Leaf blowers and I go way back.
Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, the neighborhood kids and I dueled with handheld Craftsman air cannons, launching pine cones off one another’s heads and blowing geysers of muddy water up from the creek out back.
When I became a pro landscaper, I strapped on a gas backpack Echo blower to roll waves of leaves across vast asphalt parking lots. As an editor at Popular Mechanics circa 2009, I tested gas blowers at a farm in New York’s Hudson Valley, recommending the most powerful tools for moving a heap of leaves across a field.
All of that is to say, if you’ve ever woken up to the ear-splitting sound of a leaf blower revving up outside your window, there’s a chance it was my fault. Forgive me; I’ve inhaled fumes, damaged ears, and emitted emissions.
I’ve also been on the obnoxious receiving end of plenty of leaf-blower action — the neighborly noise of yard work shattering the silence of suburban weekends and gusts stirring up dust clouds and creating a haze over my kids at playgrounds.
Maybe because of all that experience, I’ve been eager as a longtime editor of Wirecutter’s leaf blower guide to steer people toward options that are less offensive but still effective. Senior staff writer Doug Mahoney and I have been on this hunt well before California’s 2021 gas leaf blower ban, the upcoming ban in Montgomery County, Maryland, and similar legislation in other places across the US.
It was becoming obvious, even 15 years ago, when I was at Pop Mech, that you didn’t need a gas engine to make the tool work. And it was clear from my days as a landscaper that the best way to actually use the tool was to fire it in short bursts — not in the steady droning gale you hear from folks spewing air into nowhere, earning leaf blowers their bad reputation.
I now have a sensible, mostly polite Ego LB6504 leaf blower. It’s the most powerful cordless leaf blower Wirecutter recommends, and we’ve recommended a version of Ego’s tool since 2016.
Best for…
This Ego blower’s nearly 30-minute run time is one of the longest among the cordless blowers we’ve tested. It has easy-to-use controls, a lot of power, and a precise airstream.
Today, to clear the paved patio, driveway, sidewalk, and street in front of my home in Los Angeles — where you can still see plenty of gas leaf blower use despite the ban — I use the cordless Ego LB6504 Power+ 650 CFM Blower. Its 2.5-amp-hour battery runs, realistically, for about 20 to 30 minutes (Ego claims a run time of 15 to 90 minutes), which amounts to a nice short burst that forces me to work efficiently.
Measuring noise with Decibel X on an iPhone 14 Pro held at chest level with the blower at arm’s length, I found that the Ego LB6504 produces 70 decibels on its low setting and 80 dB on high. For context, that’s comparable in volume and frequency to a Dyson hair dryer’s pleasant-sounding 70 dB, louder than a less-harmonious Nespresso machine’s cleaning cycle at 65 dB, and quieter than my barking dog, Hank, who spiked the Nespresso reading with discordant 85 dB yips from 15 feet away.
I’m often blowing leaves within a walled patio. When I put my kid “to work” with it and stood in the street outside, I could hardly hear the leaf blower at all.
Originally published on Source.
