Kärcher K3 Power Control Car and Home Review

Design and Features

• Small and light
• Excellent accessories
• Lots of bits to store

You can have a Kärcher pressure washer in any colour you like, so long as it’s yellow. The K3 and its accessories are all made from a mix of black plastic, and the trademark canary colour. As I mentioned, the machine itself is quite compact, as you can see in this line up of our recently tested models.

The Kärcher K3 Power Control Car and Home arrives in something of a jumble of components and accessories, mostly loose within its box. As with most pressure washers you’ve a bit of assembly to do; in this case that means attaching the telescopic handle, and clipping on the fixed handle and wheels. There are no screws, which keeps things fairly simple.

The next step is to find all the accessories included in the box. All K3 washers come with a choice of two lances, which clip into the handle. The Vario Power lance offers a range of pressures, letting you adjust from a reasonably strong spray suitable for paving, all the way down to a relatively weak, 20-bar plume, ideal for less robust surfaces. There’s also a Dirt Blaster lance, which is a circular jet designed for maximum power applications.

This pressure washer’s bundled Home kit consists of a round patio and wall cleaning attachment, and a half-litre bottle of Kärcher’s Patio & Deck detergent. The car kit also includes a shampoo bottle, together with a foam attachment and soft brush. This is ideal for getting a rich foam during car cleaning, but the Kärcher K3 itself has an integrated detergent tank for more general use.

It’s great to have all these accessories, but together there are quite a lot of tools to store. And while the K3 itself is compact, it has only a basic hook for storing its coiled five-metre power cable when not in use. There isn’t even a hanger for its generous seven-metre pressure hose.

While ‘Power Control’ might suggest the pump can operate at different speeds, incidentally, it actually refers to the Vario Power lance. Unlike some more expensive pressure washers, this reduces pressure through purely mechanical means; there’s no communication with the main washer unit itself.

Performance

• Mostly very straightforward to use
• Quick and easy cleaning with accessories
• Lacks the power for harder jobs

The Kärcher K3 Power Control Car & Home is a very easy pressure washer to use. Select the right tool for the job, fit it into the handle with a push-twist, prime the system with water then it’s ready to go. With only a single power setting, all you need think about is the correct lance or attachment, and whether you need detergent to get the best results.

Kärcher has clearly spent time on making its various accessories convenient to use. For example, bottles of car detergent screw directly onto the foam attachment, which fits directly into the handle – there’s no need to decant them first. One limitation of this is that you’ll need to buy Kärcher detergents, or keep and re-use the bottles supplied with the machine.

On a related note, this cleaner’s main detergent dispenser is located low down at the back, where it’s hard to gauge how full it is. Additionally, the cap design feels a bit vague – I wasn’t always sure whether the detergent pipe was under the surface level and feeding any liquid into the washer.

It looked as though this was happening as I first tested the patio cleaning attachment, which comprises a rotating bar with spray nozzles at each end, within a plastic shell. I subsequently realised that the foam you see in this photo was from manky water that had overwintered in my garden hose. Fortunately this was quickly flushed out and rinsed away.

I tested the Kärcher K3 Power Control Car and Home directly against five other pressure washers, cleaning a single paving stone on my patio with each. In the photo below, tile 1 was cleaned with the K3 and its patio attachment, whereas tile 2 was cleaned with the K3 and its Dirt Blaster lance. As you can see, neither is as clean as stones 3, 4, 7 or 8, all cleaned with more powerful pressure washers.

I also tested this pressure washer’s patio attachment on our blockwork driveway, on which individual bricks are separated by sharp sand. It dislodged more of the sand than when I cleaned with the lance, which I was able to angle so that it didn’t blast directly down into the cracks, but this approach was more labour intensive than simply using the patio attachment and sweeping the sand back into place afterwards.

With only a moderate power output, the Kärcher K3 Power Control Car and Home is an ideal washer for cleaning vehicles. Here its long pressure hose helps you get around the car without constantly returning to move the machine. The combination of foam gun, soft brush and variable pressure lance make it easy to rinse, clean then rinse bodywork. However, while the K3’s lower pressure means it has less chance of damaging paintwork or bypassing seals, you should always be cautious – read our guide to how to pressure wash your car.

The Kärcher K3 is no louder than competing pressure washers, although it didn’t seem especially efficient. I measured its power consumption at 1,604 watts when using the Dirt Blaster lance; that’s more than several other machines I tested that could deliver a higher pressure.

Should you buy it?