Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I live in NH, we've had 2 major snowstorms. One with 6 inches of heavy and wet slushy snow and one with 12" of lighter snow. I rated this 4 stars for convenience, performance, and that I no longer have to worry about hard starting or a smelly garage. This machine requires 7.5Ah batteries, not the 5Ah batteries that Amazon suggests. Also - you can purchase this snowblower with batteries and dual charger for $400 less from Ace Hardware. I initially made the mistake of purchasing everything separately from Amazon using its suggestion buttons to buy the batteries and charger, I sent them all back when I discovered Amazon suggested the wrong batteries and wrong charger. Purchasing from Ace was significantly less money and for 20.00 I had it professionally assembled. That being said, this snowblower is still $500-600 more expensive than a comparable gas model. You really need to want electric to love this machine. This EGO machine replaces my 8hp Toro that is over 25 years old. Besides the price, my only complaint is that the E-Go folks should back off their claim of clearing an 18 car driveway. That might be true under ideal conditions, but it's not realistic. The reality is clearing a driveway also includes clearing the mailbox, walk way, and often times very dense snow at the end of the driveway left behind by plow trucks. In both storms the E-Go ran for close to 45 minutes before requiring a recharge. It was almost enough to clear my ~10 car driveway + 12 foot front walk + mailbox. I got about 90% done before having to bring it back in the garage for a recharge. The good news, this is really the only negative. The rest is good news. The E-go throws dry and WET snow effortlessly. It throws wet snow better than my Toro, and throws it farther. It is very easy to maneuver, much easier than my Toro. You can adjust forward speed and you can set the speed for the impeller, not possible with my gas model. My first thought about the impeller speed knob was that it was not going to be useful because I figured to always set it to max, but in the most recent storm we had high winds with blowing snow, slowing down the impeller allowed me to get the snow off the driveway without it spraying back onto the driveway. So it turned out to be a nifty feature. The machine is a mix of metal and plastic. The main intake, auger, and gearbox are all metal, the controls are plastic. Using the machine takes a little getting used to, not everyone will like it. Every time you release the controls, the machine turns off, you need to press the start button to restart The auger. So with regards to snow throwing performance, the machine performs very well even compared to the Toro, it only falls short on run time duration. When the batteries die, it takes 90minutes to recharge both batteries. This machine does have one major advantage over my gas model, no gas or oil smell. This is especially important to us as our master bedroom is situated over the garage. That smell never enters the house anymore, and because of that I think this machine is worth the money and the extra effort to recharge the batteries to complete the job. So for now, it's good, needs more duration to get the job done, but overall happy with the purchase. Year 2 Update: After using this for 2 winters I can set more expectations: 8 inches of snow, 3.5 cars. That’s all you will get from 1 charging. Turns out that another issue is the batteries get hot and automatically turn off. It takes about 5-10 min for them to cool down (based on placing them on the charger and timing from the time they switch from red warning light to green charging light). I would no longer recommend this blower for New England or anywhere you expect regular snow storms of 6 inches or more unless you have a smaller driveway. Therefore I’ve lowered the score from 4 to 3 stars. To make this better EGo would need to provide another set of batteries. Also, there's no way this does 18 cars (EGO claim) which is the most disappointing - misleading or completely false product claims.