Best electric snow shovel

The electric snow shovel is the one winter tool most people should own and few people consider. It is not a small snow blower: it is a replacement for the manual shovel on the fifteen feet between your door and your car, and the two machines here publish enough to size it honestly.

The short answer

Energy per square foot, at two depths

Greenworks publishes something no other winter tool in our registry does: how much ground one charge clears, stated separately for 4 inches and 10 inches of snow. Put that against the pack's watt-hours and the whole category becomes sizeable.

Now do the Snow Joe, which publishes no area at all but does publish a motor rating.

The two, on published figures

1. Greenworks 40V 12 in — the computable one

Area cleared per charge at two depths, a clearing rate in pounds per minute at those same depths, an impeller speed of 1,800 RPM and a published 76.7 dB. That is more disclosure than any cordless snow blower in our registry manages, on a tool that costs a fraction as much.

It also carries a three-year tool warranty against Snow Joe's two, and its 160Wh pack holds two-thirds more energy than the Snow Joe's 96Wh — which is precisely why it can publish an area figure worth quoting.

The honest cons: 18.3 lb with the battery is five pounds heavier than the alternative, the clearing width is an inch narrower, this model has no LED lighting, and the same page states both a 6 in maximum depth and a 4 in figure in the specification table.

#ad Check the Greenworks 40V 12" Cordless Snow Shovel (2600702) price on Amazon — how we're funded.

2. Snow Joe 24V-SS13 — the light one

Thirteen pounds, a 13 inch clearing width, a 6 inch cut depth, a 2-blade paddle auger and up to 300 lb of snow per minute at 20 feet of throw. On steps and a deck, five pounds of difference is the whole argument, because this is a tool you carry as much as push.

Publishing a clearing rate in pounds per minute is genuinely unusual and useful: it is the only figure in the category that describes work rather than dimensions.

The limits are energy and warranty. Ninety-six watt-hours is a small tank — about 14 minutes at the motor's full 400W rating — and Snow Joe publishes no runtime, no area per charge and no decibel figure. The warranty is two years.

#ad Check the Snow Joe 24V-SS13 IONMAX 13" Cordless Snow Shovel price on Amazon — how we're funded.

Sizing one to your actual paths

Measure the paving you clear, not the property. A path 3 ft wide and 40 ft long is 120 sq ft; a 10 x 20 ft parking apron is 200. Against the Greenworks figures, 320 sq ft of that at 4 inches of snow is well inside one charge, and the same ground at 10 inches is most of one. Anything approaching a full driveway belongs to a snow blower, and our snow blower buying guide sets out where the line falls.

Who should skip both

• Anyone with a driveway to clear. Twelve inches of bite and a 6 inch depth ceiling are hard limits, whatever the snow does.
• Gravel surfaces. A paddle auger contacting loose stone throws it at 20 ft, exactly as a single-stage snow blower would.
• Anyone who wants one battery for everything. A 24V Snow Joe pack and a 40V Greenworks pack each run their own ecosystems — see which platform for winter.

What we cannot tell you

We have not cleared snow with either tool. Snow Joe publishes no runtime, no area per charge, no charge time and no noise figure; Greenworks publishes no runtime in minutes and contradicts itself on clearing depth within one page. Neither publishes a cold-weather derating for the pack, which is the figure that would tell you what these numbers mean at 10F rather than at room temperature.