Nerf Super Soaker Power Drench Review

New Year, New Nerf! Or at least that was my attitude finding this on store shelves prior to the spring toys turnover. Many hours of testing later, I was disappointed.

In theory, I was expecting the return of true CPS blasting, complete with a hose-fed refill station. The latter part of the expectation, was solid. The former, however, is a massive disappointment, because the “pulse burst” mechanism turns the blaster into a glorified squirt pistol that wastes part of its load to achieve the effect. It’s the worst experience I’ve had in a water blaster in a LONG time, and there’s no way I could recommend anyone buy this.

Let’s dive in to the disappointment, shall we?

Pretty in Package

The Power Drench ships with both a modern version of the Quick-Fill Device and a hose adapter, in case you have a bare hose in need of a connector. That part’s nice, and ensures whatever hose is available will that the fitting necessary to connect to the QFD.

The box does state your water pressure needs to be at least 27psi in order to fill the blaster up. There’s no onboard pump for pressurizing, so you have to meet the minimum and let your home’s water pressure do the rest.

The QFD, when connected to the hose, sits flat on the ground – you press the nozzle of the blaster down into the top port in order to open the valve and fill the blaster. It does take a decent amount of force, considering the ages 8+ nature of the toy, to hold it down, but if the blaster pops out, the valve shuts off.

Assuming you hold the blaster down long enough, the bladder will expand all the way back, and a small overpressure valve will engage. That valve’s exit point is within the grip of the blaster. It looks funny, of course, but you’re doing it right. You need a pressure release valve somewhere!

Refilling takes mere seconds. That’s always a plus.

Poor Operation?

…This is the point where I thought I had a defective blaster. So, I checked the instructions. Yep, after pulling the trigger and taking a discrete shot, “small jets of water release from the pressure gate on the side of the blaster”. That part was normal. Unfortunately, the small amounts of water going out the front are also normal – I bought another Power Drench just to be sure.

The spurts of water go maybe 15 feet away, without much cohesion. So at even minimal distance, you’re spreading into a mist that’s largely an annoyance, not the “soaking” you’re looking for. In another interesting twist, I noticed that the shot volume and distance are dependent on…how fast/hard you pull the trigger. That’s right, the blaster is just as dependent on your trigger fingers as a dollar store squirt pistol with a syringe-type trigger! Which means that the pressurized reservoir is simply supplying water into a forward firing chamber. A mechanical bit reciprocates when you pull the trigger, squeezing some water out the nozzle, and on the return motion, it refills some of that chamber while some sacrificial fluid gets pushed out the side.

So it’s a CPS system…but there’s no real use for it.

Also, if you fire too fast, it’s possible to squib shots as well. Though you still lose water out the side port.

Let’s Run Through a Few Numbers?

When I was testing both blasters, I ran out of “juice” when I hit 40 shots. So let’s use that as a benchmark.

Filling a blaster completely, then emptying it via the QFD’s drain mechanism (that’s the extra port on the side – the long tube disengages things) gave me ~210mL of volume. Measuring after firing 40 shots gave me 60mL left over. Measuring the water coming out the side of the blaster (literally holding it sideways over a Tupperware tray) got me ~45mL.

That leaves 105mL of water coming out the nozzle in 40 shots, or a little over 2.5mL per shot. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a large amount to be firing from a $25 blaster. And when a comparable amount of water is being wasted out the side of the blaster, it’s annoying.

Granted, these were rough measurements, as it turns out there’s extra water that can be drained out of the blaster if you really try to get it out. Draining a soaker when not in use is best practice…so that much water staying inside after following the instructions for draining is alarming. Anyway, I don’t imagine others will see wildly different results when they try to measure things.

Internals

After removing all the screws, we have the inside of the blaster. With a bit of effort, we can take apart the front firing chamber to find…lots of things that sit concentrically, some of them with tiny holes and passages. The two yellow pieces are both spring-loaded, and the orange cylinder is the piece that connects to the trigger linkage. I’m still trying to understand exactly how this works…but the box does say US Patent Pending, so illustrations explaining it will come soon enough.

In any case, that’s a heck of a complicated mechanism just so you can fire a tiny bit of water on a trigger pull.

Final Thoughts

I think my wife expressed the best opinion of this. Earlier in the day, we filmed for a Youtube short, with the relatively simple Mega Dunk-Fill that’s $15, and you just pump to shoot. She had lots of fun using me for target practice.

After letting her try the Power Drench, she said it was “awful”.

I may be disappointed for hobby-based reasons, especially considering the pressurized reservoir tech inside the blaster, but when a casual user like my wife is disappointed just by trying it out, it’s worth noting.

Perhaps the Power Drench XL might have some hope, since it has a full flood mode. We’ll see when it becomes available. But the regular version? Leave it on the shelf and save $25.