9 Best Camp Showers of 2024 for Staying Clean Off-Grid, Tested & Approved

There's really nothing like a good hot shower after a long outdoor adventure. But what if said adventure involves an extended stay in nature? Or what if you're giving the vanlife a go and don't have access to traditional facilities? The answer to both—and to freshening up your dry, grimy, sunburnt skin—is the humble camp shower. Aka the subject of our latest hands-on gear review.

The humble camping shower has come a long way from simple plastic gravity and solar shower bag systems (and MSR Dromedary attachments) of yore. I’m talking about instant heat, pressurized roof mounts, water bottle adapters, and more. As a former thru-hiker, van-lifer, and old-pickup-dwelling-dirtbag, I have no shortage of experience in spaces big and small, fancy and not, to determine which showers will provide the most value and functionality for every kind of space and budget.

So I set about testing a couple handfuls of the latest off-grid camp showers currently available, form brands big and small. I tested each in their intended environments, and below you'll find an exhaustive review on my top 9 picks for the best camping shower. They may not totally replicate a home shower, but honestly, some of them come pretty close. If staying clean (or keeping your dishes and gear clean) on the dirtiest adventure is a top priority for you, then a portable camping shower is worth adding to your outdoor kit, whether you're backpacking, car camping, vanlifing, even overlanding.

Criteria for this hands-on guide prioritized well-designed camp showers with good water pressure and efficient water heating for a warm, off-grid shower experience. And meant to work in a wide variety of scenarios. Keep reading to discover my top picks for portable camp showers and learn about important factors to consider when making your choice.

Camp Shower Testing Criteria

How I Tested Each Product

I tested the following showers on several car camping trips in Wyoming's Bridger Teton National Forest. For the more versatile showers, like the WaterPORT, Yakima, and Nemo, I also tested their gear-cleaning abilities after a few dirtier packraft and bike day trips.

I evaluated the showers for their capacities, water pressure, heating time, and ease of use and made my decisions based on their performance in these categories.

Budget

There's no shortage of portable camping shower options on the market these days, but the price of some of these systems is admittedly pretty steep—take the $550 RoadShower for example, a great design that's realistically way out of most people’s budgets (there’s a reason so many people make DIY versions with PVC pipes). For this reason, I focused most mof my efforts on testing outdoor shower options in the $50-$150 range. I find this range strikes the best balance of value and use, though you definitely sacrifice some of the luxuries of the heater and roof-mounted systems.

Environment

Another major consideration is what kind of environment you live in or will be traveling in. I found that gravity showers simply do not work with the trees where I live—the lodgepole pines and aspens in Wyoming have high, useless little branches and the junipers and pinyons in Utah are just not tall enough. I hadn’t considered this before starting this project, but gravity showers strike me as something that only work if you have big sturdy Midwest or East Coast trees from which to hang them. Or if you have ample time to search for the perfect tree and campsite, which frankly, I don’t. Like all camp gear, what constitutes “the best” is personal and subjective, so keep that in mind.

Type of Shower

If you’re looking for a versatile shower that you can use car camping and backpacking, then the propane and roof-mounted showers aren’t for you. Conversely, if you want a pressurized shower that can clean your camping gear or one that gets hot enough to rinse your oily dishes, then the more basic gravity showers probably won’t be very useful.

With all that said, I did my best to cover a range of styles, types, and designs for a range of uses. Read on for my top picks.

9 Best Camp Showers of 2024, Tested

Best Overall: Nemo Helio Pressure Shower 2.9gal, $130

I don’t have a lot to write about the Nemo Helio Shower and that’s actually a great thing. Instructions weren't needed to figure out how to use it and it didn’t suck up hours of my life trying to install or hang. the Nemo Helio Shower is straightforward, works in most any environment, has adequate water pressure, and has a reasonable water capacity. If you’re not looking for a roof-mount or propane shower, add this to your cart right now.

