Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In my quest to eliminate another gas-powered device from my home, I picked up one of these eGo 2-stage snow blowers after my positive experience going from a gas lawn mower to an eGo lawn mower several years back. I have a large, tracked Honda snowblower that has been working fine for several years that I'm comparing the eGo to. The eGo is small (does't clear as much in each pass) and much, much lighter than my Honda. The light weight is generally a good thing, as it makes the unit very easy to move around. Sometimes I don't even engage the drive wheels and just push it myself. The lack of weight does sometimes mean it takes a bit more effort to push it down into the snow if the snow is crusty enough and the snowblower wants to ride up on top of it, but not overwhelming. The smaller width of the eGo doesn't seem all that bad, as I've found that the unit has the power to throw a full width worth of snow, unlike previous snowblowers I have where I had to offset my runs enough not to overload the intake. Maneuverability is fantastic. No levers to pull when you want to turn, or no funky clutches trying to figure out when you want to turn. You just turn. As another review noted, there is little resistance to forward motion, which could be seen as a bad thing when going down hill. However, after trying it, I don't find it any worse that a big, heavy snowblower that does hold itself back, as in the end both want to pull you down the hill about the same. The controls are fine, though could be improved. The chute direction (left/right) is very loose, which at first seems great as it's easy to move, but it also means that it doesn't stay put. I called eGo about it, and it sounds like it's a known issue they are working on a fix for. The chute height control is a bit too coarse for my liking, as it always seems like it's shooting a bit too high or a bit too low from where I want it. I would really like to see this integrated into the stick for the left/right control, as it is with my Honda (and other) snowblowers. It's also nice to have control over the auger speed, which I've never see on another snowblower, but it just means it's a third thing to control with your right hand. With several inches of wet snow/slush, the eGo performed great. My Honda has never really been great with wet snow, and the eGo did notably better. The throwing distance isn't the best in the world, but does seem to stand up to the claims eGo makes about it. The torque of the electric motor driving the augers really comes through. Battery life was acceptable, given how heavy the snow was, but was certainly not up to the claims eGo makes (without really defining the conditions they achieved those results with). I expect when the snow gets colder and fluffier, the battery life will improve quite a bit. UPDATE after snow storm that delivered powder instead of slush - With the latest snowstorm, I ended up doing two passes with the eGo. The first was with about a foot of snow, and the second pass was a few hours later with only a few inches. For the second pass with only a few inches, the eGo did fantastic. It cleared the snow quickly, and the battery drain seemed very acceptable. I often found myself not even using the drive wheels, and it was still easier to use than the traditional gas snow blowers I've used with their drive wheels engaged. The unit was very quiet too, at one point I thought the thing had died because I couldn't hear the auger going with my headphones on, but it was going just fine. For the first pass with the foot of snow, things were a bit more mixed. The eGo was certainly powerful enough to clear the deep snow. However, it did burn through batteries, and even though I have 3 pairs of 7.5Ah batteries, and two rapid chargers, I wasn't able to keep going. I do have a long driveway (several hundred feet), but I wish the batteries were able to recharge within the time it took me to use up a pair. I've found that adjusting the auger speed didn't really change much in terms of how much or how far the snow was thrown, but higher settings really used up the batteries, so I learned to just leave it at the lowest setting. The minimum drive speed is also too high, and in deep snow this ends up forcing you to do a pretty small pass or doing a double pass. Several times I just stopped using the drive wheels and pushed it myself, but that was a bit challenging in the deep snow. Perhaps a slower minimum speed would also help with battery usage. The top speed of the drive wheels isn't all that much faster than the slowest speed, so a wider range on drive speeds would be a big improvement. I would really love to see a display of some kind on the unit that told you how much power you were using at the time, to help gauge when you're trying to attack too much or too little snow in a single pass (to a lesser extend this could also be useful on the eGo lawn mowers as well). In the end I'm not quite sure how I feel about this as a replacement for a gas snowblower in deep snow. With another set of rapid chargers I believe I could keep going for as long as the snow kept falling, but that's really getting pretty expensive between all the batteries and chargers.