Drillbrush Power Scrubber: Does TikTok's Favorite Power Cleaner Deliver?

If a product were ever going to work as advertised, it's the Drillbrush Power Scrubber, and perhaps its dozens of competitors. It's a simple and affordable product (ours was $18.99 from Ace Hardware; the same kit is available on Amazon for $18.95) based on a fairly simple proposition: Instead of scrubbing by hand, chuck a brush into a drill and let an electric motor do the work. To distinguish their products from competitors and knock-offs (the Drillbrush website has a Counterfeits section), the company touts the quality of their products; they go so far as to directly compare their brushes with competitors on-camera, even naming the competitors, which is not something you see every day.

And if a company were going to go viral, it would be this one. The family-run manufacturer, Useful Products, is headquartered in a freestanding, house-sized building in New York State that looks as if it might have an after-church catfish special. The company's YouTube spokesmen, John and Jeff, add to all this authenticity with earnestness and humor and, most tellingly, with hints of indignation at the inferiority of competing brushes. In one video, someone (John, we figure) can be heard off-camera reaffirming many positive comments about Drillbrush's durability with apparent pride.

It's the kind of company you want to buy things from. But this isn't at all why the Drillbrush Power Scrubber has become a viral cleaning product. And it's not absolutely clear that it is the viral cleaning product.

There are quite a few drill brushes on TikTok, from simple, bring-your-own-drill products to more elaborate models that might include drills, be attached to poles, feature waterproofed battery compartments, or look like giant toothbrushes. Kits similar to the Power Scrubber we bought can be had for as little as $7 or $8, and you can get more elaborate Drillbrush-brand kits for as much as $55. The company offers brushes in four degrees of stiffness and six colors, coded to help you prevent cross-contamination when cleaning.

Plenty of TikTok reviews apply to products from other companies. Some reviewers focus on more expensive spinning brush cleaners, like the Ryobi scrubbers mentioned by cleanthatup. Others feature cheaper products, like this rather noncommittal review of a set of brushes from Temu. (Temu is a Chinese-owned online marketplace with products ranging from the ridiculous –- drawstring-equipped dog shoes –- to the sublime –- intricately detailed die-cast toys, Japanese-style pull saws. Not to mention these sandals, which appear to have been designed by the free version of someone's AI product.)

Regardless of the drill brush used, the reviewers focus on how much effort can be eliminated. TikTok isn't big on narrative detail, but you can find YouTube reviews like this one from Jackie Schultz (daughter of comedic actor Howie Mandel) that dig a little deeper. In typical YouTube fashion, it takes her five to six minutes to get to her point, which is that the Drillbrush is great for larger, dirtier spaces.

We encountered two sorts of claims for the Drillbrush products, so we tested them in two different ways. First, we tested the ease and effectiveness that the TikTokers are promoting by operating the Drillbrush on a small drill press (both with and without power, under identical pressure) to clean both sides of a piece of metal roofing from a construction site.

The non-spinning brush did a creditable job of cleaning the metal, but the spinning brush was, predictably, faster at achieving the same results. We also learned that cleaning sheet metal with a drill press could be a fairly efficient way to cut your hand off. And, you generally want to move the cleaning brush, not the object being cleaned.

We also looked at what people were cleaning on TikTok. The most common was auto interiors, and in fact the company's founder invented the spinning brush approach when he ran a car-washing business in 2007. So, in keeping with Useful Products' heritage, we cleaned an unusually dirty Weather Tech floormat from an older Honda Accord. With both the floormat and the metal roofing, we used what was almost certainly an apple cider vinegar window cleaner (label your spray bottles, people). The Drillbrush made the floormat cleaner than we believed possible, given that it has been stepped on for an hour or two a day for 18 years.

The other claim we wanted to check out was from the folks at Useful Products themselves. The company differentiates their products (and justifies their prices) with quality claims. In one video they claim to have never been able to "spin out" their brushes' shafts from their plastic bases under normal use, while Jeff from Drillbrush was able to dislodge the stem from a competitor's knock-off one-handed in seconds, with little apparent effort. "Since these drills typically spin at over 1000 RPMs," Jeff said, "the last thing you want is a chunk of plastic being thrown around." He was using a DeWalt impact driver, so we grabbed one as well and went about the business of trying to break the Drillbrush Power Scrubber.

In addition to the 20v impact driver, we also used an 18v drill driver, a 7.5-amp corded Bauer hammer drill, and an electric screwdriver. (Drillbrush recommends against using corded tools, but only because cleaning with water while using a corded electric tool is dangerous. No water was used during our torque torture testing.) We tested by clamping the 4-inch brush in a vise we made for larger objects, then using various power tools to attempt to break it.

We didn't break it, though at first we did have some difficulty keeping the brush clamped tightly enough in the vise. A 20v DeWalt impact driver is a powerful thing. None of the devices damaged the Power Scrubber brush in any visible fashion.

The Drillbrush Power Scrubber brushes work as advertised and achieved a level of clean we didn't expect. Based on Drillbrush's recommendation, we used an impact driver to clean the floormat quickly and thoroughly. Our only misgivings about the Power Scrubber product line arise from that quickness and thoroughness. Using the brushes with a high-torque, high-RPM device like a 20v DeWalt impact driver takes a fair amount of energy, mostly to keep the brush under control. It's probably a little more energy than most buyers are looking to expend. More worrying, though, is that cleaning an uneven surface with such a drill can result in the whole device occasionally shooting off in various directions like a cleanfluencer with a Bed Bath & Beyond gift certificate. It's not hard to imagine damaging the workpiece or some other nearby object, like your wrist, once such a tool breaks free from your control. (This same impact driver has been used to sink ⅜-inch lag screws 4 inches into a concrete slab.) Consider trying a standard drill or even a cordless screwdriver instead. The lower RPMs help manage spatter.

Other than that, the brushes were perfectly behaved. They formed a thick lather with our cleaner, and worked very well. The brushes themselves even cleaned up nicely after use. We simply ran them at high speed to fling away any gunk, then quickly rinsed. It seemed like the perfect, low-effort way to finish up a job with a drill brush.