The Helio Shower is a PU-coated polyester chamber that sits on four legs and has a foot pump for pressure and a 6’10” shower hose and nozzle. At full pressure, the 2.9 gallons of solar heated water will last about three minutes and it takes about three hours to get nice and warm on a 70 degree Wyoming day. Like some of the other showers on this list, you can add hot water to cold water in the chamber if you don’t want to wait for the sun (or direct sunlight is limited), too.

For my specific location, the fact that the Helio shower rests on the ground was a big plus. This is important for anyone who plans on using this shower on a big road trip or pretty much anywhere west of the Mississippi because it adds a ton of versatility. It’s easy to pressurize the chamber with a foot pump and you can control how much pressure you want for different tasks (showering vs dishes). I wasn’t very impressed with the tiny nozzle and the pressure isn’t amazing, but it’s definitely good enough to get the job done.

Praise aside, the main downside to the Nemo Helio Shower is the water inlet pocket. The design is both oddly placed and leaks a lot of water when you try to snap the lid in. The LX version doesn’t seem to have this same inlet system and the extra $30 would be worth avoiding this hassle. But ultimately I’m glad I persevered, because the Helio turned out to be one of the easiest showers to actually use. My top pick for sure.

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Most Versatile: Sea to Summit Pocket Shower 10L, $40

The Sea to Summit Pocket Shower is pretty much just a dry bag with a nozzle—it doesn’t get more basic than this. But the simplicity is part of its charm, because once you strip away the excess you have a camping shower that will work in a variety of conditions, from a backcountry campsite to a campsite (or parking lot, driveaway, etc) with suboptimal trees.

The Pocket Shower packs up very small—roughly 5 inches long and under 4 oz—which makes is great for multiple camping uses, including backpacking. I didn’t give it the top backpacking spot because the Shower To Go is even more bare bones than the Pocket Shower, but if I was backpacking with a family I would probably opt for the Pocket Shower’s 10-liter capacity instead.

The Sea to Summit Pocket Shower differs from the other gravity showers in a few key ways. It’s easier to fill from a natural water source given the wide mouth design, and this also means that it actually dries inside—the other gravity showers will hold moisture inside forever. A dry inside means less mold, less time spent cleaning with baking soda, and to me, the Pocket Shower is all about saving time. The roll top design and lack of a hose also meant that even in branchless Wyoming, I could still generally find a place to hang it without cutting into my hands with the skinny little string.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s anywhere near a real shower. The stream is significantly weaker than even some of the other gravity showers—pouring a water bottle over your head will have a stronger flow than the Pocket Shower—but with a flow time of 8:30 minutes to empty, it provides a nice long outdoor shower experience. For climbers, hikers, and the general dirtbag variety who want to spend more time doing and less time cleaning, this is the shower I would bring for an occasional freshening up.

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Best for Backpacking: Shower Toga Shower To Go, $20

The Shower To Go by Shower Toga is pretty much exactly what it looks like: a miniature shower head that screws onto the top of your water bottle. There are some bottles and bladders that are not compatible with it, but it will work with Platypus bladders and a Smartwater bottle, which are what I (and my friends) have always used for thru-hiking. But those more likely to carry Nalgenes, Hydroflasks, or some other sorts of water bottles should look at the Sea to Summit Pocket Shower above.

You can screw the Shower To Go onto your bottle in one of two orientations. One way claims to block the flow entirely to prevent leaks so it can stay on your water bottle at all times. The other way is the actual shower nozzle. I found that the Shower To Go still leaked a little despite the claims, so personally I’d love to see them do away with the lid-like option and make a port that is compatible with wider mouths, like those on a Hydrapak bladder. But so long as you don't hike with it attached, this isn't an issue.

The Shower To Go has a very fast stream for such a little piece of gear, so having a larger capacity water bottle is pretty important. It’s honestly not that different from dumping a water bottle over your head, but the nozzle distributes and slows the flow enough to add a luxurious, psychological element that pouring water over your head can’t quite capture, and that little bit of fanciness goes a long way in a backcountry scenario.

