To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
- Good performance for the price
- Comes with turbo nozzle and foam bottle gun
- Very easy to use
- Not as much power as more expensive mid-range washers
- Ludicrously kink-prone hose
Looking for a powerhouse pressure washer on a budget? Black + Decker’s new BEPW200-GB could be the one. Where most pressure washers at this price point give you 110 to 130 bar of pressure and a flow rate of under 400l/hour, the BEPW200-GB packs in a more powerful 2kW pump to give you 150 bar of pressure and a maximum 450l/hour. What’s more, you get all this in a rather natty black and orange unit, complete with some very useful extras.
Given the price, this sounds almost too good to be true, but the proof is in the testing. I’ve spent several hours over the last week cleaning up outdoors with Black + Decker’s latest, so let’s look at what you get and how it all performs.
What do you get for the money?
Quite a lot, actually. First, you get a compact pressure washer, which stands just under 61cm high if you ignore the telescopic handle. It comes with a 6m high-pressure hose, a spray lance and three attachments: a variable nozzle, a rotating turbo nozzle and a foam bottle gun. Between them, you should have everything you need to cover most outdoor and car-cleaning jobs.
At 10kg it’s reasonably heavy, but the handle and the wheels make it fairly easy to drag around, though the 5m power cord means you’re going to need an extension cable to get around the average sized garden and driveway. When not in use, the handle compresses down and you can stow the cable on an outcrop on the left-side of the unit, with the spray gun and lance slotting in behind. There’s nowhere to loop the high-pressure hose, however, so it’s best removed and hung elsewhere for storage.
How easy is it to use?
The BEPW2000-GB keeps things simple. Once you’ve got it plugged in, connected to your tap and locked the spray lance and nozzle into position, you can just twist the dial on the front of the unit, then blast away with a squeeze of the trigger. The two nozzles click into place on the end of the spray lance, detaching when you click in the chunky orange button, while the soap bottle twists and clicks into place using the same bayonet fitting as the lance.
Your standard nozzle has a variable pattern, moving from an intense jet to a wider fan as you twist it to the right, though there’s an interim area where it’s really just a messy, broader spray and not particularly useful. The BEPW2000-GB’s spray gun has a very similar design to that of the VonHaus Pressure Washer 1,600W, to the extent that I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if they’d come from the same factory. However, I found it had more range between jet and fan spray, which made it easier to wash loose tarmac, wood or soft stone without worrying that with a slip, I might tear right through it.
How well does it clean?
This is a more powerful unit than the VonHaus, and I found it could handle just about everything except some really dried-on paint splodges on stone paving caused by a fast attempt to paint the house last autumn. I’ve had similar splodges removed by the Nilfisk Core 140 and the Kärcher K5 Power Control but the BEPW2000-GB couldn’t quite get through them.
Otherwise, it performed brilliantly on algae-stained paving, grimy-looking concrete, a moss-covered driveway, mucky plastic chairs decorated by the local seagulls and some seemingly glued on mud spots attached to my car. The foam bottle also worked a treat when it came to the latter, working with some diluted Demon Foam to create a decent, reasonably dense snow foam. With a quick rinse using the variable spray, I was able to remove embarrassing levels of winter driving dirt.
What could be improved?
I tend to regard rotary and turbo nozzles as a tool of last resort, to be attached when your standard variable nozzle can’t shift some stubborn paint or grime. Yet the BEPW2000-GB’s turbo nozzle isn’t noticeably fiercer than the standard jet nozzle, even if it did a fantastic job of cleaning algae from paving at a faster pace. The paint spots that wouldn’t shift with the variable nozzle remained unshifted with the turbo.
Otherwise, my biggest grumble is the high-pressure hose. To say it’s prone to kinking would be an understatement. By the time I’d washed the car it had already formed several tiny loops which halted water coming through if I tried to stretch the hose to its maximum length. Very frustrating and it’s a recurring issue that takes a while to fix.
Should you buy the Black + Decker BEPW2000-GB?
Like the VonHaus Pressure Washer 1,600W, the BEPW2000-GB makes a good step-up option from the cheaper and smaller 110 bar pressure washers, without the expense of the more powerful 140 to 150 bar options.
I’m not sure I would buy this 150 bar model, especially with the max flow rate lower than the 145 bar Karcher K5 Premium Smart Control. However, it has more beef than the VonHaus and also doesn’t have the same annoying bark when you release the trigger. To get anything with more force, you’d have to look at the pricier Nilfisk Core 140 or the Karcher K4 or K5. It also feels more solid than the VonHaus, with an aluminium motor that should handle a few years of use.
