Anyone who has driven a car in Minnesota over a winter or two is familiar with the three basic types of windshield ice scrapers.
There’s a better tool to get ice off your windshield. It’s shaped like a cone.
Forget about better mousetraps. We need a better windshield scraper.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 13, 2025 at 2:00PM
There’s the one-hander, a sort of short spatula small enough to fit in the glove box.
There’s the stick, a longish wand, one that used to be made of wood but now is usually made of plastic, with a scraper on one end and a modest snow brush on the other.
And then there’s the desperation credit card, used when you get caught without a real tool and this is your last resort other than using your fingernails.
But is there a better way? To find out, we gathered the most unusual ice scraping ideas we could find. We tested them on our windshield on the frosty mornings we’ve experienced so far this winter.
These devices include beefy battery-powered tools, heated ice scrapers, scrapers that look like a spaceship, and scrapers big enough to defend yourself against a polar bear. Read on to learn about our surprising winner, an unlikely cone-shaped gadget that looks like the lid of a Moroccan tagine pot.
The Better Ice Scraper
This “revolutionary new design,” held in the palm of your hand and pushed around like a computer mouse, is touted as having better ergonomics than a traditional ice scraper and easier to use for people with reduced grip strength.
The brass metal scraping edge also promised to hold its edge longer than a plastic scraper. We were a bit worried that it might scratch the windshield when it made a squeaking noise as it rubbed over the glass.
It didn’t cause any damage, but we can’t say it did a better job of getting frost off the glass than an ordinary plastic scraper. And you really miss the extra inches of reach that a traditional stick or spatula style scraper gives you when you’re trying to clear the middle of the windshield.
Snow Joe Ice Dozer 360°
The Ice Dozer is another palm-held device that looks a little like a spaceship with different tools on each of the gadget’s six sides.
There’s some fearsome toothlike things on the pointed front, a straight, sharp edge on one side and a rubbery toothed-squeegee brush on the other. Some more “high-impact” teeth in the rear are supposed to be used to rap on the ice “to disrupt its adhesive grip on the windshield.” Finally, there’s a wiper notch, a little gap that you’re supposed to run your wiper blades through to clear away ice and frost.
We had high hopes for this device, made by the Snow Joe company that also makes a new style of snow shovel called the Shovelution with a strain-reducing, spring-loaded assist handle.
But in practice, the Ice Dozer suffered from the same problem that the Better Ice Scraper had in reaching the middle of the windshield.
And all of those “ice-shredding,” “hinged blades” didn’t do better at getting a simple layer of frost off the glass than a straight plastic edge.
12V Electric Heated Snow and Ice Scraper
This gadget is basically a souped-up, electrified, 18-inch-long spatula scraper with a heating element, an LED light and a rubber squeegee blade in addition to the typical straight plastic scraping edge. You power it by plugging in a 14-foot power cord in the 12-volt cigarette lighter socket in your car.
The heating element recessed in the triangular scraping end of the tool does get as hot as a curling iron, but the power cord is not very robust. We wondered how durable it will be over multiple uses stretching it around the car.
It was also a nuisance to have to untangle the long cord, plug it in, start up the car, dangle the wire out the window and wait for the device to heat up. We got too impatient to take the time to let it actually melt anything. When it comes to windshield ice and frost, you just want to scrape it off as quick as possible and go.
Electric Ice Scraper
There are several battery-powered, motorized ice scrapers on the market. We tried the one that looked the most extreme, a 2-foot, two-handed power tool that spins a 5-inch-diameter disc at an advertised 1,300 revolutions per minute.
When you press the plastic teeth on the face of the disc to a windshield, it does whisk away the frost pretty quickly.
But weighing more than 3 pounds, including the battery, it’s heavy and a little hard to handle when the device is spinning away. The experience is a bit like using a handheld power sander. The instruction manual suggests wearing eye protection.
It might not be overkill if it saves some muscle strain getting off a really heavy layer of ice.
But it’s expensive. The device is sold without a battery, so you have to buy a separate battery and charger compatible with DeWalt power tools. That set us back another $60. And if you forget to keep the battery charged, you might end up using a credit card.
SubZero 60″ MAXX-Force Snowbroom
Basically, this is a stick-style ice scraper on steroids. The metal handle telescopes so the whole thing is a pole nearly 5 feet long. There’s a robust, foot-wide pivoting brush and squeegee on one end and a 4-inch-wide scraper on the other end.
The extra length is handy for reaching the snow on the middle of the roof or the ice in the middle of the windshield of a big car. The extra length may let you put a bit more leverage on the glass, but otherwise the scraping performance is only average.
One downside: It takes up a lot of room in the car and is awkward to haul in and out.
Magical Car Ice Scraper
This unlikely cone-shaped device that doesn’t look like an ice scraper turned out to be our favorite.
It’s basically just a plastic funnel. You hold the narrow end and rub the 5.5-inch-wide mouth of the funnel over the surface of the glass. Compared with a straight-edged scraper, there’s something about the slightly flexible circular edge of the funnel that makes it conform better to the slight curve in the glass.
And since it scrapes it all directions, you can get the frost off the windshield by moving the device in a circular scrubbing motion. That works faster than a straight-edged tool that only scrapes in one direction.
We haven’t experienced any ice storms so far this winter, so we’re not sure how it handles thicker layers of ice. But there is an odd cap on the narrow end of the funnel with some sharp bumps that are supposed to help scratch off thicker ice.
There are several makers that are selling versions of this type of scraper. We’re surprised that one of them didn’t think to put a more ergonomic handle on the cone.
But it works. It’s portable. It’s cheap. (Our version from Amazon was $9.95 for a pack of two.) And a bonus: You could also use it as a funnel for your windshield-washer fluid.
The low-tech features and old-school aesthetics add to the show’s charms.