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Best Roof Rack Mounted: Tie Between Yakima RoadShower 7-gal ($449) & Klymit WaterPORT 8-gal ($384)

I wanted to choose between the Yakima RoadShower and the WaterPORT Weekender for this review, but ultimately both had such strong and varying pros and cons that I just couldn’t decide. So I made it a tie and laid all of the details out here, instead.

The Klymit 8.0-gal WaterPORT and Yakima RoadShower are respectively 8-gallon and 7-gallon water tanks that mount to some sort of roof rack on your car. They both come in other sizes, but I found these to be the most versatile capacities for a few showers and gear washes without having to fill up all the time.

They both have two fill options—a regular, larger opening and a pressurized hose connector—and they also both have shrader valves to add more pressure manually with a bike pump, if necessary (55psi for the RoadShower and 40psi for the WaterPORT). They both require rather painful installations, though the WaterPORT blows the RoadShower away when it comes to bad mounting experiences. That said, if your car and budget can manage it, I’d choose the WaterPORT or the RoadShower over any other shower on this list.

Now to the actual review: I’ll start with the positives, because there are quite a few. The WaterPORT is made of a food-safe plastic so you can drink the water that comes out of it (on the other hand, the RoadShower is made of aluminum, so Yakima does not advise drinking the water). Potable water is a huge plus for Klymit, as carrying a separate water container for drinking just feels like a pain in my relatively small Ford Ranger. The WaterPORT also comes with a 16ft, coiled hose that attaches via a quick connect system, and that hose has plenty of length to reach bikes and other gear that you may want to wash. The garden hose-esque nozzle feels sturdy and has plenty of settings with seriously impressive pressure. It has to be removed before driving and I thought stashing it would be annoying, but it actually didn’t bother me much.

The Yakima is more or less the same design, but made of aluminum so the water inside is not potable. That was the biggest drawback of the RoadShower, to me, and one that I think should be remedied by Yakima. Were that fixed, I might prefer the RoadShower to the WaterPORT. The RoadShower’s hose straps to the side of the tank, so it doesn’t have to be removed when driving, but the hose is substantially shorter than the WaterPORT’s. The head is also not quite as pleasant on the skin, though it does have a few adjustable settings. But the water pressure was equal to the WaterPORT so materials aside, the two are pretty much equal.

As big black containers exposed to the sun, the WaterPORT and RoadShower can both get extremely hot, inside and out. Luckily the RoadShower has a temperature gauge so you can tell when the water has gone from comfortable to way too hot. You’ll have to guess with the WaterPORT, so don’t spray any living creatures before checking.

The WaterPORT was primarily designed for the overlanding crowd, and those types of vehicles often have a platform rack instead of simple crossbars. It would also mount well on the type of roof racks you see on burly Sprinter vans. It comes with metal plates that supposedly give you a variety of mounting options with that type of roof rack, but for crossbars you only have one option that makes the WaterPORT sit a lot higher than the RoadShower. I didn’t realize this mounting hiccup originally and had to purchase a separate linkage bracket adapter, which increases the cost of the WaterPORT as well.

The linkage bracket adapter is one of my least favorite things I’ve purchased this year. $50 gets you eight flat pieces of metal and eight carriage bolts that require either two people or one person with a clamp and two wrenches to mount. The washers that come with it slip right through the metal holes, so I had to use larger washers from the original mounting kit. I don’t know why they couldn’t design something more similar to the RoadShower’s mounting system (a curved, padded piece of metal) but between the installation and the aesthetics, it’s a really bad solution.

That doesn’t mean that the RoadShower was a breeze, either. Yakima roof boxes are so easy to mount so they really need to transfer that technology over to the RoadShower. The carriage bolt system requires a wrench and no shortage of time and patience for the interminable twisting. It took about 1/3 of the time of the WaterPORT and only uses 4 carriage bolts instead of 8, but it still felt like an outdated system that’s due for a refresh. Nonetheless, it was significantly better to mount than the WaterPORT and I would recommend the RoadShower in a heartbeat to anyone with regular crossbars.

