Hands On: Meguiar's Quik Interior Detailer Cleaner Wipes

We’ve all been there—you’ve been out on the road for way too long, and you’ve neglected your car’s interior to the point that you’re a little embarrassed. You don’t have the time to run to get your car detailed, but you want to at least tidy things up a bit before you have to pick someone up. Over the years we’ve seen several car cleaning product companies offer up solutions, but how well do they really work? That’s why we’re here. Recently the folks at Meguiar’s—one of the bigger players in the auto detailing space—sent out some of their latest and greatest for us to trial. With an 800-mile road trip on the agenda, pointed towards rural Quebec in December, I knew full well that there was no chance of keeping the car spotless. What better time to give these Quik Interior Detailer Wipes a test run to see how they do at cleaning “interior plastics, vinyl, leather, rubber, metal, and even LCD and navigation screens”, per their marketing materials. For the most part I had high hopes, though I couldn’t help but doubt their efficacy on a touchscreen display.

Jumping right into the thick of it, my timeframe to tidy up the Nissan Kicks SR was relatively brief, making it the perfect testbed. There were minor amounts of grit, grime, and dust in a number of spots, including the door pockets, passenger seat, navigation screen, as well as a handful of other nooks and crannies. Popping open the container and removing the plastic seal I was immediately hit with that all-too-familiar synthetic “new car smell”. Personally I found it to be a bit of a punch in the face at first, however it either subsided relatively quickly, or I simply became numb to it as it permeated throughout the interior cabin (it turned out to be the former, as stepping away from the car for a few minutes and hopping back in after shooting photos proved the smell had toned down a fair bit).

For a first pass I tackled the hard-surfaced door trim panels, which cleaned up basically with a single wipe. The muddy tracks left behind when stepping in and out of the car were gone, and though wipe number one was slightly tarnished with gritty sand, it was still usable to finish the door panels. Starting with a fresh cloth on the leather seats, there was still little in the way of elbow grease required to remove the dirt that had built up. The wet disposable cloth immediately brought a very bright shine to the seat, but within roughly two minutes the cleaning product had evaporated, leaving it in as-new condition.

Moving on to the last and more questionable cleaning task, the infotainment screen of the Nissan Kicks SR had taken on a nice little layer of dust. Generally speaking the idea of multi-purpose wipes taking on a screen of any kind sounds less than ideal, so I was curious to see how these Quik Interior wipes would fare. As you can see below, the results are good, but still not perfect. After an initial wipe (much like with the seats) a reasonable amount of residues was left behind to evaporate, but unlike the seats, the finished product wasn’t entirely perfect. The screen itself appeared to be pretty much streak-free—a definite win—but residual marks were left behind on the console’s buttons. Sure, this isn’t a massive failure by any account, and the “after” looks miles improved over the “before”, but it’s still not perfect. With a finer touch to avoid wiping the button surfaces, or possibly by taking smooth and even strokes across the buttons with the cleaning wipes you’ll likely achieve a more consistent and clean look. Considering most general purpose cleaning wipes are not meant for touchscreen surfaces in the first place, getting your infotainment screen to this level of clean is really more of a bonus than anything.