Autocar product test: What snow foam cleaner is best?
Car cleaning is essential for car maintenance, but which one should you buy? Here is Autocar's breakdown
Whether you like to keep your car clean for practical reasons, or simply because you take pride in making it look brilliant, snow foam cleaners get rid of tough grime and dirt with ease – and these are the best around.
Fans of snow foam cleaners say that using a foamer gun is the best way to apply the foam, making it easy and fast, while offering the deepest clean possible. To others, dousing your car in a thick layer of foam seems a seriously messy and awkward way of cleaning your car. If you're in the former camp, which product is best?
To find out, we applied our snow foam cleaners both as a liquid and as a foam to the side of a grubby van. We appraised each product’s foaming properties – the ideal is to have a thick foam that rinses off easily – and checked its pH level to make sure that the cleaner wasn’t too far towards either end of the pH scale, when it can damage your paintwork.
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*Best buy - Chemical Guys Maxi Suds II*
*Price:* £7.95
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity:* 473ml
Chemical Guys does a wide range of snow foams, with strong scents, such as Beer, Watermelon and Honeydew. But it’s the cleaning performance of this hybrid shampoo/foam that wins it the top spot here. It’s very simple to get to grips with, dissolves dirt and muck off the paintwork with no hassle, and has phenomenal cleaning power as well as extremely kind-to-paintwork pH neutrality. What is most remarkable is how much cleaning punch the tiniest heavily diluted drop of the Chemical Guys product provided, which means that it’s going to last well. Provided you use it frugally, this bottle will produce 120 litres of highly effective foam. Overall, it’s a clear winner. We’ll take a beer-scented one, please.
*Autocar says:* 5 stars
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*Recommended - Chemical Guys Hydro Suds*
*Price: *£17.99
*Buy from:* Amazon
*Capacity:* 473ml
The Chemical Guys Hydro Suds foam is really heavily concentrated, which is why we got brilliant cleaning results from a super-diluted 0.9% solution – the equivalent of using 2oz of the Hydro Suds in a foamer bottle of water. It’s also a joy to use, with thick foam that sits on the paintwork in a satisfying duvet of cleanliness and then washes away very easily. It leaves a shiny, protective ceramic coating, too.
*Autocar says: *4 stars
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*Recommended - Farécla G3 Pro Snow Foam*
*Price: *£7.99
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity: *500ml
G3 Pro Snow Foam is a brilliant all-rounder. Officially it's a pre-wash, but it's also a shampoo, and you can use it with the old bucket and sponge if you prefer. It's not a complete three-in-one treatment like Ceramic Blast or Hydro Suds, but the cleaning results are seriously impressive even if Farécla’s instructions do suggest that you apply a finishing wax periodically for the best shine and protection. Despite that, if you want a fast, very effective and kind-to-paintwork foaming shampoo, this is tough to beat.
*Autocar says: *4 stars
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*Best budget buy - Bilt-Hamber Auto-Foam*
*Price:* £16.95
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity: *5000ml (five litres)
Given that it’s a very high dilution rate for the Bilt-Hamber Auto-Foam, this actually works out at one of the best value products here. On frequently washed cars, where weaker dilutions will normally be possible, that five-litre bottle will last a very long time. Some rivals have the edge when it comes to all-out cleaning power and brilliant finishing shine, but the difference is so marginal that this is still the one we’d take.
*Autocar says:* 4 stars
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*Autoglym Polar Blast*
*Price: *£14.66
*Buy from:* Amazon
*Capacity:* 2500ml (2.5 litres)
This is Autoglym's heavy duty pre-cleaner, and it doesn’t take much time with it to see why it already has an impressive reputation. In terms of ease of use and outright cleaning power alone, it's hard to choose between this and the pricier Bilt-Hamber's Touch-Less. The Polar Blast's greater dilution ratio offsets its smaller bottle, so you’ll get a good number of washes from it. It doesn’t smell too great, though, with a definite chemical aroma.