My RoadShower also did leak pretty substantially from the point where the hose connects to the tank, even when not in use. My extremely handy carpenter partner couldn’t even get it to stop, and based on other reviews, the RoadShower fittings seem to require a lot of tightening. I see RoadShowers everywhere so I assume it’s a resolvable issue, but the extreme amount of water spraying out of there whenever I tried to use the hose made the experience a little off-putting. This might have contributed to the fact that the RoadShower lost pressure more quickly than the WaterPORT, though it’s easy enough to top off with the Shrader valve. The WaterPORT, by contrast, was one of the only showers on this list that never leaked.

The WaterPORT is the shower that I still have on my roof, but that’s arguably because I’d rather die than touch the mounting hardware ever again. I genuinely like both of these showers quite a lot, but they do both have some serious flaws (mostly around mounting) that need some work. But once you get through the mounting process you have a water system that is good for so much more than simply showering, and that goes a long way in my book.

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Best Heated Camping Shower: JOOLCA HOTTAP V2, $299 - $549

The Joolca HOTTAP is the best shower option for overlanding, vanlife, and for folks who spend a lot of time in their rig. It's also the most luxurious shower on this list—and the most complex (though it’s not too difficult). It heats water with propane (max water temperature 122F, according to JOOLCA) and the system itself operates on two D-cell batteries, which power the igniter and LED display. The two controls are self explanatory (water pressure and temperature) and the hoses are similarly color-coded and have simple quick-connect attachments. The HOTTAP comes in a few different packages and I was lucky enough to test the Nomad kit, which has everything a traveler could ever want and heck of a lot more.

The HOTTAP water heater works faster than a house shower and has multiple flow choices with strong water pressure (2.5 to 6 liters per minute, according to Joolca). This does mean that it uses quite a lot of water, though, so you’ll have to figure out a conservation method that works best for you if you’re operating out of a water jug. The Outing and Nomad kits come with an extra sprayer hose and IPX3 pump that pulls water out of flowing water sources so you don’t have to worry about water capacity. The pump filters out quite a lot of sediment, though I wouldn’t risk using it in siltier desert streams and rivers. The Outing kit is an extra $150, which is not inconsequential, but I do think the water pump provides a lot more flexibility and enjoyment to the HOTTAP experience.

People on overlanding and van forums love the HOTTAP and unless you’re very serious about your outdoor hygiene, that is the kind of set up where it really shines. The HOTTAP isn’t really all that complicated to put together, but it takes enough steps that I would want to mount it somewhere permanently and attach the remaining components before use.

There aren’t many cons to the JOOLCA HOTTAP V2 shower, besides the price and space requirements. It’s admittedly not as sleek as some newer propane showers on the market but you also get way more value for a lower price. I read that the flame can blow out in the wind so campers need to choose their spot carefully, but I didn’t experience that. Our unit did fail to ignite on the first couple tries, and the troubleshooting options in the handbook didn’t seem to apply. Fortunately, it started working on it’s own eventually but investing in this pricey piece of gear and having to take a cold shower would have been demoralizing, so follow their warning and test it before you head out.

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Best Budget: Coghlans Gravity Shower 5-gal, $12

The one shining feature about the Coghlans solar camp shower is the $12 price tag and there’s not a whole lot to rave about beyond that. It’s more or less a budget version of the Advanced Elements Summer Shower, which is great if you’re looking for a very cheap shower to get the job done. I wouldn’t necessarily call it fuss-free though, which I’ll get into below.

The Coghlans shower gets very warm, even on a 70-degree Wyoming day. The Advanced Elements Summer Shower heated up faster (though they still both took 3+ hours), but the Coghlans ultimately got hotter - after a long afternoon in the sun, it reached about 109-degrees. In warmer temps, this solar bag shower could definitely get too hot for comfort, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the temperature. As for flow, I clocked it at a 4:30 minute run time, which is generally enough time to shower if you stop the flow while you suds up.

Now for the bad things. The clamp permanently kinked the hose and it leaks, so I had to find a way to hold the hose upright. I attempted to hook it through the hole at the top, but it would only stay in place momentarily. The hose is also longer than the Advanced Elements (22in), meaning you’ll have to hitch it even higher to get it to the right height. I think it would be pretty simple to pull out the nozzle and cut the hose shorter, but eventually the time you put into modifying this shower outweighs the budget savings, in my opinion.

