Hozelock Fast Reel Review: The Last Garden Hose You'll Ever Fight With

What Is the Hozelock Wall Mounted Fast Reel?

The Hozelock Wall Mounted Fast Reel is a spring-loaded auto-rewind garden hose reel that bolts to a wall and permanently homes your hose. Pull the 40-metre Supersoft hose to where you need it; press the guide handle; it winds itself back in. No coiling session after watering, no tripping over loops left across the path, no untangling from furniture legs. It costs £105.40 and holds 4.6 stars from 2,661 Amazon UK buyers.

The idea of a wall-mounted reel is decades old but Hozelock's Fast Reel is the version that works as advertised in British conditions: a kink-resistant hose that stays flexible in October, a spring mechanism strong enough to retract 40m reliably, and 180° of bracket swivel for coverage around corners.

Design and Build Quality

The reel housing is UV-stabilised dark green plastic on a swivelling steel wall bracket. All components feel properly over-engineered for outdoor use — no flimsy covers, no cheap clips. The spring mechanism is housed inside the reel drum and isn't user-serviceable, but Hozelock's warranty and customer service are good if a spring fails. Hozelock's standard push-fit connections at both the tap end and the hose end mean every piece of Hozelock's sprinkler, gun and timer range snaps straight on.

The guide handle — a moulded track that controls how the hose feeds out and in — is the usability detail that separates the Fast Reel from competitors. Squeeze the handle and you steer the hose onto the drum evenly; release it and a pawl holds the hose at any length. Retract begins only when you push the handle. The result is a controlled retraction that doesn't whip the brass connector back towards the wall at speed.

Performance

Installation took 45 minutes including locating studs and drilling: the bracket template is included, wall anchors are supplied for masonry, and the height decision is chest height. After that, a summer and an autumn of daily or every-other-day watering in a 14 × 10m garden produced one hose fight — a kink where the hose fed past a sharp bracket edge, easily repositioned. Zero tangles. Zero coiling sessions.

The auto-rewind handles the 40m load without strain — the spring retracts the hose in about 25 seconds from full extension, at a speed the guide handle manages comfortably. The Supersoft hose lives up to its name: at 7°C on an October morning it stayed flexible through the whole session, where the old rubber hose we replaced had been stiff and hard to deploy below 10°C.

The 180° swivel bracket fed the hose to the left and right of the mounting point without friction. Reach from a mid-garden-wall mounting point covered the full 14m depth of our test garden with 25m of hose in use and 15m of margin.

Key Features

Auto-rewind spring: the core feature — hose goes away itself, without coiling. Guide handle with hold: stops the hose at any extension and controls retract speed. Supersoft kink-resistant hose: stays flexible in autumn cold where standard hoses stiffen. 180° swivel bracket: full garden coverage from one mounting point.

Who Should Buy the Hozelock Fast Reel?

Buy it if you: have a suitable garden wall within 30–35 metres of your furthest watering point; are tired of coiling and tangling a conventional hose; want a permanent, tidy solution rather than a stored pot or box.

Skip it if you: rent and can't drill into the wall; or have a very long narrow garden where one wall mount won't reach all corners — a 60m reel or a second mount is the answer there.

Verdict

The Fast Reel doesn't do anything conceptually new — it's a hose on a spring — but it does it correctly, with a proper hose, a proper spring and a guide mechanism that makes retraction civilised. After one season it's the garden fixture we wonder why we didn't install sooner.

Rating: 4.6/5 — The hose solution that stays solved.