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MOW & MEADOW

Leaf Blowers

CFM moves the pile. MPH lifts what's stuck. Almost nobody explains which you need.

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Leaf blower clearing autumn leaves from a path

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Blower listings are dominated by peak CFM, which is the least useful number on the page. Peak is turbo, and turbo empties a battery roughly ten times faster than the setting you will actually work at.

The specifications that decide whether you like a cordless blower are the bottom of its variable range, whether the manufacturer publishes honest per-setting runtimes, what it weighs in your hand, and whether anyone will commit to a decibel figure. On all four, the brands separate sharply.

There is also a genuine technical question underneath all of it — CFM moves volume, MPH dislodges what is stuck — and matching those two to your actual debris matters more than either peak number.

In this section

30 pages under Leaf Blowers. Every recommendation is built from published specifications and arithmetic you can redo — we have not tested these units.

The 10:1 ratio nobody puts on the box

The arithmetic — EGO LB7650, published figures, one 5.0Ah pack
56V x 5.0Ah = 280Wh
Turbo: 15 min -> 18.7Wh per minute
Low: 150 min -> 1.9Wh per minute
Ratio: about 10 to 1

So the headline CFM figure describes about a tenth of the time you spend holding the tool. That is why we rank on the published variable range instead: the EGO LB6504 dials from 225 to 470 CFM, and the bottom of that range is what lets you clear a flowerbed without rearranging the mulch.

It is also why brands that publish separate turbo and low runtimes are telling you something real. EGO and Ryobi do. Greenworks publishes one figure for low and nothing else.

CFM or MPH?

CFM is how much air moves; MPH is how fast it travels. Dry leaves on open ground are a volume problem. Wet leaves matted into turf are a speed problem — air speed is what breaks the surface bond holding them down.

Your debrisPrioritizeNote
Dry leaves, open lawnCFM400-500 CFM sustained is plenty
Wet leaves in grassMPHThe published range here runs 145 to 200 MPH
Pine needles in turfMPHAir speed does all the work
Gravel or mulch bedsLow CFMUse the bottom of a variable range or you will redistribute it

Full explanation, including why the two peak figures on a box are usually measured with different nozzles, in CFM vs MPH.

The one category where noise figures exist

Blowers are the tool your neighbors notice, and unlike mowers, several manufacturers publish a decibel rating. Ryobi publishes 57 dB on its Whisper Series at 730 CFM; EGO publishes 64 dB on both its flagship handhelds; Greenworks publishes nothing.

Decibels are logarithmic, so 7 dB is roughly a fivefold difference in sound intensity and reads as about half as loud. Each brand measures under its own conditions, so treat the gap as directional — but a company that built a named noise-engineering program has made a decision a company publishing nothing has not. The full comparison is here.

A blower is transformed by the pack you already own

The arithmetic — Same tool, two packs
Blower kit pack, often 2.5Ah = 140Wh
Mower pack, 7.5Ah = 420Wh
At 1.9Wh/min on low: 74 min vs 221 min
At 18.7Wh/min on turbo: 7.5 min vs 22 min

Three times the runtime from a battery already in your shed. It is the strongest practical argument for buying the bare tool on a platform you are already on, and the reason we treat the platform decision as the one that comes first.

We have not held any of these blowers. Trigger feel, tube length for taller users and how the balance sits after an hour are all real questions a spec sheet is silent on. What we can give you is every published figure converted into comparable form, with the caveats stated where the numbers are not clean.