Best Snow Blowers of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

These powerful three-stage snow blowers can tackle the heaviest snow in drifts as deep as 18 inches.

Two-stage snow blowers are just right for heavy snowfall up to 16 inches deep.

Many snow blowers are 28 or 30 inches wide. If you want to save space in the garage or get a more maneuverable machine, consider these compact snow blowers, which are 24 inches across. They may require an extra pass or two along your driveway, but they muscle through piles of snow as capably as their wider rivals.

These single-stage snow blowers aren’t as powerful as the machines listed above. But they do a stellar job moving up to about 9 inches of snow.

Top-scoring battery-powered snow blowers can work nimbly in a range of conditions, though they won’t clear snow as fast as the best gas-powered machines. The models listed here are two-stage machines. They will easily clear up to 9 inches of snow, but you’ll need some patience to clear deeper snow. (We also rate single-stage battery-powered snow blowers.)

These battery-powered handheld shovels are capable of clearing dustings of up to 6 inches.

Snow blower performance varies from machine to machine. The exceptions are three-stage models, which perform uniformly well across brands and individual models, and corded electrics, which perform uniformly badly in our tests. In fact, we think no corded electric snow blowers are worth buying because they’re so underpowered.

But you’ll see more variation across brands and models when it comes to single-stage gas and single-stage battery-powered snow blowers.

Case in point: the Power Smart PSS1210M. This single-stage gas model is slow to clear snow and struggles to get through heavier piles, earning poor marks on both measures. You’re better off spending a few hundred dollars more on the top-rated single-stage gas tool from Toro, which earns an Overall Score more than 40 points higher.

Then there’s the single-stage battery-powered Greenworks 2600402. It bombs on several of our most crucial tests, proving to be insufferably slow during use. It’s also incapable of working through even 6-inch-deep simulated snow or throwing it an acceptable distance. It earns an Overall Score of just 28 but isn’t much cheaper than recommended models that score more than 40 points higher.

No two snowflakes are alike, and that presents a challenge for our lab technicians. “We need to run our tests with something we can standardize, for consistency,” says Dave Trezza, who oversees CR’s snow blower evaluations. So he and his team use a certain sawdust saturated with water in place of snow. It’s a combination that can simulate a standard snowfall or be molded into a mound, much like the ones municipal plowing trucks leave at the end of your driveway.

The experts at Consumer Reports look for snow blowers that do the job quickly and efficiently—and that will prove reliable season after season. Here’s what our top picks have in common.

They’re capable. All of the models selected here can work through 6- to 18-inch-deep snow, depending on the model’s number of stages.

They throw snow far. The best snow blowers hurl snow a suitable distance so that you won’t have to make extra passes to clear a path or driveway.

They’re quick. The gas models here work through snow quickly.

They can handle a plow pile. All of the best models can tackle a large mound of snow that a snowplow might leave at the end of your driveway.

They’re reliable. Top models are worth the investment only if you can count on them season after season.

Whether you’ve yet to receive your first inch of snowfall or you’re on your third blizzard, it’s never too late or too early to consider a snow blower. In general, you can often find snow blower sales during seasons with low snowfall, and some manufacturers and retailers look to clear inventory before spring. Keep in mind, too, that a snow blower isn’t a single-season tool. Many last a decade or longer with proper maintenance, meaning you’re not just buying it for this winter but for the next 10 or more.