13 Best Battery-Powered Snow Blowers of 2026, Tested by Our Experts
The best cordless electric snowblowers from brands like Ego, Ryobi, and Toro rival gas-powered machines. Bonus: You’ll find them easier to maintain, too.
When you shop through retailer links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. 100% of the fees we collect are used to support our nonprofit mission. Learn more.
At Consumer Reports, we’ve been testing battery-powered snow blowers for more than a decade. By creating our own heavy snowlike mixture made of water-saturated sawdust, we’re able to test the performance of battery snow blowers well before winter—and find the best ones to help you through the coldest, snowiest months of the year.
But should you choose a battery snow blower instead of a gas snow blower? “Battery snow blowers are really nipping at the heels of comparably sized gas models in terms of performance, and they offer advantages that gas snow blowers can’t match,” says Dave Trezza, who oversees CR’s snow blower tests.
- Best Battery Snow Blowers: Two-Stage Single-Stage
- Best Battery Snow Shovels
- How Long Does a Battery Snow Blower Last?
- How CR Tests Battery Snow Blowers
Best Two-Stage Battery Snow Blowers
Two-stage battery-powered snow blowers are relatively new. They have better snow-removal speeds and throwing distances than single-stage blowers and rival the snow-removal power of similar gas-operated models, handling up to 9 inches of snow. There’s not enough survey data on any of the two-stage cordless snow blowers recommended by CR to judge their predicted reliability and owner satisfaction.
Best Single-Stage Battery Snow Blowers
Single-stage battery snow blowers are meant to handle up to only 6 inches of snow, and they’re substantially cheaper than two-stage models. Depending on where you live, a single-stage machine may be just what you need.
Best Battery Snow Shovels
Battery snow shovels, or power snow shovels, are best for surface cleaning, not removal of substantial amounts of snow. They’re the most budget-friendly snow removal device you can buy (outside of a pure shovel) and offer more flexibility to clear hard-to-reach surfaces. CR doesn’t record reliability data for battery snow shovels.
Do Battery Snow Blowers Die Faster in Cold Temperatures?
It’s important to note that extreme temperatures generally affect battery performance. So it is common to see battery run times reduce in the cold, which is a weakness for battery snow blowers, says Trezza.
Our own tests of batteries in extreme cold have found reduced run times ranging from 5 to 20 percent. Our snow blower ratings include the manufacturer’s claimed run time, which gives the maximum battery life as the machine is working to clear snow.
For instance, the top two-stage model in our ratings, the Ego SNT2807, has a maximum run time of 45 minutes, according to Ego, and it would take just over 3 hours to charge the battery. For comparison, another model, the Kobalt (Lowe’s) KDSB 5280-06, has a run time of an hour, according to the manufacturer, and the battery would recharge in under an hour and a half.
If you already have a suite of battery tools and intend to get a snow blower that can share batteries with them, then you can have multiple charged batteries ready to go, extending your run time.
How CR Tests Battery Snow Blowers
As much as we try to do here at CR, we can’t control the weather, and we can’t easily lug all these snow blowers across the continental U.S. to test them in locations that have snow early in the fall. In order to test snow blowers year-round, we created the next best thing: a custom sawdust-based mixture that matches the consistency of heavy, wet snow.
We use this fake snow to test battery-powered snow blowers and snow shovels the same way we test gas snow blowers. This includes manipulating it to reflect a standard snowfall or molding it into a mound to simulate a thick pile like the ones the town plows leave at the foot of a driveway.
In each test, we time how fast a model cuts through the dense mixture. We also note how far the sawdust is thrown and how clean the surface is.
Pushing Snow Blowers to the Limit
Check out what our engineers do to ensure each machine can handle the worst winter has to offer.
We also measure each machine’s noise at the operator’s ear, assess how easy each model is to handle, and judge how user-friendly and intuitive the controls are.
The Overall Score for each model combines results from these performance tests with brand reliability and owner satisfaction ratings from our survey of thousands of CR members. (Note: For specific snow blower subtypes, there is insufficient survey data to provide brand-level reliability and satisfaction scores.)
For battery snow blowers, brand reliability reflects estimated problem rates by the fifth year of ownership. Owner satisfaction reflects the proportion of CR members who are highly likely to recommend their machine to a friend or family member.
BEST TIME TO BUY:
