The Gardena Comfort Heavy Duty Garden Hose is the 'best' garden hose we have ever had. Granted, such a statement is useless without further information, therefore here are the other hoses we have in our arsenal for basic home-watering for comparison: two 5/8" Craftsmen, heavy-duty, rubber hoses with hexagonal cross-section, one 5/8" Craftsmen old-style heavy-duty rubber hose with circular cross section, a 5/8" Flexogen Lifetime hose, a cheap 5/8" knock-off of the Flexogen hose, and a Gardena Classic 1/2" hose. Kinks There is no truly kink-free hose despite what advertisers say. They all are kink-prone to some extent. Of our hoses, the Gardena Comfort Heavy Duty Garden Hose is the least kink-prone hose; in fact, any kinks that get introduced through normal handling can be removed right away without the hose 'remembering' the kink. It should be noted that kinks should never be left for long times in any hose. The Craftsmen rubber hoses are significantly more kink-prone during normal handling but also don't really 'remember' the kinks. The Flexogen hose, despite other people's good experiences, has always given us problems with remembering kinks more than the others. Let's forget about the cheap hose that we have... Finally, the Gardena Classic hose is slightly more kink-prone than the Comfort Heavy Duty Garden Hose, probably because it is the basic Gardena hose, but is perfectly acceptable as well. Weight The Comfort Heavy Duty Garden Hose is very light-weight given that it is a 5/8" hose. It can easily be carried around, even when filled with water. The rubber hoses are MUCH more heavy in that respect, the Flexogen hose a bit heavier than the Gardena hose. The Gardena Classic hose is very light, not only because it is a 1/2" hose, but also because the wall thickness is much less than that of the Comfort Heavy Duty Garden Hose. Flow rate Generally, I found that flow rates are determined much more by what we attach to the hoses than by the hoses themselves. For example, a nozzle attached to our 66-ft 1/2" Classic hose gives the same spray experience as when attached to any of the 5/8" hoses, be it 50 or 100 ft long ones. In our setting, none of the hoses is limiting. Your mileage may vary. End connectors End connectors, in my opinion, is where much of the aggravation with hoses comes from. The Comfort Heavy Duty Hose, being from Gardena, obviously fits into the Gardena quick-connector system. The connectors on this hose are general connectors in the sense that they attach to a cut-off end of a hose. They do not screw into male/female garden-hose threads. This feature makes it very convenient to cut hoses to required lengths, if necessary. We have embraced the Gardena system for years, and we are very happy with it, but there are a couple of things to be mentioned here: one of the connector had recently developed a leak. At first, I thought it was malfunctioning, but then I discovered that robust handling had jiggled it loose a bit. If that happens (once so far over two years), just unscrew the connector, clean off any debris, push the hose back into the connector all the way, tighten connector, and everything will be good again. A potential issue could be the water pressure available at the spigot. Ours is over 90 psi, which in general is almost too much for most hoses and systems. So far, we haven't had any issues, other than that one incident. The connector became looser over time when connected to the spigot under pressure and eventually popped off. Again, this is nothing to worry about, but it is best to release any pressure when the hose is not in use. The various metal connectors on our other hoses have held up well over time with a couple of exceptions. The old-style Craftsmen rubber hose features much sturdier connectors than the newer Craftsmen hoses; one of the newer ones did get deformed during normal handling and had to be cut off. The other hoses are fine, except our cheap one, which we decided to forget about... Can't say much about the Flexogen hose as we use it as a stationary pipe, and it is thus attached once in spring and removed before winter. It is important to service the connectors by replacing the O-rings every now and then (chlorine in the water will chew them up over time). General handling Since the Comfort Heavy Duty Garden Hose is so light, very flexible, not very kink-prone, and due to the fantastic Gardena connector system, this hose is our go-to hose for spontaneous watering (flowers, herbs, washing the car and tools, etc.). The rubber hoses are a pain to move around. If we didn't have an excellent RapidReel hose reel cart, we would use our rubber hoses only as stationery pipes, which we mostly do anyway to provide a line to the remote areas of our backyard. The rubber hoses are quite flexible as well, less so the Flexogen hose. Summary The Gardena Comfort Heavy Duty Garden Hose is a true pleasure to work with in every respect that matters with garden hoses. Even the Classic hose that we have is perfectly fine for light-duty work. I'd like to get my hands on a Gardena Premium hose to see what the deal is there. Happy watering!
