’s Power Control gun, including the K5 Power Control, or at alternatives with a pressure control, such as Nilfisk’s excellent P180. Otherwise, my one complaint is that the high-pressure hose – supposedly kink-resistant – is still quite prone to kinking once released from its reel.
Should you buy the Kärcher K5 Comfort Premium?
I could argue that the K5 Comfort Premium will be overkill for many households, but the 4-in-1 lance makes it useful across a wide range of cleaning jobs, and it never hurts to have more cleaning power on tap than you actually need.
Most of us could save some money by going for the cheaper K4 Power Control – it’s still a brilliant product that will do most people proud. However, if you’re looking for a versatile pressure washer with more power and a great design, the K5 Comfort Premium is definitely worth the extra.
