The Best Garden Hose and Hose Reel of 2025

The Goodland Everlasting Garden Hose is light and floppy compared to the Continental, but it’s heavier and stiffer than the Eley. It comes in a number of designer colors, which is nice, but based on performance alone, it’s tough to justify the nearly $200 price tag, especially since we already consider the $100 Eley to be on the pricey side.

We once recommended the Flexzilla Garden Hose, but it did not hold up well over long-term use. This hose is still lightweight and flexible, and its coupling hardware is still solid, but its stiff sidewalls have degraded enough that its tendency to fold flat and block water has become increasingly frequent and frustrating. We’ve also found that the Flexzilla hose’s slightly porous outer jacket tends to accumulate filth—maybe not more so than the exteriors of most hoses, but more visibly because of this hose’s chartreuse color.

We had originally named the now-discontinued Hospaip Expandable Garden Hose as an expandable-hose pick. Unfortunately, even though it seemed durable in our initial tests, it quickly succumbed to the same rips and leaks that seem to plague every expandable or “pocket” hose. If you want something that’s easy to store, stick with the HoseCoil model.

Although the Gilmour Flexogen Super Duty Hose handled well enough, the steel spring coils on the end—intended to prevent kinking on and near the fittings—made us bleed when we tried to unscrew the hose from the spigot. No thanks.

The Teknor Apex NeverKink Heavy Duty felt great to handle, and the sleek yellow racing stripe down the middle made us feel like gardening champions. But it was almost too firm—knocking over patio furniture and stubbornly catching on branches and thorns. And on the occasion that it did kink (despite its name), we found undoing those knots and tangles to be difficult.

The Teknor Apex zero-G looks like it should be an expandable hose, even though it isn’t one. It’s a good, flexible hose overall, and some hardware-store employees we spoke with even recommended it as a better alternative to an expandable hose. Although it’s lightweight and generally reliable, nothing about it stood out enough for us to make it a pick.

The Water Right 600 Series Polyurethane Garden Hose seemed almost too good to be true—in our tests, it was durable, sturdy, and remarkably easy to maneuver. But once this hose finally kinked, it was difficult to straighten out, a problem we’ve seen repeated in negative owner reviews. And at the time of our research, the Water Right hose cost about $100, which was way too much to pay for a flawed hose.

In previous years, we tested and dismissed the GatorHyde Drinking Water Safe Hose and the Scotts MaxFlex Heavy Duty Garden Hose (both discontinued), as well as a rubber/PVC hose from Gilmour. We briefly recommended the Tuff-Guard Perfect Garden Hose, but it ended up leaking during long-term testing.

We also dismissed a number of hoses without testing them, as we determined (during our research or our in-person assessments at various hardware stores) that they did not meet our criteria. This group included the Apex Medium Duty, the Flexon Medium Duty Garden Hose, the Goodyear Maxlite Premium Rubber+, the Plastair Springhose PUWE650B94H-AMZ, the Swan Flexrite Pro (discontinued) and ProFusion, the WaterWorks Flexrite, the Xhose Pro, the GrowGreen and GenLed expandable hoses (both discontinued), and the terrible yet terribly ubiquitous Pocket Hose.

The Suncast Hosemobile Hose Reel Cart represents everything meh about inexpensive hose reels. This cart is adequate, and it’s about the best you can get for the sub-$50 price, but it’s marred by too many of the flaws that plague all inexpensive hose reels, as it’s unstable, takes too much effort, and feels kinda flimsy. Not everyone has the budget for a Gorilla reel, an Eley hose reel, or a Hoselink retractable model, and this is a barebones hose reel available at a much, much lower price. But aside from the fact that it barely functions, nothing about it sets it apart. In other words, if you’re truly after a low-budget hose reel, get this one, but keep in mind that it causes a lot of frustrations—far too many for us to wholeheartedly endorse it.

Gorilla sells a number of other reel configurations, both larger and smaller than the 175-foot model we recommend. The smaller models lack the top handle, making them more difficult to move around, while the larger ones can get quite bulky. But if you need 200 feet of hose reeled up, the GRM-225G 225 ft. Mobile Hose Reel looks nice, as does the 250 ft. Heavy Duty Hose Reel Cart.

As for other hose reels, we also looked at models made by Liberty, including the 302 2-Wheel Garden Hose Reel Cart and the decorative 301 2-Wheel Garden Hose Reel Cart. These carts aren’t as expensive as the Eley model, but they’re still in the $150 to $200 range. Overall, buyer reviews of the Liberty reels aren’t anywhere near as stellar as those of the Eley cart, with mentions of rusting over time and leaking. Even though the Eley reel costs more, its quality (backed by Eley’s 10-year warranty) makes it the better purchase.

We have not yet tested the Giraffe Tools Retractable Hose Reel. It looks similar to the Hoselink model but has a larger-diameter hose, measuring 0.625 inch as opposed to 0.5 inch. Although it lacks a quick-connect system, it otherwise looks like a decent option. Typically it sells for about $40 less than the Hoselink offering.

This article was edited by Harry Sawyers.