*Autocar says:* 4 stars
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*Diamondbrite Ceramic Blast Ceramic Snow Foam*
*Price: *£9.95
*Buy from:* Diamondbrite
*Capacity:* 500ml
Diamondbrite's Ceramic Blast is a three-in-one, one-shot product that melts away muck, cleans and even leaves behind a protective, high-gloss ceramic coating. You might think that it wouldn’t deliver the same results as those sets that have separate treatments, but we couldn’t find any signs of compromise here. It dissolved dirt and grime just as well as most of the pre-wash-only formulations, and overall cleaning and the resulting shine were as impressive as the shampoo foams.
*Autocar says:* 4 stars
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*Bilt-Hamber Touch-Less*
*Price:* £30.98
*Buy from:* Amazon
*Capacity:* 5000ml (five litres)
The Bilt-Hamber Touch-Less breaks all the rules, but in a good way. Its unique sugar-based formula is kind to paintwork, even if our pH tests flagged up higher alkalinity than expected. Traditionally, high alkalinity can indicate excessive caustic content, which is clearly best avoided, but that’s not the case here. We expected a thicker foam, but even the thinner foam that we got is an amazing dirt shifter and is very easy to work with. It also creates a massive 125 litres of foam, which goes a long way to justifying the price.
*Autocar says:* 4 stars
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*Nilfisk 3 Step Premium Car Cleaning Kit*
*Price:* £40.61
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity:* 500ml x3
Like Autoglym, Nilfisk has taken a three-step approach with its snow foams, but the difference here is that you get all three in the same box set, which is claimed to be good for around 20 full treatments. We like the foolproof "add a capful to your foamer bottle and top up with water" instructions for use, and cleaning results were pretty good – if not quite up to the standard set by Bilt-Hamber's excellent Touch-Less.
*Autocar says:* 4 stars
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*Karcher Ultra Foam Cleaner*
*Price: *£9.49
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity: *1000ml (one litre)
This Karcher foam cleaner comes ready to go. You don’t need to measure it out and dilute it, or mess about figuring out the right strength, as you can use it straight out of the bottle. In fact, if you have a Karcher pressure washer with the right nozzle, the bottle simply screws on and you’re all set. Alternatively, just tip it into another foamer gun. In use, the cleaner is effective and easy to use. It’s not cheap, though, as you’re only getting around 7.5 litres of foam.
*Autocar says: 3 stars*
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*Autoglym Polar Wash*
*Price:* £14.40
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity: *2500ml (2.5 litres)
Polar Wash is the second part of a three-stage treatment but it did a good job even on its own. It has a highly recommended dilution – up to half and half with water in a typical foamer bottle, which is a solution of nearly 7%, so you’ll go through it fairly quickly at that rate. Mind you, we found it gave great usability and left the car impressively clean even with just 4%.
*Autocar says:* 3 stars
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*Meguiar’s Ultimate Snow Foam*
*Price: *£19.94
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity: *1890ml (1.89 litres)
You immediately notice the sweet smell of the Meguiar’s, which is a bit much for our tastes, to be honest. Having said that, this froths up well for a dense and clingy foam that also rinses well and leaves the paintwork looking clean and fresh. It is only a pre-wash, though, and not a shampoo or finishing wash, so there are others here that deliver a better finish.
*Autocar says:* 3 stars
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*Simoniz 2 in 1 Shampoo & Snow Foam*
*Price:* £12.61
*Buy from: *Amazon
*Capacity: *2000ml (2 litres)
Many products here can be diluted for conventional shampooing with an old-fashioned bucket and sponge, but this Carnauba Wax formula really shouts its dual usage. We’d stick to the shampoo use only, and the suggested dilution for foam use results in thinner coverage than is ideal, so that it proves to be short-lived and not very effective against even mild grime. Stronger mixes may work better, though, and given the low price, it’s still a bargain even if you have to double the quantity you use per wash.
*Autocar says:* 2 stars
*How we test products*
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