Leaf clearing
A blower and a sweeper are not competing products; they fail in opposite conditions. A sweeper collects into a bag in one pass and works in a breeze, and it cannot lift a wet leaf off paving or reach into a border. A blower reaches everywhere and moves leaves into a pile that then has to be picked up, and it is useless in wind. This guide is three of each, and the figures that separate them.
The way this shelf is usually presented — blowers on one side, sweepers on the other, pick one — gets the question wrong.
They do not do the same job badly and well. They do different jobs, and the dividing line is surface and weather.
A push or towed sweeper has rotating brushes driven from the wheels, and a bag behind them. It sweeps leaves off grass and throws them into the bag in one pass.
What that buys:
It collects. The outcome is a bag, not a pile — and a pile is a second job.
Wind does not matter. The leaves go from the ground into the bag with nowhere to escape to.
It is silent, and it needs no power. Two of the three sweepers here are manual; the third is towed behind a machine.
It is fast on open grass. A 53 cm brush walked across a lawn clears at walking pace.
What it cannot do:
Wet leaves stuck to paving. Brushes skim over them.
Gravel. Brushes throw the gravel into the bag with the leaves.
Borders, steps, corners, under shrubs. A sweeper is a wheeled machine and it goes where a wheeled machine goes.
A blower moves air. The three here publish 210 km/h on a cordless, and 335 and 404 km/h on two 3000 W mains machines.
What that buys:
It reaches everywhere. Gravel, borders, steps, under a hedge, the gap between a shed and a fence, wet leaves stuck to a patio — a jet of air at 400 km/h lifts what a brush skates over.
It vacuums and shreds. All three of these have a vacuum mode, and two publish a shredding ratio: 10:1 and 16:1. Sixteen bags of leaves become one.
What it cannot do:
Work in wind. This is the whole limitation and it is not marginal. A blower builds a pile; a breeze unbuilds it.
Collect on its own. Blowing is half a job. The pile still has to be picked up, which is either a rake and a sheet or the vacuum mode — and vacuuming is far slower than blowing.
Two of these publish air volume, and they publish it in different units:
600 m³/h on one. 15 m³/min on the other.
Those look incomparable and they are not: 15 cubic metres a minute is 900 cubic metres an hour. Converted, the second machine moves half again as much air as the first.
That conversion matters because volume and speed do different jobs:
Speed — km/h — unsticks a single wet leaf from paving.
Volume — m³/h — moves a drift of dry ones across a lawn.
All three blowers here publish a speed; two publish a volume, in two units.
10:1 on the cordless. 16:1 on both mains machines.
That is the figure that turns leaf clearing from a disposal problem into a gardening input.
A bag of whole leaves is mostly air, takes two years to rot, and blows away. A bag of shredded leaves is a sixteenth of the volume, rots in a single winter, and stays where it is put — and leafmould is the best free soil conditioner there is.
One of them publishes what the impeller is made of: metal. That is worth noting, because an impeller shreds by striking, and it strikes the twigs and small stones that come up with the leaves. A plastic impeller wears its edges round within a season and the ratio quietly stops being true.
566 L on the towed sweeper. 100 L on the push sweeper. About 100 L on the third.
72 L on one blower, 45 L on the other two.
Those figures are not comparable in the way they look, because the blowers’ bags hold shredded leaves at up to sixteen to one. A 45 litre blower bag holds the equivalent of several hundred litres of whole leaves.
What it does not change is how often you stop. A 45 litre bag on a shoulder strap, on a lawn under a mature lime, is emptied continuously. One of the blowers here answers that with a 72 litre backpack bag and a quick release, which is the right shape for a long session.
Leave some.
A lawn with a thin scatter of leaves on it is fine; a lawn under a solid mat of them for six weeks is a lawn with dead patches and moss in the spring, because the grass has had no light.
So the job is real and it has a threshold. Clear the lawn when it is covered. Under a hedge, in a border and at the back of a bed, leaves left in place rot down into exactly the material the soil wants — and this site’s lawn soil shelf sells the bagged version of it.
53 cm, 100 L, 3 brushes, 0–40 mm height, 250 mm wheels
Three brushes, 250 mm wheels and a stated 0 to 40 mm height range — the most completely described push sweeper here.
