The Speakman Hotel Anystream S-2005-HB is a fixed 2.5 GPM shower head with three spray settings: intense, massage and a combination of the two. Bob Vila tested it in two roundups, gave it an overall 5/5 in its high-pressure comparison and named it best overall in both; its low-water-pressure testers called the massage spray the strongest they tested. Bob Vila's criticisms are narrow spray coverage and having only three settings.
Full review
Tested twice by Bob Vila
Bob Vila's high-pressure shower head guide tested 13 models over more than 100 showers and named the Speakman Hotel Anystream best overall. Its comparison table gives the Speakman an overall rating of 5/5, and its testing scores are 5/5 each for installation, appearance, performance, design and value.
A separate Bob Vila guide to shower heads for low water pressure also put the S-2005-HB first.
Spray settings and pressure
Speakman's Anystream system and eight massage jets move through intense, massage and combination settings. Bob Vila's testing found that the adjusting ring moved easily, but not so easily that the head could slip from one setting to another on its own.
The low-water-pressure testers described the adjuster as having a smooth, weighty feel and said the massage spray was by far the strongest spray they tested. They wrote that the head outperformed competitors costing more than ten times as much.
Installation and upkeep
Tester Tony Carrick said installation is as easy as it gets: remove the old shower head and screw this one on without tools. The second guide noted that a roll of plumber's tape is included and that the head was bigger than its testers expected.
Bob Vila explains that plungers control the spread of water at each nozzle so pressure can build, and that they are self-cleaning and resist hard-water buildup and sediment.
What Bob Vila did not like
The high-pressure guide lists one drawback: spray coverage is narrow. The low-water-pressure guide's one drawback is that the head is limited to three spray settings. Bob Vila lists the flow rate as 2.5 GPM and notes no handheld is included.
Strengths
- +Adjustment ring moves easily without slipping between settings, per Bob Vila
- +Self-cleaning plungers resist hard-water buildup
- +Four finishes
Watch-outs
- −Spray coverage is narrow, per Bob Vila
How it compares
The Speakman runs at 2.5 GPM, more than the 1.75 GPM Kohler Forté K-22169 and Delta 52535 and the 1.8 GPM SparkPod High-Pressure Rainfall. It has three spray settings, the same count as the Kohler Forté and fewer than the Delta's five, while the SparkPod has a single rainfall pattern. Bob Vila found its spray coverage narrow; the SparkPod and Delta heads are 6 inches across.
Rating sources
Counts as 4.68/5 in our score — this publisher's 42 scores on the site average 4.53, so its scores are adjusted down to compare fairly with other publishers.
Not in the average — we derived this score from the review's words, and a publisher printed a score for this product, so the printed number counts instead.
Not in the average — we derived this score from the review's words, and a publisher printed a score for this product, so the printed number counts instead.
Not in the average — we derived this score from the review's words, and a publisher printed a score for this product, so the printed number counts instead.
Not in the average — we derived this score from the review's words, and a publisher printed a score for this product, so the printed number counts instead.
Our 4.7 score is the average of 1 of the scored reviews above, each adjusted for how strictly its publisher scores; 1 more reviewed it without printing a score and is not in the average. 4 derived scores above are not in the average because a publisher printed a score for this product. Ratings marked * were derived from the reviewer’s written analysis or video transcript — the publisher didn’t print an explicit numeric score, so we inferred one from their own words. Click through to verify. More about methodology.
