It’s colder here in the northern hemisphere, which means many of you good readers will soon be blessed with one of the greatest advantages of automobiles: snow. The white powder mix allows you to glide your car at safe speeds, move sideways in a parking lot, practice your rear car control – it’s fantastic. Fresh snow means a new chance for car shenanigans. But for too many of you, the snow seems to be a brake.
I understand. You have to warm up your car before it gets comfortable, and you have to brush and scrape all that pesky snow and ice from your roof, hood, trunk, and windows before you can drive away. What if I told you there was a better way? A tool that made cleaning your car not only simple, but also enjoyable? My friends, I present to you: the only good snow brush.
This, dear reader, is the Arctic-Force SubZero 53″ Snow Broom – but the make and model don’t really matter. You’ll find this exact design from all sorts of manufacturers, in every brand colorway you can imagine. Lowe’s Blue, Rain-X yellow, Advance Auto Parts red, it’s the same form and function in these pretty colors. I have owned more than one of the scrapers listed here, and I can tell you that they are more or less functionally identical.
Function, however, is what sets them apart from lesser quality scrapers. You see, you might be used to the traditional scraper and brush design: an inflexible, slightly curved piece of inexpensive plastic, with a molded scraper at the top and a brush on the side. It’s a design as old as dirt, and it should be just as unwelcome in your trunk. See, there’s something crucially missing from these grocery store options: articulation.
G/O Media may receive a commission
Our fancy pants snow broom changes shape in two different ways. The first is by extension – a selection of lengths, allowing you to tailor the width of your vehicle to push snow the full length of your roof in one fell swoop. The second is rotation, allowing the brush and foam head to stay in line with your grip (for wiping down on a windshield) or lock perpendicular to it (for brushing those wide stretches of roofs and covers). The hard scraper, located at the other end of the broom, is never in the way and will never accidentally stain your paint.
These movement points also allow our broom to pack up small, meaning it won’t take up too much room in your trunk. The foam grips keep your hands insulated from cold metal in the winter too, which is definitely nice when you’re not wearing gloves. All the functionality of a huge perpendicular head broom, with the storage needs of a special small gas station. This is thoughtful engineering.
Now, I said there was only one good snow brush, but I’ll take the time to name an honorable mention. The snow brush has a sister product, called “Crossover Broom Avalanche Blade.” Its brush head is a marked downgrade, losing all of its foam side, but it gains the benefit of a curved center section – really nice to have, if you’re a shorter person cleaning the roof of a larger vehicle big.
So this winter, don’t mess around with the same old piece of cheap plastic snow removal. Invest in the extendable, rotating snow brush instead. You’ll spend less time cleaning your car and you’ll also do a better job – your hands, feet, paint and other drivers on the road will thank you.