Ranking Garden Hose Sprays

Let’s be honest, choosing the right garden hose setting is a lot more important than it has any right to be. You’re standing in your backyard, faced with a variety of settings that have the potential to make your gardening experience magical. Or perhaps it’s the middle of a hot summer day, and you’re preparing to ambush your friends and family with a powerful burst of water during a water fight. Either way, you’re faced with a decision, and a very important one. You twist the head of the hose, hearing the ticks as you switch nozzles. Finally, you land on one, pulling the trigger, only to find a lousy handful of droplets escaping. You try another setting, but you’re let down once again by a weak stream. At this point, you accept your fate and give up. No matter what situation you’re in, hose settings are high-stakes. Some are so perfect, you’ll wonder why you ever lived without them, while others are downright useless and leave you questioning who on the product management team of this hose company let this slide. In this highly scientific ranking, we’re going to take a brutally honest look at each setting and give you the perfect ratings and situations to use each one.

Shower

Let’s start with the basics. The shower setting on a garden hose is easily the most frequently used setting. It’s the vanilla ice cream of spray patterns—simple, classic, and universally useful. Those who know nothing about gardening and tending to the intricate needs of every plant will blindly switch to this setting, giving no thought to the process. If plants were in a relationship with a gardening hose, this pattern would be the definition of getting too comfortable: settling into the relationship and slacking off on the effort required to keep the spark alive. The plant’s needs are not fulfilled. However, the relationship will ensue because the effort this pattern puts into this one-sided relationship is just enough to keep the love alive. This one is going to be an 8/10—overrated but nevertheless appreciated by people all around the world.

Jet

Sometimes, watering your petunias just isn’t enough—you need to obliterate them. The jet setting is the ultimate home-defense system; who needs alarms and big dogs when you have the machine gun of water-hose sprays? Jet mode isn’t for watering plants, it’s for power-washing the grime off your driveway, sending wasps into another dimension during summer, and attacking your unsuspecting sibling standing 20 feet away. Accidentally aim it at a plant? Celebrate lowering your water bill this month because there’s no more greenery to be drinking it up. Aim at your foot? Instant regret for the pain in your toes and in your wallet for that expensive hospital bill. The jet nozzle is less about hydration and more about wielding water in the most aggressive way possible. Use it responsibly (or don’t, we’re not your mothers). 9/10 for chaos potential, -2 points for potential property damage = 7/10.

Mist

THE most useless setting. I don’t know who this is for. Plants? Perhaps. Cooling yourself off on a hot day? Sure. But let’s not pretend like you don’t feel like a complete idiot standing there misting your face while your Gen X neighbors watch. Using the mist setting on yourself would only work if you’re trying to roleplay as a head of cabbage in the fresh produce section in the supermarket. Worse, it’s completely ineffective in any kind of water fight (unless you’re going for a slow psychological takedown (Chinese water torture method who?). Have you ever tried to assert dominance by gently misting someone? Here’s a tip: it doesn’t work. 5/10 for trying.

Unsurprisingly, Twisha decided she just had to have a different opinion: it is the most beautiful setting. If I had to marry a spray pattern, this would be my choice of suitor. Mist provides a gentle, caring kind of love. Bonsai connoisseurs, succulent lovers, and enthusiasts of delicate plants utilize this setting on a day-to-day basis, providing their precious children with only the best of the sprays. In addition, it doesn’t bruise you like Jet or completely soak you like Soaker or Shower, should you use this beautiful innovation on yourself. 10/10—the love of my life.

Flat/Vertical

This is the garden hose equivalent of an underwhelming handshake. It serves its purpose (cleaning off insects and dirt off leaves and outdoor surfaces) but in a deeply unsatisfying way. It sprays in a weak and sad little sheet, like your hose is half-heartedly trying to be a power washer but gave up halfway through. Sure, it technically covers a wide area, but at what cost? The pressure and distance are disappointing garbage, and the only thing it’s good for is getting your shoes wet when the wind blows the wrong way. However, it does have potential…as a hose for washing the pile of dishes in the sink as quickly as possible before my mom comes home and realizes that I indeed have not cleaned the kitchen like I was supposed to. Overall, great if you want to uselessly mist a sidewalk or remind yourself why you never use a Flat setting in the first place. 4/10—we expected more.

Cone

Cone is the illusion of a good setting. At first glance, it seems promising–it must have wide coverage! Gentle spray! But then you use it and reality sets in. This nozzle sprays in a perfect circle, meaning the one place you actually want to water gets nothing, and everything in its radius is absolutely drenched. What problem was this meant to solve? Using this setting is like using an umbrella with a hole in the middle–sucks that you felt like you were drowned by one of those giant buckets at waterparks, but hey, at least your shoulders are dry! The Cone nozzle must have been designed by aliens. Why else would it spray in a perfect ring while leaving the middle dry? What is it trying to tell us? Is this some kind of coded message? A way to mark landing sites for UFOs? Maybe we need to bring in Shane Dawson to get to the bottom of this. Unless you specifically need to wet a perfect ring-shaped area for some reason, Cone is useless. Maybe it has a higher purpose we don’t understand yet. Maybe it’s just bad. Either way, I refuse to trust it. Cone is a setting with confidence but no actual ability, and while I respect that, I also hate it. 3/10—only useful if you want to confuse your dehydrated plants.

Soaker

Soaker mode is for when you want to give your plants a slow, drowning death, or absolutely destroy your friend’s new limited-edition shoes. It isn’t here to play games. It dumps water like it’s trying to single-handedly refill the ocean. Turn it on, and within seconds you’ve created a swamp. It doesn’t even spray—it just leaks aggressively, like the hose has completely given up on being a practical tool and decided to become a broken pipe instead. Not bad for soaking garden beds, but terrible for literally anything else. If you accidentally aim it at your shoes, have fun with your built-in waterbeds. Its lack of spraying structure prevents it from being any good for chaos, but absolutely fantastic if your enemy is wearing socks outdoors for whatever reason. It’s basically the equivalent of leaving your hose on the ground and hoping for the best. Barely functional, and not even a little exciting. 1/10—the gardening equivalent of watching paint dry. 

Center

Center is the hose setting that doesn’t quite know what it’s supposed to do but tries really hard anyway. It sprays in 3-4 concentrated streams, but ignores everything else in the process. The stream is so wide and weak that it’s more like a sad drizzle than an actual spray. It isn’t even helpful for watering your dog–the poor thing will try to catch a few water droplets, get impatient, and drink out of a puddle instead. The individual jets make it seem like someone at the garden hose factory got a bit distracted making the Shower setting and forgot to finish the nozzle, thus only making a few holes for the water to escape through. It’s like those rainfall showerheads that look like they’d provide a nice and sensual experience, but just don’t have the right pressure to feel like it’s really doing anything. Overall, the Center setting just seems incapable of deciding if it’s watering anything or just moistening the air. 3.5/10—precise, but with no purpose.

At the end of the day, each hose nozzle has its own (weird and sometimes mildly annoying) way of reminding us that everything is a gamble, including who will get soaked today, you or the dying plants in your backyard. It’s all a matter of trial and error to find the perfect setting that balances water pressure and coverage. Perhaps this is the fun in gardening–the unpredictability keeps things interesting. But with our guide, becoming a water bender doesn’t have to be so fickle, because now you know which setting to use for cleaning off your bed of petunias, and the best spray to ambush your neighbors.