If the Snow is really deep, icy or heavy slush, a gas powered snow blower is the only thing that might get the job done.  But most of the time, this isn't the case.  Unless you live in Buffalo, a heavy snow fall is about 4 inches.  Or it takes a day or two for that apocalyptic snow fall to bury your neighborhood.

In the really big snow falls, if you are smart, you'll go out every couple of hours and shovel that latest accumulation.  It is much harder to shovel two foot deep snow all at one time.

As long as you are shoveling 4 inches of snow or less, most electric snowblowers can do the job.  By why consider an electric snow blower in the first place?  They: cost a lot less; weigh a lot less; don't have the gas or oil mess; store in a smaller space; and the engine won't gunk up if rarely used.  The down size is they are not as powerful as gas and you can only plow as far away from the outside power outlet as your extension cord can reach.  This is 50 to 100 feet.

A couple years ago, I received a Snow Joe Ultra for Christmas.  I found it to be a big improvement over shoveling even though I sometimes still had you pull out the shovel to get that last 5% of the job done.   This was mainly due to my power cord was only 100 feet long.

This year, I have the new Snow Joe hybrid electric snow blower.  It runs by an extension cord or it's internal battery.  For a small job, the battery is supposed to last for 50 minutes, promising a gas blower experience with all of the advantages of an electric motor.  At least for a little while.  If the job isn't done when the battery runs down, there always is the extension cord.

Since it hasn't snowed at my house yet, I haven't given it a proper test drive.  So, stay tuned to this posting.  The heavens will open up one of these days soon.  Until then, here my experience putting it together.  It wasn't hard.