17 January 2009

Gear Review: Toro 1800 Electric Snow Thrower

Hey, did you read the recent news that Belkin's development rep is hiring people to write fake positive Amazon reviews? I guess this gentleman (and possibly company...) has decided that it would be a better investment to essentially commit fraud rather than actually make a product that works well. Way to go!

(I'm not shocked that there are fake reviews on Amazon -- I mean, this is obvious -- but I do find the brazen manner in which this is being arranged to be surprising)

Anyways, I have another (real) gear review: The Toro 1800 Electric Snow Thrower.

My gear review will be pretty short and sweet: this thing works pretty well. I've used it for two winters now and it still works well. For snow depths of less than (say) eight inches this thing works like a champ. For depths greater than this, then things get a bit harder. I happened to use this thing two weeks ago after a storm dumped 16 inches of somewhat dry/powdery snow on my driveway -- this thing handled everything except for the snow at the end of my driveway. With 16 inches of snow the going was slow but steady.

I like this thing because it (1) works well (2) is maintenance-free (3) doesn't require me to maintain yet another balky gas engine (4) I figure that this thing has to lead to less overall pollution than the balky 2-stroke gas snowblower that this thing replaced.

If you have a really large driveway or if you absolutely need to clear your driveway really quickly, then maybe this isn't the tool for you. For my purposes, this thing works really well.

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