We do love our knowledge, so we be sure that to gather and analyze producer specs alongside our personal check knowledge. There are two details of knowledge that we acquire for leaf blowers: The primary is the sound stage.
As a contributor to restrictions being positioned on out of doors instruments throughout the nation, extreme noise will be fairly a trouble. That is why we run a sound stage check for every mannequin, putting it at roughly the gap you would possibly anticipate finding such a product working out of your ear. We place it perpendicular to the sound stage meter and document the outcomes. You’ll be able to see these leads to the graph above, the place it is clear that Ryobi’s blower is, by far, the quietest of all of the models we examined. All the pieces else sits in a cluster as they race for the loudest leaf blower — a title at present held by the Enhulk Max Professional Collection 58V.
That is the place our propulsion cannon is available in. Sure, we may have grabbed some leaves and a few unfastened particles and blown it round our check areas, and stated, “Hey, this factor blows leaves,” however we needed to go one step additional and see how the leaf blowers’ output translated to uncooked energy.
CNET’s air cannon for leaf blower testing.
To do that, we constructed an air cannon principally from 3-inch PVC. Facilities included are an air gate, so we are able to ramp up every unit and launch all of the air into the cannon immediately, and a restriction plate, to maintain the projectile from getting into the core of the equipment. There’s additionally a base for balancing and a 5-foot barrel for launching the projectile.
The projectile itself is a spherical plastic tube (just like these pneumatic-driven tube containers at financial institution drive-throughs) containing a sand combination and, in complete, weighs 210 grams.
This is Eric from our lab demonstrating the air cannon in motion. Every coloured line represents the longest common distance achieved by every mannequin — of all of them, the Greenworks Professional leaf blower shot our weight the farthest. All of these excessive scores have been achieved within the respective blower’s turbo mode, apart from the DeWalt leaf blower, which solely has a single setting.
We load the projectile into the cannon, safe the leaf blower nozzle into the enter port, ramp the leaf blower as much as full energy within the chosen mode, open the air gate and foomp. We measure the gap the projectile travels from its resting location throughout the cannon to the spot of the preliminary impression on the ground. We common this distance over a number of makes an attempt. Voila.
We examined every leaf blower at each regular and turbo settings, noting that the DK2 leaf blower and the DeWalt Max Flexvolt 3 every solely supply a single setting. The colourful visualization above exhibits the utmost common distance achieved by every model and makes it clear that our high decide from Greenworks blew the competitors away so far as air energy is worried, practically taking pictures our weight so far as the professional-grade DK2 blower, which prices nicely over $1,500. You’ll find the total outcomes from each rounds of checks within the graph beneath.
The check outcomes are fascinating right here if you begin evaluating specs. Take the Milwaukee and Craftsman blowers, for example. The marketed specs for CFM and mph are practically the identical — 120 and 450 for Milwaukee and barely decrease numbers of 110 and 410 for Craftsman. Our check knowledge exhibits Craftsman outperforming Milwaukee by greater than 12 ft in regular mode and outperforming it by greater than 10 ft in turbo mode.