The rope is also very slippery, making it difficult to tie knots and haul it up a tree. This actually applies to every gravity shower on this list, but I would go to your local climbing store and buy some decent cordelette before bringing any of these showers outside. And again, if you’re buying a shower solely based on price, then modifications and replacement parts kind of outweighs the savings eventually.

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Best Gravity Fed: Advanced Elements Summer Shower 5-gal, $49

For those who live in a place with the right kind of trees and branches, the Advanced Elements Summer Shower is the premium gravity camp shower. It comes in a variety of sizes (2.5, 3, 5, and 10 liters) and even a PVC-free version.

I tested the Advanced Elements shower after the Coghlans and it has so many features that improve user experience. It has a much nicer handle for carrying and a buckle for clipping onto a rope. It also has velcro straps to hold a towel (or the hose up when not in use) and the nozzle pulls out to release the water. There’s a little external pocket and a mirror to make sure you actually get all of the dirt off your face and it even has a little thermostat on the back.

The Summer Shower keeps a consistent pressure throughout its use, unlike some of the other gravity showers (notably the Pocket Shower) that begin to fizzle out as the weight of the water above lessens. It will run for about six minutes and heat up in about three hours. I left the solar showers out for an entire afternoon to see which ones got hottest and the Coghlans did get a few degrees warmer than the Summer Shower, but the Summer Shower heated up a little faster. The Coghlans attracts a lot of heat with the black plastic versus the clear side of the Summer Shower, and it’s hard to compete with black plastic in the sun. But if warm water is what you're after, the Advanced Elements Summer Shower works just fine.

The Summer Shower does have the typical drawbacks of gravity showers. Hanging it is a pain and it’s the one shower that doesn’t come with a rope. It is difficult to dry out and clean the inside and it also doesn’t pack nearly as well as some of the others due to a plastic bar across the top of the bag. But those are the only problems I could really find with it and none of them are very significant. After cursing the Coghlans, using and setting up the Summer Shower was a pretty breezy experience and I’d easily put it near the top of this entire list due to its value, durability, and ease of use.

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Most Water Efficient: Geyser Systems Portable Shower with Heater, $389

The Geyser Systems with Heater uses the least amount of water on this list but that’s because it’s more of a heated sponge bath than an actual shower. I pack wet wipes on a lot of my trips to wipe sunscreen and grime off my face at the end of the day and it felt like an elevated version of that, which I say lovingly because I’m all for a quick wet-wipe bath. It heats water to 95-degrees using a 12V car plug in a reasonable amount of time but less patient campers can heat water on a camp stove and pour it into the chamber (just make sure you don't add boiling water). It doesn’t have a very large chamber (.8 gallon), but that’s fine since it is so efficient with water.

The design is definitely unique, but it’s not a replacement for a traditional shower because of the low-pressure sponge design. As a desert rat with an obsession for conserving water, the low waste aspect appealed to me and I found a lot of people on overlanding forums felt the same, but I’m not sure if conserving water outweighs the $390 price tag on the Geyser Systems. Especially because the ability to wash my very fine, grease-prone hair would be the primary incentive for me bringing a shower on a camping trip in the first place.

It doesn’t have a carrying case and the sponge will get pretty dirty if you don’t have a container to place it in. Each person will probably want their own sponge as well. I found that I also liked the stronger spray showers for the ability to clean bikes, packrafts, and other mucky gear, and unfortunately a sponge bath just doesn’t cut it.

The Geyser Systems feels like it would almost have more use in my everyday life. If I had to go into an office after mountain biking, trail running, or ski touring in the morning, a quick scrub in warm shower is generally all I would need to be fresh enough to keep my coworkers complacent. Is that worth $390? Hard to say. I can say that overall I liked the Geyser Systems, but it’s easily the most niche and polarizing shower on this list.

SHOP FROM REI