Best Backpack Leaf Blowers of 2022

Battery backpack blowers start instantly and run quietly, though you have to recharge them when they run out of juice. They’re also far better for the Earth than gas models. Noisier gasoline-powered backpack leaf blowers can run indefinitely, but they require you to mix oil and gas for fuel and can be harder to start than their battery-powered counterparts.

So is a backpack leaf blower right for you? If you have a large area to cover or thick piles of leaves every fall, it’s worth considering. They typically cost $100 to $200 more than handhelds, so they’re probably overkill if you have a small yard or if you don’t have a lot of fallen leaves to clean up.

In CR’s leaf blower tests, we rope off a swath of grass and dump bag upon bag of leaves inside the boundary. Backpack blowers get a larger area with more leaves because they’re designed for larger yards. We time how long each blower takes to clear the pile, and how thoroughly the tool moves every last leaf—some leaf blowers struggle to get rid of the leaves near the bottom of the pile, which can become embedded in the grass. Each fall, we go through about 2,500 pounds of leaves in our quest to find the top models.

We test leaf blowers in six configurations, including backpack models, from all the major brands, including Ego, Husqvarna, and Stihl. Below, we’ve highlighted four models that sit at the top of the heap in our tests.

For more information about shopping for a leaf blower, see our leaf blower buying guide. CR members can turn to our comprehensive leaf blower ratings for details on how backpack and other types of leaf blowers perform in our tests.