EGO SNT2800 28 inch Self-Propelled 2-Stage Snow Blower with Peak Power™, Battery and Charger not Included

After years of battling my gas blower, struggling to get it running every winter, I finally got this battery one. It "blows" circles around my old gas one. At full power, it was throwing the snow much further than my gas one. It is also much easier to handle and very quiet for a snow blower. Even my wife was able to use it.

I bought this a couple months ago when it was a couple hundred less, hoping I could jinx and put off the snows of WNY for awhile. Indeed. It worked. Took until the middle of January to get snow here where we don't measure it in inches, we measure it in feet.Charged up two batteries, an Ego original we use for our lawnmower (which is excellent) and a third-party battery because we're not rolling in money in advance of this latest storm, one to dump enough feet to postpone a Bills home game, ready to see how this snowblower works.In a word: This snow blower is excellent. Some caveats.Coming from a full-sized gas-powered snowblower of the same size, the electric has more torque. Throttle, once pushed down for forward or reverse, is instant. The auger and blower, again, almost immediate. Most gas snowblowers, of which I've owned several in the past, do not have this level of everything is an on-off switch that kill you if you're not paying attention.This said, I do not see this as a negative but rather, a positive. Want to get going? It's going to get going, and do without a futz. I did not miss a gas-powered mower going to an Ego model to tackle over an acre on a single charge, also instantaneous, and I do not miss gas-powered snowblowers.I've heard of people with cold battery issues but, having a two car garage where we keep our equipment and cars, and of course the Ego charger, I've zero issues with cold batteries.Speaking of batteries. Could battery life be better? Probably. Does it affect me? No. I'm able to do a two-car width driveway, a walkway, our sidewalk, and both neighbors' sidewalks, and I still had a single green bar left on each battery, the Ego, and the third party. If I wanted to only do my driveway, walkway, and sidewalk in front of my house I still had two bars on each battery. My lawnmower ran for 10-15 minutes before even giving me a warning it was on low on a single battery bar (there are five, BTW); this was plenty of juice.Granted, this was my first outing. Over time batteries, do degrade but my lawnmower battery I've used for over a year prior to the snowblower to mow a lawn every week for 26(ish) weeks has not shown any sign of losing how long it would last.BTW, I will say the third-party battery is NOT as good as the EGO one, but, again, is the EGO $300+ battery really three times better than a $100 third-party battery? Short answer is no. If you're rolling in money, by all means, buy EGO batteries, if you're not rich, the third-party batteries will do.Another thing I've read is extending the battery while snowplowing by not putting it on "turbo" or whatever the highest throwing setting is and the fastest walking setting. I had my blower set to the second-to-highest setting, and that 50' seems like no joke, depending on the type of snow, of course.HOWEVER, anyone expecting 50' while trying to move slush from ANY snowblower is delusional. Not on turbo, so take what people say in reviews here with a grain of salt. In the light flurries we get in Buffalo it can probably get the snow flying 40' easily, the length of my house, almost into my neighbor's driveway.When we get what is pretty much just Lake Erie's surface water picked up and dropped into our front yard as snow, it'll throw the stuff maybe 7-15 or more which, if you don't know, lake effect snow is far more wet and far heavier, sometimes 2-4X heavier than snow the rest of the world sees.I've probably snowblown hundreds of feet of lake effect snow in my lifetime, and even when I had a high-end John Deere snowblower that had 12 HP and cost five-times the EGO with a claimed 60' throw, in reality, with heavy lake effect, the John Deer could throw, at best, 10'.The short of it, you're simply not going to be throwing heavy, wet snow far regardless of what you buy... period. Don't get caught up in length of throw because there's a reason Eskimos have eight different words for snow, there are different types of snow you can get, each having different density, weight, and qualities and how far ANY snow blower regardless of gas, electric, propane, etc., is going to be able to throw the snow. I'm not sure what are those eight different words for types of snow Eskimo use, just know I've probably seen at least four of them.As far as what you buy it for, we had almost a foot, 18-24 inches at the end of the driveway of packed snow from the plows. Zero problem getting through it. Do be mindful to set the throttle back to a slower speed. It will push into the very heavy wet stuff like a tank but it can only move so much heavy, packed snow at a time, which is exactly the same as any gas snowblower.Which is the point, this is just as good as a gas snowblower without the getting gasoline, storing gasoline, gasoline fumes, all that, which I do not miss in my garage one bit.As far as operation, once you recalibrate for the instant torque and tank-like it will go better hold on.Truth be told I used to own a farm with over 250' of driveways, walkways, etc. The only way this would have worked would have been buying $300+ or more to keep 2-3 extra third-party batteries or $600+ of Ego batteries, even then it'd be close.At some point, the price point of an electric vs. gas would have a break over of pricing, whereas a gas snowblower would be the way until this tech gets better (and it will). Note, my farm had six acres to mow, I used an ACTUAL FarmAll tractor, no battery-powered anything would have helped there, and the tractor had a plow to move snow, which, again, see above, sometimes I was moving lake effect snow which even a full-sized tractor with enough torque to spin the world backward if you could find a big enough stump, would still struggle with lake effect snow vs light snow from a blizzard with my plow on the tractor it was move like dust.It took only around 45 minutes for each battery to recharge in a heated garage. So, in 1.5 hours, I could snowplow the entire driveway, walkway, and sidewalks of both neighbors again. That beats a trip to a gas station with a canister.As much as Buffalo can get slammed with as much as 4-6" in as little as an hour, it's never more than the time it takes to charge the batteries, and this snowblower can handle over a foot of snow.So, if you own a house with an 80' (give or take) two-care driveway, around 80' sidewalk, and around 40' front walkway, this battery-powered Ego will more than meet your needs with two batteries, Ego or otherwise.Great purchase. Highly recommended.

I took delivery of my 24" 2-stage- self propelled blower this morning. Delivered when I asked, right on time. Coincidentally, we had about 1/2" to 1" of lake effect snow, which is dry and powdery. I used the blower as a test and it passed with flying colors. When the auger is set for the highest thrust the blower will easily throw snow more than 40 ft. It made short work of the snow in my driveway.The only caution I recommend is use the lower power/ drive settings until you get used to it. It is powerful enough to pull the operator and the wheels are wide enough to get a very good grip on the surface. The batteries are cold sensitive so store them where the temperature will not likely fall below 15 degrees if you keep them in a non-insulated garage. The batteries will need to warm up before use which is not a big deal.I had a gas powered blower comparable in power and features to this which lasted 8 years until the auger shaft broke making repairs impractical due to the cost. I expect this machine will last equally as long but without the need to change the oil or refill a gas can.It is about 140 lbs without the batteries and highly maneuverable at about 170 lbs with the batteries mounted. Very easy to move around without the batteries but with them it will go where you direct it.I recommend this machine for its' power, maneuverability, and ease of storage.

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.

It is easy to use and the job is well done every time I use it.