High Sierra Showerheads® - ‘Half Dome’ Solid Metal 2.0 GPM High-Flow Shower Head with Pressure & Flow Control Valve - Brushed Nickel - Perfect for Home, Hotel & Spa Bathroom Upgrades

We live in drought stricken California and recently moved into a 4 bathroom house. Besides wanting to save water, we run out of hot water fast if everyone wants to shower at once. Our old place had a Speakman shower head with the flow restrictor drilled out, which was truly the gold standard of showering.Being a pretty nerdy household we collectively spent maybe a thousand dollars looking for a good low-flow shower head. This included most of The Wirecutter’s recommendations and even two models of Nebia’s shower heads. We tested them 3 at a time, leaving the 4th bathroom’s water guzzling Speakman as the control. It was actually really important to take a drenching 5gpm shower to “reset” expectations — after taking some wimpy showers, you tend to forget what it’s like to rinse out conditioner quickly or get sunscreen off your legs.We were pretty dissatisfied with almost everything we tried. The Kohler Wirecutter pick came close to acceptable but the build was flimsy and at the end of the day it still feels like a less disappointing low flow shower. We were settling at the Kohler with flow restrictor removed (about 2.25gpm) as our solution, until I ordered the High Sierra.Honestly we all dismissed this originally because it looked too simple. One person said “it looks like a prison shower”. We all believed to have used something looking like this in a locker room or outdoor pool shower. But holy crap it blew us all away. It is NOTHING like the knockoff / generic shower of this form. It really produces a wider and more useful spray than you might think, and the stream feels powerful without stinging. I would describe it as “invigorating”, in that it excites you the way you would expect from getting blasted with a garden hose. I think the “waterfall” analogy is really spot on. If you’re looking for a relaxing dribbly rain shower, this isn’t it.Everyone liked the performance and feel. It rinses well, the big drops are still intact at leg level which was a huge problem with most low flow showers (rinses shampoo out of your head, but leaves residue in your leg hair). It feels like a crazy amount of water (we sampled the 1.8 with an adjustable valve and believe it’s just right). Really the only way we could tell it was saving water was because the bathtub wasn’t pooling with water!In terms of downsides and considerations, the biggest issue I would say is noise. It emits a fairly loud hissing sound which was divisive. 3 of us didn’t mind it (one even saying it’s relaxing because it blocks out all the other ambient noise), but the youngest one found the sound loud and somewhat irritating. We did find, with the included shutoff valve, you could restrict the valve just a little and that makes the noise a ton better without affecting the feel of the shower!The other thing is that it has a lot of splatter — random droplets hit everywhere, some inexplicably are hitting the window above the shower (probably bouncing off our bodies). This is fine in our shower stalls but if your shower curtain isn’t watertight around the whole tub, you might not like this design. It also makes it difficult to find a “dry spot” to lather yourself, so you really do want the trickle valve.We will likely all go with a 1.8gpm High Sierra with the shutoff valve. What we’ve learned from trying 20 different under-2gpm showers is that while splitting the water into dozens of different nozzles works to distract you from the fact it’s low flow, it is not useful for actually cleaning yourself. High Sierra uniquely manages to deliver uncompromising cleaning performance at a low flow.