Best for: A medium lawn where the surface is uneven enough that the height setting will get used
107 cm towed, 566 L net, universal hitch, tool-free height
A 107 cm towed sweeper with a 566-litre net and a universal hitch — pulled behind a ride-on, not pushed.
Best for: A large property already served by a ride-on mower, where an autumn clearance is measured in hours
530 mm, 0–40 mm height, about 100 L, 6.5 kg net
The only sweeper here with a published weight — 6.5 kg — on a 530 mm width, a 0 to 40 mm range and roughly 100 litres.
Best for: A medium lawn, and anyone who has to lift the machine over a step or into a car
18 V, 4.0 Ah included, 210 km/h, 500 m³/h, 10:1, 45 L
A cordless two-in-one with a 10:1 shredder, a 45-litre bag with a window, wheels on the tube, and the pack included.
Best for: A medium garden where the leaves are on grass and the cable is the thing you want gone
3000 W, 335 km/h, 600 m³/h, 16:1 metal impeller, 45 L
Blow, vacuum and mulch at 335 km/h and 600 m³/h, with a metal impeller, a 16:1 ratio and a one-button mode change.
Best for: A medium garden with a mix of paving and lawn, where the machine switches modes constantly
3000 W, 404 km/h, 15 m³/min, 72 L backpack, 16:1
The fastest air on this shelf at 404 km/h, with a 72-litre backpack bag, a 16:1 shredding ratio and a rake attachment.
Best for: A large garden with trees, where an autumn session means filling a bag several times
For a lawn under trees, a sweeper: it collects as it goes, in one pass, and a bag of leaves is the outcome rather than a pile. For a garden of gravel, borders, paving and steps, a blower, because brushes cannot work on any of those. Most gardens with a lot of leaves end up with both.
Because a blower moves leaves without containing them. A pile built in a breeze redistributes itself before you have picked it up, and a vacuum function only helps where the nozzle reaches. A sweeper’s brushes put the leaves straight into a bag, so the wind never gets a vote.
Stack them and wait. Leaves rot into leafmould over a year or two and it is the best soil conditioner there is, for free. Three of the blowers here shred as they collect — at 10:1 and 16:1 — which reduces the volume enormously and speeds the rotting up, and that is the strongest argument for a vacuum function.
Larger than you think, because leaves are almost all air. The sweepers here publish 100 L and 566 L; the blowers publish 45 L, 45 L and 72 L. A 45 litre blower bag on a lawn under a mature lime tree is emptied continuously, which is why the shredding ratio matters as much as the volume.
For : A medium lawn where the surface is uneven enough that the height setting will get used
Main strength : Brush count, height range and wheel diameter all published
Main limitation : No weight published
For : A large property already served by a ride-on mower, where an autumn clearance is measured in hours
Main strength : The widest machine on the shelf and the largest capacity by a wide margin
Main limitation : Requires a ride-on mower, ATV or UTV — it cannot be pushed
For : A medium lawn, and anyone who has to lift the machine over a step or into a car
Main strength : The only weight on the shelf among the push machines, and it is low
Main limitation : No brush count published
For : A medium garden where the leaves are on grass and the cable is the thing you want gone
Main strength : Cordless, and it still vacuums and shreds — the only machine here that does both
Main limitation : The lowest air speed of any machine here that publishes one
For : A medium garden with a mix of paving and lawn, where the machine switches modes constantly
Main strength : Both air figures published, in the same units as most of the shelf
Main limitation : A 45-litre shoulder bag where the top machine here carries 72 on a backpack
For : A large garden with trees, where an autumn session means filling a bag several times
Main strength : The fastest air speed on the shelf and a stated suction volume as well
Main limitation : The suction volume is quoted in m³/min where the rest of the shelf uses m³/h
Head-to-heads already published between two models from this guide or this aisle.
The models here come from the catalogue of this site. Specifications are those published by the manufacturer and on the Amazon product page; prices are what Keepa reported on the date below, and both move. The ranking uses declared specifications, the balance of stated strengths and limitations, and price. No product on this site has been physically tested, and nothing here claims otherwise.
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A mower gets bought when the grass is already too long, which is the worst possible moment to weigh up a price: demand on this shelf climbs from March and drops away after July, so a price struck through in May tells you nothing whatever about what the same reference cost in October. UniverTrack keeps a week-by-week record for each retailer, so a cut price can be set against one somebody really paid rather than one composed for the banner — and it says when ordering is genuinely the moment.
