Sun Joe 24V Cordless Power Cleaner Review

Most reviews of this thing start by comparing it to a pressure washer and then express surprise that it loses. That is the wrong frame. The Sun Joe 24V Cordless Power Cleaner is not competing with a corded washer any more than a headtorch is competing with a floodlight. It exists for the situation where the floodlight has nowhere to plug in.

Judged on that basis it is a genuinely useful, genuinely limited tool, and the useful part is worth being specific about.

What it is

A pistol-grip unit on Sun Joe's 24V battery platform with a suction hose instead of a faucet fitting. You drop the intake into a bucket, a jug, a rain barrel or a stream, pull the trigger, and get a directed pressurized stream out of the front. It weighs very little and packs into a bag.

Sun Joe does not state a clear maximum pressure on the listing we read. Our spec table below therefore shows both pressure and flow rate as “Not published”, which is a finding rather than an omission — a machine whose maker will not commit to a PSI number is telling you something about where it sits in the range.

What it will actually clean

Honestly: loose dirt, and only loose dirt.

• Mud off boots, bikes, dogs and gear. Its best job by a distance. Wet, loose contamination that just needs moving.
• Wheel arches and undersides after a gravel track. Good, because none of that is paint you have to be careful with.
• Rinsing shampoo off a car. Workable, if slow. You are moving less water than a hose, so a full-car rinse takes patience and more than one bucket.
• Road film, bug splatter, bonded traffic grime. No. That needs chemistry or contact, and a low-pressure rinser supplies neither.

Why it will not run a foam cannon

This is the disappointment people actually hit, so it is worth explaining the mechanism rather than just asserting it.

A foam cannon works on the Venturi effect: water forced through a small brass orifice accelerates, the pressure at that constriction drops, and the drop is what sucks soap up out of the bottle. No pressure through the orifice, no suction, no soap in the stream. That is why a cannon needs roughly 1,200 PSI and 1.2 GPM as a practical floor, and why no cordless rinser in this class will drive one.

If you want foam without a pressure washer, the tool for that is a garden-hose foam gun, which is designed around low pressure from the start. It does not make cannon-thick foam, but it makes real foam, which this does not.

Where it beats everything else

There is one scenario where this is the right answer and nothing else is: you need pressurized water somewhere there is no faucet and no outlet. A campsite. A trailhead. The far corner of a yard. A horsebox. A boat.

It is also, quietly, a genuine option for apartment dwellers. If your car lives in a shared parking lot with no water at all, a couple of buckets carried down plus this will get you a rinse-and-dry that is meaningfully safer than dry-wiping the car with a detailer spray. It is not a replacement for a proper wash — nothing is — but it moves grit off before you touch anything, and that is the entire principle behind the safe-wash method.

Who should skip it

Skip it if you have a faucet and an outdoor outlet. In that situation a corded washer under $200 is more capable in every dimension for similar or less money, and it will run a cannon.

Skip it if you are hoping it replaces a hose for general garden or driveway use. It does not have the runtime or the water volume, and you will be refilling buckets constantly.

Skip it if you already own the Worx Nitro Hydroshot or similar. There is no reason to own two low-pressure bucket-fed rinsers, and the Nitro's published 710 PSI is a step up on paper that this has not matched with a figure of its own.

The verdict

Buy it for the situation, not for the car. As the answer to “I need to rinse something and there is no faucet here”, it is light, cheap and genuinely handy, and it slots neatly into the Sun Joe battery platform if you already own one.

As a first pressure washer for washing a car, it is the wrong purchase and we would not recommend it. That is not a criticism of the tool — it is a portable rinser and Sun Joe describes it as one. It is a criticism of the buying decision people keep making with it.