Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This winter has been a great test of this new snow blower, and it's been interesting. My Driveway: Approximately 1500 feet long. (Yes, I'm a bit crazy for wanting to use an electric snow blower on a quarter-mile long driveway, but hey ... I also mow 5 acres of grass using an electric riding mower. :) ) Location: Ohio, not in the snow belt. A typical largish snowfall might be 6 inches, so really we don't get all that much, but it tends to be heavy wet snow. It can drift pretty badly if the wind blows strongly out of the North. What I've done in the past: I've lived here 10 years, and have always had a gas snow blower. Big, noisy, obnoxious, irritating to maintain, but powerful as all get out. How I use it: Surely you're wondering about this. I have three sets of batteries and two chargers so that I can rotate through them. This winter: We've had 3 snow falls significant enough to need to use the blower - more than usual. It's performed remarkably well. In particular I was surprised how well it did with the 2nd one, which had 2 foot drifts, and 300-400 feet of driveway covered in 8-10 inches of drifted snow. Good: - It works! Generally speaking, it will blow the snow just fine. Even deep snow. - Generally easy to operate and of course very easy to maintain. - Appears to be reasonably well built. - Can handle really deep snow too, but not quickly. - Unlike my gas blowers, no shear bolts broke! (Wow. It's not unusual to encounter sticks and small rocks on my driveway.) - Three forward speeds plus reverse. It'll also let you know when you're in the wrong speed. (In speed 3, if it starts to get bogged down, it'll actually pause briefly ... Go down to 1, and it'll behave.) Speed 2 is the least useful. - Electric motor to rotate the chute. (This is also listed under bad though.) - Headlights are nice and bright, adjustable, and useful. - Tires are nice and grippy, and the balance of the blower is good. Neutral: - The super heavy stuff left by the plow at the end of the driveway gets blown all of 2-3 feet. My old gas blower (a 14HP monster) didn't do much better though. Bad: - They added an electric motor to rotate the chute, which is nice. The switch for that has a plastic cover over it (for obvious reasons) but the plastic gets hard when it's cold out (erm - it's a SNOW blower) making the button really hard to press. So hard that I'm probably going to end up cutting that cover off and just try to be careful to not get too much snow on it. - The battery charger is super slow. - The battery charger's "battery too hot" detection circuit works very strangely. (What I mean: Put a set of used, hot, batteries in. The light flashes indicating they're too hot to be charged. So far so good. Just leave them there - they'll cool off. Come back later, and the LEFT battery is charging. The RIGHT battery is still flashing too hot. Pull the right battery off, put it back on, and it'll now charge - it really wasn't too hot anymore. Both chargers work this way, with all three sets of batteries, and it doesn't matter how long you wait. The batteries for this blower aren't bad, but the charger needs some work.) - XPort speed is only very slightly faster than speed 3. (I'm actually not convinced it's any faster. It's faster to just turn it off and push it with the auger lifted up. But then, I'm potentially moving it a quarter mile, so others with shorter driveways might find the speed just fine.) - Shipping box/packing: The box wasn't beat up at all, but one of the feet that adjusts the height of the auger was bent. I just ordered a new set - not a big deal. There was literally no protection though. If the box had been beaten up more, there could have been a lot more damage. Notes: Batteries: I didn't list battery life as either good/bad above. Battery life is what it is based on current battery technology, and the quality of these batteries appears to be pretty good. How long the batteries last will vary drastically depending on how bogged down the blower is. (If it has to work harder, it will consume energy faster!) For me, they've lasted anywhere from 20 minutes (for the heavy two foot drifts where the blower was being operated at it's limit the full time it was in use, and the batteries came out hot) to about an hour and fifteen minutes for a lighter 4" snow fall that wasn't drifted (and the batteries came out cool). It's easier to tell that the batteries are getting near the end of their life just by how much force the blower has, than using the lights on the control panel. How to handle drifts: Go slow. Turn off the forward speed entirely and just push it by hand. Push it in far enough that it starts to bog down, pause while it blows out the snow, then push it in a little more, and so on. The snow above the auger housing will just go over the housing and fall down behind it. Periodically pull the blower backwards, then push it forward to blow that snow. It can be slow going for really big drifts, but that's true with any blower. If you get a lot of heavy tall drifts your best bet is a plow. Verdict: It's not perfect, but then no blower I've had is. I do prefer it (by far) to my old gas blower though. It's a lot easier to maneuver and handle, no gas to spill or run out of, no oil to change, much quieter (but not silent of course). If you're interested, give it a shot! Electric's time has come.