Kobalt 80V & Stihl Backpack Leaf Blower Review

Those Plant Ladies

The leaves are coming down and it’s making a little bit of a mess in our yards. There’s plenty of reasons to handle them in your yards and plenty of ways to handle them in your yard. We’ve covered all that here, just for you:

Taking Control of Your Fall Leaves: Why it Matters

Taking Control of Your Fall Leaves: What to Do with Them

But, you know, the leaves end up coming down in a lot of other places too. They fall on the sidewalks, by the front door, on the porch, they blow into the garage, and they eventually end up in the house, making a mess inside. They can even end up in the gutters. And yeah, you can sweep your porch or garage with a broom or you can whip out your handy-dandy leaf blower and get those areas cleaned off in no time!

Fawn of Those Plant Ladies with a Stihl backpack blower; part of the leaf blower review on the Those Plant Ladies blog.

When choosing a leaf blower for yourself, there are a lot of choices out there. It can be really overwhelming but there really are some different strengths and weaknesses to each type. We want to help you make the best choice for your needs. In case you’re in the market for a new leaf blower now or in the future, we wanted you to have all the deets on some of our personal favorites and why we love them.

Kobalt 80V Battery-Powered Handheld Blower

First up is the Kobalt 80v Battery-Powered handheld blower. (This isn’t an affiliate link, just want to share exactly what we have in our own arsenals!) Our team member, Alexa, owns this leaf blower and she has a small lot with moderate leaf fall but doesn’t spend much time worrying about the few leaves on the lawn. The biggest pain for her is dealing with the leaves on her front porch that get tracked into the house or keeping leaves off of her new baby plants she’s always planting. She also loves having a leaf blower for cleaning up the yard after her gardening projects, where she’s spilled potting soil on the pavement or some other little mess.

The Kobalt 80v leaf blower; part of the leaf blower review on the Those Plant Ladies blog. — Source: Lowes.com

Here’s what’s great about the battery-powered, handheld blower. It’s quick and easy to use. Simply pop the battery in and pull the trigger! No pouring gas and no pull cords to start it. It has plenty of power for everything that Alexa needs it for and weighs under 10lbs. It’s quieter than a gas-powered blower and will run, on a high setting, for about 30-40 minutes. This blower is great for someone with smaller areas to blow off and someone who isn’t dealing with huge amounts of leaves or anything that’s too heavy like wet leaves or heavy soils. We even think, if you are someone who is definitely in this category, you could even go with the lighter-duty 40v Battery-Powered handheld blower from Kobalt. It has a little less power and a little shorter battery life but would still be incredibly handy to pull out for blowing off the pavement or cleaning up a little mess in a jiffy.

Some quick specs:

Air Speed: 140mph
Air Volume: 630 CFM (Cubic Feet/Minute)
Weight: 8.9lbs
Sound: 85 decibels

Stihl Gas-Powered Backpack Blower

Next up, is the big daddy blower: the Stihl Gas-Powered Professional Backpack Blower. Fawn, Heather, and Claire all own this type of leaf blower. They all have large landscapes with a lot of trees around and work hard at keeping their lawns in tip-top shape. The big selling point for this blower is power and quality. When it comes to moving lots of leaves, you’ll want to have the horsepower and reliability of this equipment. All of the gas-powered backpack blowers by Stihl will be more than capable of moving lots of leaves, running for long periods of time, and handling most of the tougher stuff like wet leaves or heavier dirt. The higher you go in price, the more power you’ll get. If you know you have found your leaf blowers always insufficient in the past, maybe choose something with a little more power. Otherwise, you should do okay with the low to mid-tier lines. Claire has a Stihl BR 600 model and it’s lightweight enough for her to carry and she can move a yard full of leaves in 1-2 hours.

Some quick specs:

Air Speed: 207 mph
Air Volume: 544 CFM (Cubic Feet/Minute)
Weight: 22.3lbs (500 series), 23.4 (700 series)
Sound: 65 decibels (important to note this is on your back rather than hanging at your thigh like the handheld)

A typical backpack blower will weigh over 20 pounds, but, of course is easier to carry on your back for longer periods of time than even a lighter weight handheld if you’ve got a lot of space to cover. You’ll want a backpack blower if you are at this for much more than 15-20 minutes. There are some battery-powered backpack blowers on the market but the runtime and power will be less than the gas-powered options. We really think if you have enough work to do that it warrants a backpack over a handheld, you should probably opt for gas-powered anyways. For now. The technology for battery-powered equipment is rapidly evolving so we will keep you posted on new options that might change our minds!

Do you have a blower that you love? Tell us about it in the comments or send us a DM over on Instagram! We love trying out new equipment and making sure our community knows all about the best options available to plant ladies around the world.