The 8 Best Leaf Blowers of 2024

We love watching the foliage transform from green to brilliant gold and yellow every fall. But after that peaceful moment when the leaves turn, it’s time to get to work. You can gather the leaves on your lawn with a rake, but that takes awhile and involves a lot of effort. Alternatively, you can make your life a lot easier and invest in a good leaf blower.

These powerful lawn machines can produce wind speeds upwards of 200 mph, giving you the power to herd all those leaves into a pile so you can run them through a mulcher, or pack them up and put them on the curb for pick-up. There are relatively quiet, low-maintenance electric handheld blowers that make it easy to clear debris off paved surfaces and clean up smaller yards with light tree cover.

For larger leaf-clearing efforts, powerful (but higher maintenance) gas-powered handheld and backpack leaf blowers can turn an ankle-high layer of leaves into a giant pile before you know it. After putting the latest and greatest models through a rigorous series of tests year after year to find the best leaf blowers, these are our recommendations.

Since its inception in 1902, Popular Mechanics has offered tips and advice on home improvement, technology and virtually every kind of DIY topic. We’ve also spent decades testing tools and gear, making us a go-to source of advice for the most important equipment you use to get things done, from lawn mowers and snowblowers, to chainsaws and garden hoses.

Our largest, most important testing projects are handled by the Popular Mechanics test team, which designed specialized testing regimens to find the best gear. The test editors are long-time tool users and reviewers, journalists, former bike and auto mechanics, and ever-curious DIYers. Together, they have tested hundreds of tools and yard machines, giving them unparalleled insight into what’s a quality product and what isn’t.

In addition to the test team, this guide has been updated by Tom Price, an Associate reviews editor at Popular Mechanics; and Tony Carrick a freelancer specializing in home improvement equipment.

All of the products were carefully selected by our test team. Most of them went through a rigorous testing process. Those we haven’t tested were vetted through extensive research that involved comparing specifications and poring over customer reviews.

All of the products in this guide were recommended by the Popular Mechanics test team. Most of them, including the Stihl BR800 C-E Magnum and the DeWalt DCBL772X1, were selected based on real-world use-testing and their performance in an extensive battery of performance tests, which were designed to help us better understand and evaluate these machines.

We marked out a 6- by 14-foot trapezoid of pavement to run a sawdust erosion test. We covered the pavement with a thin layer of sawdust and lowered a blower’s tube parallel to the surface for just a second, blasting away the area where the air is most turbulent. The result showed the shape of the leaf blower’s effective area, as well as its length and width.

Next, we marked out a 6- by 12-foot rectangle of grass and timed how long it took to clear the area. To measure the run time for battery leaf blowers on their highest settings, we built custom timers. Then, we strapped each leaf blower into the apparatus and tested the batteries longevity with the machine running nonstop.

Clockwise from top left: pushing a brick, the sawdust erosion test, and measuring battery run time.

We also constructed an instrument using an MGL Avionics Stratomaster Vega air speed indicator (called an anemometer). The anemometer measures a blower’s air speed 6 inches from the tip of the tube. Finally, we took sound-level readings at the operator’s position and from 75 feet away—for the sake of your neighbors.

In addition to the leaf blowers we’ve tested, some of the test team’s recommendations are based on reviewing the leaf blowers’ specifications and features. One of our picks, the CAT DG651, hasn’t been tested in person yet. We picked it based on its estimated blowing power, run time, and price. We also checked customer reviews for all of our picks, tested and untested, for additional insights into long-term wear and performance.

There’s a reason you’ll find the Stihl BR800 C-E Magnum leaf blower in the arsenal of many professional yard maintenance crews. It packs serious power, blowing air at speeds approaching 200 mph. That’s more than enough power to blast a thick carpet of leaves across any yard. In fact, we found that it could slide a 4.5 pound brick across a driveway.

Along with massive power, the BR800 offers lots of user-friendly features, including an ergonomic harness that helps distribute its hefty 26-pound weight, an anti-vibration system, and a handle that puts all the blower controls in the palm of your hand.

Though it features a recoil rope to start, it’s easy to get the blower going thanks to Stihl’s spring-loaded “Easy2Start” mechanism, which reduces the amount of force needed to get it running. Plus, the recoil is positioned such that you can reach and pull the rope with the pack already on your back.

The Stihl BR800 C-E Magnum is made and priced for pros, but it’s a worthy investment if you find yourself swimming in leaves year after year.

With just over 12 minutes of run time, the DeWalt DCBL772X1 isn’t going to help you clear leaves from a large area. That said, its ability to reach air speeds of more than 100 mph over a broad area makes it one of the most powerful electric leaf blowers we’ve seen. It’s also lightweight, so it’s easy to wield, and built to take a beating with a large oversized skid plate on the base.

Because of the limited run time, it’s best suited for small jobs, like blasting pockets of leaves out of tighter corners of your yard, cleaning dirt and sawdust out of a garage, or blowing debris off a deck or a porch. That said, if you’ve already invested in the DeWalt universe of power tools and have a few spare batteries, you may have enough power on hand to move some leaves.

Best Value Electric

Ryobi RY40440 40-Volt Whisper Series Electric Backpack Leaf Blower

Key Specs

Air speed:	127.7 mph
Weight:	17.8 lb
Run time:	47 min, 31 sec
Decibels:	87 dB / 67 dB

Ryobi’s 40-volt backpack leaf blower is a powerful battery-operated machine that falls on the affordable side of the price spectrum. It produced wind speeds of nearly 130 miles per hour during testing, with a symmetrical air flow that efficiently moves leaves and debris. Its 47-minute run time gives you enough juice to clear and collect leaves from across a standard quarter-acre yard.

