Electric snow shovel vs snow blower

These two tools get compared as if one is a cheaper version of the other. They are not. The published clearing widths differ by 75%, the throw distances by more than double, and each one fails badly at the other's job.

The short answer

The three, on published figures

What the width difference costs

Throw distance is the other half

Twenty feet against forty-five is not a detail. On a narrow drive with a lawn on one side, twenty feet puts the snow on the grass. On a wide drive it puts the snow on the half you have not cleared yet, and you move it twice.

The EGO also publishes a 200-degree directional chute, which is what lets you aim that 45 feet. Neither shovel publishes a chute control at all — they throw forward, and your only aiming control is which way you are facing.

What each machine spends per square foot

No maker in our snow registry publishes area per charge any more. The discontinued Greenworks 2600702 did, at two depths, and it was the only snow tool whose energy cost could be computed at all. We have kept that arithmetic below because the shape of it is a property of moving snow rather than of one dead listing — but the shovel you can buy today publishes none of it.

That near-linear relationship is useful beyond this one product: it says a cordless snow tool does not fall off a cliff as depth increases, it just spends proportionally more. What it does not account for is wet snow, which is heavier per inch — see heavy wet snow.

Clearing early changes which tool you need

The single biggest variable here is not the machine, it is when you go out. Both shovels publish a 6 inch single-pass figure; the Greenworks area-per-charge figure drops by 60% between 4 and 10 inches. A driveway cleared twice during a storm is two easy jobs for a shovel; the same driveway cleared once afterwards is a blower job.

• Light, frequent snow: a shovel keeps up, and it is the tool you will actually pick up for a two-inch fall.
• One heavy storm a winter: a shovel will not, and no technique fixes it.
• Ice or compacted snow: neither tool is designed for it. A paddle auger against ice is how you break an auger.
• Gravel drives are their own problem, single-stage machines included — see snow blowers for gravel.

Why many households end up with both

These tools do not overlap as much as the price difference suggests. A 21 inch blower cannot clear a set of steps, a deck, the strip between a car and a garage wall, or a path narrower than it is. A 12 inch shovel cannot clear a two-car driveway after a real storm.

Owning both is not redundancy, it is coverage — and the shovels are light enough (13 lb and 19.1 lb published) that the second tool costs almost nothing in storage. Our snow blower buying guide covers sizing the larger machine, and the winter checklist covers getting both ready before the first fall rather than during it.

Plenty of households end up with a third tool, and it is the cheapest one: a plain hand shovel or pusher for the steps, the car and the plow windrow at the end of the drive, where nothing with a motor is worth fetching. Our manual snow shovel roundup ranks the three whose makers publish real specifications — and explains why almost nobody in that category publishes a weight.

When the shovel is the right tool

• Steps, decks and paths where a 21 inch machine does not fit and cannot be lifted.
• Storage-constrained households. Thirteen pounds hangs on a hook; a single-stage blower needs floor space all year.
• Light, frequent snow — the published rates are for 4 to 6 inches, and clearing early is how a shovel keeps up.
• As a second tool alongside a blower, for the places the blower cannot reach. Our electric snow shovel roundup covers the two in detail.

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When only a blower will do

• Any real driveway. The pass arithmetic above is the whole argument.
• Snow over about six inches, which is where both shovels stop publishing a single-pass figure.
• Anywhere the snow has to go further than twenty feet, or has to be aimed.
• Wet, heavy snow, which has its own page: heavy wet snow.

#ad Check the EGO Power+ 21" Single-Stage Snow Blower SNT2134 price on Amazon — how we're funded.

Whether a single-stage or two-stage blower suits your drive is worked through in single-stage vs two-stage, and battery sizing in the snow blower runtime guide.

Which to buy first

Start with the tool that matches your worst storm, not your average one. A shovel bought for a typical fall is useless in the storm that actually matters, and a blower bought for the storm still gets used on the typical fall.

The exception is a household with no driveway to clear — a path, a deck and a set of steps — where a blower is simply the wrong shape and a 13 lb shovel is the whole answer.

What we cannot tell you

We have not cleared snow with any of these. EGO publishes no weight and no decibel rating for the SNT2134, and expresses coverage in car-spaces rather than square feet. Snow Joe publishes no area per charge. Greenworks' own page gives two different clearing depths — 6 inches in the copy and 4 inches in the spec table — and we have quoted both rather than choosing. No maker publishes a cold-weather derating figure for any battery, which on a snow tool is the specification that would matter most.