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Best Leaf Blowers for 2024 [CNET]
There are tons of different types and great options available, so it can be tough to choose a leaf blower. But based on your needs, you can opt for gas blowers, cordless blowers, corded electric leaf blowers and even professional quality blowers help with your summer yard maintenance. While it can be overwhelming to shop for one, our top pick is the Greenworks Pro 80-volt cordless leaf blower. That’s because of its energy-efficient design and best-in-class air power. Other factors, such as relative value, noise level and weight are also important to consider while shopping for a new leaf blower. We’ve spent weeks testing and evaluating each leaf blower below in our lab to bring you well-informed recommendations.
If you’ve spent any of your life in the suburban or more rural areas of the US, it’s tough to remember a time when leaf blowers weren’t a thing. Even if your family didn’t own one, it’s likely that your friend, neighbor or the guy down the street probably did. Although larger walk-behind versions were available as early as the 1950s, the more traditional backpack and handheld types didn’t appear until the 1970s, according to the October 1977 issue of Popular Science.
The landscape is changing. All those leaf blowers we remember from years past were gas-powered. Today, some cities and states have outlawed gas-powered leaf blowers outright, and even more areas restrict the days and times you can use any type of leaf blower.
Even today, leaf blowers are one of the quickest and most effective ways of moving leaves and other bits of debris around on your property. They’re much better than the other traditional methods such as raking and sweeping. We’ve tested several of the standard electric models available on the market today, considering things like how much power their airflow actually offers, as well as other common concerns like battery life and how loud each unit gets. Let’s take a look at the best leaf blowers to shop for your home and yard care needs.
As a contributor to restrictions being placed on outdoor tools across the country, excessive noise can be quite a bother. That’s why we run a sound level test for each model, placing it at approximately the distance you might expect to find this type of product operating from your ear. We position it perpendicular to the sound level meter and record the results. You can see those results in the graph above, where it’s clear that Ryobi’s blower is, by far, the quietest of all the units we tested. Everything else sits in a cluster as they race for the loudest leaf blower — a title currently held by the Enhulk Max Pro Series 58V.
This is where our propulsion cannon comes in. Yes, we could have grabbed some leaves and some loose debris and blown it around our test spaces, and said, “Hey, this thing blows leaves,” but we wanted to go one step further and see how the leaf blowers’ output translated to raw power.
To do this, we built an air cannon mostly from 3-inch PVC. Amenities included are an air gate, so we can ramp up each unit and release all the air into the cannon instantly, and a restriction plate, to keep the projectile from entering the core of the apparatus. There’s also a base for balancing and a 5-foot barrel for launching the projectile.
The projectile itself is a round plastic tube (similar to those pneumatic-driven tube containers at bank drive-throughs) containing a sand mixture and, in total, weighs 210 grams.
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Here’s Eric from our lab demonstrating the air cannon in action. Each colored line represents the longest average distance achieved by each model — of all of them, the Greenworks Pro leaf blower shot our weight the farthest. All of those high scores were achieved in the respective blower’s turbo mode, except for the DeWalt leaf blower, which only has a single setting.
Ry Crist/CNETWe load the projectile into the cannon, secure the leaf blower nozzle into the input port, ramp the leaf blower up to full strength in the selected mode, open the air gate and foomp. We measure the distance the projectile travels from its resting location within the cannon to the spot of the initial impact on the floor. We average this distance over multiple attempts. Voila.
We tested each leaf blower at both normal and turbo settings, noting that the DK2 leaf blower and the DeWalt Max Flexvolt 3 each only offer a single setting. The colorful visualization above shows the maximum average distance achieved by each brand and makes it clear that our top pick from Greenworks blew the competition away as far as air power is concerned, nearly shooting our weight as far as the professional-grade DK2 blower, which costs well over $1,500. You can find the full results from both rounds of tests in the graph below.
The test results are interesting here when you start comparing specs. Take the Milwaukee and Craftsman blowers, for instance. The advertised specs for CFM and mph are nearly the same — 120 and 450 for Milwaukee and slightly lower numbers of 110 and 410 for Craftsman. Our test data shows Craftsman outperforming Milwaukee by more than 12 feet in normal mode and outperforming it by more than 10 feet in turbo mode.
Milwaukee M18 Fuel Model 2724-40: This unit was probably the most disappointing one to test. Its specs lined up with a couple of the other smaller units on our list, but the overall performance was drastically different. In our propulsion tests, the Milwaukee was barely able to dribble the projectile out of the launch tube at its normal setting, giving it a score of about 5 feet. Turbo mode kicked that up to 14.5 feet, but that was still dead last in our turbo tests, and less distance than we saw from three of the other leaf blowers in normal mode. Meanwhile, our top power pick from Greenworks was almost five times as powerful as Milwaukee’s blower in normal mode and more than twice as powerful in turbo mode — and it costs $100 less.
Ego 56V Leaf Blower Model LB7654: Ego did come in second overall in our propulsion tests, so give it some credit. That tracks, as we’ve generally seen high-performance scores from Ego across the brand when it comes to power. Still, at the end of the day, Greenworks edged it out in our lab and took the top spot on this list. It’s still a solid choice with a good price, especially if you own other Ego products that can borrow its battery when needed.
DeWalt 60V Model DCBL772X1: This model was the only one on our list that doesn’t offer two separate modes (normal, turbo). That seems a bit odd when you consider that the interior chamber of this thing actually looks like a jet turbine engine. It had a better-than-average performance from its one mode, but the price seemed a bit too high at $300. It was also worth noting that this unit took an extra 3 seconds (give or take) to spool up to full power. Not really a game changer, but good to know if you tend to use short bursts.
Craftsman 20V Model CMCBL730P1: This was previously our budget pick — and even though it’s been replaced by the Litheli model, there are still reasons to choose this one instead. The main reason is the platform. Litheli does have an array of other products, but those are largely within the outdoor space. If you’ve also invested in the Craftsman power tool platform, then it makes sense to stick with it. After all, although the Litheli unit is cheaper (only $20) it outperformed Craftsman by a narrow 5% margin. Still a great pick for lower budgets.
Seyvum 40V Model LB-8193: This 40-volt unit is in the lower-priced tier for leaf blowers, but its overall output was near the bottom of the group. It does have some additional versatility we don’t see in many other units. Typically, you’ll have a single “power mode,” or, just as often a normal and an additional turbo mode. The Seyvum has 3 total power settings in case your blowing needs vary greatly. We did find that the lowest power mode did not register in our “air cannon” tests, so the second and third levels are more comparable to most units’ normal and turbo modes.
Enhulk 58V Max Pro Series Model LBL1493J: The Enhulk positions itself as “most powerful handheld blower”. While I would agree that it is powerful, our tests show it as more of a “fairly powerful handheld blower.” Its performance scores in normal mode are underwhelming, but once you engage turbo it performs about as well as our tested Ego model, but still about 25% below our current best overall pick in Greenworks. Another plus here is the fact that this unit weighs about half of either Ego or Greenworks.
Told you it looked like a jet turbine engine!
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