At 87 decibels, it’s also one of the quieter leaf blowers you can strap to your back (though you should still wear hearing protection when you use it). The harness is amply padded, with straps that allow you to get a comfortable fit on your back, though we took some issue with the length of the blower tube and a difficult to operate cruise control level. Gripes aside, though, this is a great price for a strong backpack leaf blower.

The Husqvarna 125BVx offers tremendous performance for a handheld leaf blower at this price point. It didn’t produce a top-ranking air speed in our tests, but made up for it with overwhelming air volume to clear leaves nearly as fast as pricer handheld gas handheld blowers we tested.

The 125BVx has several user-friendly features. A handle positioned in line with the blower tube reduces the pressure on your wrist from blower recoil as the force of the air pushes back against you. Similar to other Husqvarna gas leaf blowers, it features the brand’s easy-pulling SmartStart starter. Plus, it comes with a kit that allows it to double as a leaf vacuum. Relatively cheap with professional-grade build quality, the 125BVx may offer more bang for your buck than any other leaf blower.

You’d be hard pressed to find a leaf blower with more raw power than the Echo PB-7910T. It earned a place in our 2024 Yard and Garden Awards for producing air speeds approaching 200 mph with a volume of 785 CFM. That’s powerful enough to blast away thick clumps of wet leaves that most blowers couldn’t. And while its price tag is comparable with that pro-grade power, other brands will charge more for less effective machines.

Echo also gets points for pairing power with comfort. An adjustable harness with ample padding and a vented back frame help to make its hefty 26-pound weight manageable on long jobs. There’s also a discharge tube and controls you can adjust to suit your size. It’s a heavy duty blower, so it comes with a heavy duty price tag, but you will get what you pay for.

While the test team usually prefers backpack leaf blowers to handhelds, the Stihl BGA 60 made a strong impression during our 2024 Yard and Garden Awards testing. With a manufacturer-listed max air speed of 154 mph, we found it was powerful enough to rapidly move leaf piles that would normally require a gas-powered blower. We also liked the extendable nozzle, which allowed us to peel matted down wet leaves off payment with relative ease.

The BGA 60 is a joy to operate. It runs at a very quiet 56 decibels, weighs a scant 8 pounds, and doesn’t produce the hand-numbing vibration you get from comparably powerful gas-powered handheld blowers. Its short run time–about 15 minutes–puts a cap on how much ground it can cover, but if trees drop a lot of debris in your relatively compact yard, this is the quickest, most comfortable way to clean it up.

The CAT DG651 weighs just 11.3 pounds, including the battery, making it one of the lighter handheld leaf blowers you can buy. It features an adjustable nozzle, which you can move forward or back to change the diameter of the airstream. Pull it back to go wide and move a broad swath of leaves, or push it forward to concentrate the stream into a narrow blast that can move large piles and heavy debris. That concentrated blast can reach a manufacturer-estimated maximum airspeed of 170 mph, which is faster than the already impressive Stihl BGA 60.

Its 60-volt, 5.0Ah battery and brushless motor also boast a far longer run time than most battery-powered leaf blowers, granting you nearly two hours of run time on a single charge. With its long run time and powerful output, the CAT DG651 is a rare cordless model that can take on large jobs.

If you hate the ear-splitting whine that comes out of most leaf blowers, consider the “whisper”-quiet Ryobi PBLLBO1K. Even at max speed, it only gets up to low hum, which both you and your neighbors will appreciate. It only weighs 5 pounds without the battery, so it’s very easy to handle comfortably for the full length of its one-hour run time.

That said, its limited air speed and volume mean it’s only suitable for light duty jobs. In our Yard and Garden Awards testing, we found it worked well for clearing leaves and dirt from patios, walks, and other paved areas or for chasing leaves out of gardens and landscaping. Anything more than that, though, and we recommend seeking out something more powerful.

Tony Carrick is a full-time freelance writer who specializes in technology, home improvement, DIY, home security, and outdoor recreation. He’s tested and written about everything from home security systems to power tools to gas grills. His product guides, how-to articles, and feature stories can be found in such publications as Bob Vila, Angi, U.S. News and World Report, Field & Stream, Futurism, and Switchful. When Tony isn’t writing, he can be found working on his latest home improvement effort at his home in North Carolina.

Tom Price is an Associate Editor of Reviews for Popular Mechanics, and also contributes to Runner’s World, and Bicycling. He has previously covered product reviews, startup news, and even professional wrestling. In his free time, he enjoys watching pretentious TV, low-brow movies, and exercising for beauty, not health. If you are interested in exploring more of his work, check out his website.

Brad Ford has spent most of his life using tools to fix, build, or make things. Growing up he worked on a farm, where he learned to weld, repair, and paint equipment. From the farm he went to work at a classic car dealer, repairing and servicing Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and Jaguars. Today, when he’s not testing tools or writing for Popular Mechanics, he’s busy keeping up with the projects at his old farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania.

Roy Berendsohn has worked for more than 25 years at Popular Mechanics, where he has written on carpentry, masonry, painting, plumbing, electrical, woodworking, blacksmithing, welding, lawn care, chainsaw use, and outdoor power equipment. When he’s not working on his own house, he volunteers with Sovereign Grace Church doing home repair for families in rural, suburban and urban locations throughout central and southern New Jersey.