WORX WG520 12 Amp Turbine 600 Electric Leaf Blower

This is one of the most powerful handheld electric blowers available. If you're serious about getting the job done quickly, this is the baseline. The next power tier is a gas backpack blower at five times the cost, then an even more powerful backpack, and then four-digit specialty tools from companies like Billy Goat. I bought the Worx because I didn't want to spend three hours raking a half-acre of grass.My trial run was an hour of continuous use with matted wet leaves and driveway sand. It fast became apparent that to be efficient, a blower has to move leaves without being on top of them. Blowing from six inches just makes everything scatter as piles build up. You end up crisscrossing the section you just cleared to deal with the strays. The further your breeze carries, the more direct the flight path of the leaves. This range, and the ability to scour stubborn leaves from the ground, comes from air speed (MPH). At the same time, though, you need a big enough wall of air to move more than one leaf at once. That comes from the size of your pipe opening. The two multiplied together determine your total air volume over a duration, or CFM (cubic feet per minute).In physics-land (with spherical cows and turbulence-free pipes, spared from the icy hand of marketing), CFM is the best measure of a blower's work capacity. MPH, you can change by varying the size of the pipe; a smaller pipe makes a smaller column of air moving at a faster speed (and more impressive advertising), which is why a lot of consumer-class blowers have tiny nozzles. (I'm looking at you, Sun Joe SBJ601E.) But there's a cost to adding MPH: it kills efficiency. The energy to move a volume of air goes up with the square of speed, so if you design your blower for 160 MPH, you'll get half the CFM of a 110 MPH blower from the same power. Something to mull if the blower is powered by a battery.Still, if you know either speed or CFM, and the size of the pipe, you can calculate the other (assuming the manufacturer isn't misleading you by quoting CFM at the fan and MPH at the end of the pipe). To get CFM from MPH and the radius of a round pipe, the calculation is (radius^2)*(mph)*(1.92). That's (1.69^2)(110)(1.92) for this blower's 110 MPH and 3 3/8" pipe, with the result arriving right at the rated number of 600 CFM.Anyway, the Worx has enough volume and speed to blow mounds of wet leaves from six feet and dry ones from ten or more. It's impressively powerful. I was switching arms every few minutes as they wore out from the backward force. Only some really baked-on mud would have benefited from a pipe-reducer attachment. Thanks to ape-like proportions or the secure fit of my spandex leaf-blowing onesie, clothing suction from the rear-directed air intake hasn't been a bother.ALTERNATIVES:I almost bought Toro's highly-rated "Ultra" combination blower to minimize bagging, but the vacuum functionality didn't seem that useful in videos. Maybe it'd be adequate to clean an enclosed deck area or a small yard with a scattering of dry leaves. For a larger yard, it looks like a time sink relative to a standalone mulcher. Likewise the blowing capacity, which, at 410 CFM, trails the Worx by quite a lot.Cordless tools were also tempting. There's a 20V DeWalt people seem to like that's rated at (a perhaps optimistic) 400 CFM. Because it's a similar fan design to the Worx, we can compare power directly. DeWalt's standard battery is 20V (or so we'll stipulate; it's closer to 18V under load) and 5 amp-hours, so we're looking at 100 watt-hours total output. 15 minutes of runtime translates to a sustained draw, best case, of 400W. Assuming 90% efficiency in the brushless motor, that's 360W actually moving air. (When new. Expect a performance drop over time and battery replacements by year three.)Compare this Worx: 12 amps at 120V equates to 1440 watts sustained, in this case feeding a 2-pole AC/DC motor that's perhaps 55% efficient. 12A is close to the maximum a device can reasonably expect from a typical 15A household socket. Even with nearly half of our power lost to heat and noise, the remaining 790W is over double what the DeWalt can manage. It's no coincidence that 600 CFM cordless blowers (Greenworks and Kobalt come to mind) have 80V/2.5Ah batteries with twice the DeWalt's capacity. Their runtime at full tilt? The same fifteen minutes, with three extra pounds to lug around from a chunk of lithium that costs more than the blower it attaches to.And what of gas blowers? The handheld versions have around 1 HP with CFM from 450 to 500. They're usually tuned for higher MPH than the Worx, so they're likely to be a little better with wet leaves and a little worse with dry ones. Backpack blowers up the displacement and make between 1.5 and 5 horsepower. The models that you might find on the back of a professional landscaper can manage nearly 1000 CFM with speeds around 200 MPH. That's a considerable difference, but you pay for it at the checkout and in weight: figure 10 pounds or so for a handheld (relative to 7ish for this unit, plus some cord) and 20 or more for a backpack.As of mid-2020, two other corded blowers are worth a hard look: Toro's F700 and Worx's WG521. The Toro arrived first in 2019 with a hefty 720 CFM rating, a bigger two-arm handle, and a better cord retention mechanism. The WG521 is the response: 800 CFM and 135 MPH (claimed) from a ~4" nozzle, albeit still intended for one arm. All three blowers are beastly and often close in price; pick whichever best channels your inner Tim Allen.ACCESSORIES:A motor this powerful benefits from a thick (low gauge) cord for longer runs. You lose a bit of performance with thinner cord. The generic orange 50-foot extension everyone has is 16-gauge. Feeding a 12A load for 50 feet, it'll have a voltage drop of about 5V. Heavier 14-gauge loses 2.5V on the same run, and industrial 12-gauge, only 1.5V. The scale is linear, so if you double up that 16-gauge cord for a 100-foot run, you'll lop off 10V.How's that play out here? From a short and fat cable (that the cheesy plastic strain-relief piece won't actually accommodate; just tie an overhand knot over the two plugs instead), we'd expect a 1440W draw (12A * 120V, or a bit less because the house wiring itself has some drop). Losing 5V drops the total to 1380W. That's about what I found when I tested the Worx with a watt meter.12ag / 3 ft = 1423W14ag / 100 ft = 1352W16ag / 50 ft = 1351W16ag / 50 ft + 14ag / 100 ft = 1280WWith the progressive thumb dial at the lowest setting, minimum draw was 260W.For shorter runs, disconnect extensions you don't actively need. Every cable sheds a percentage of the energy it carries to heat. As above, skinny cables lose more. Coiled on the ground and coupled with a high-load device like the Worx, they can build up enough heat to start melting insulation, which tends to cause sheepish expressions and insurance claims.This blower is also loud enough to merit hearing protection. On an A-weighted scale (approximating human hearing), measured outdoors from three feet, it makes 82 dB on low and 91 dB on high. Indoors or near a wall, volume jumps by 10 dB and subjectively doubles. While the sound character emulates a vacuum, my Shark only measures 72 dB indoors; you'd have to run over a rat's nest of lamp cords to make one this loud. Amazon has a number of comfortable muffs for less than a Jackson that'll keep your ears intact.You can find electric blowers with more toys, but few that'll get the job done as fast as this one. It's a bargain at the asking price. I'll update if I catch any reliability problems.

After my last (cheap) blower broke I wanted to get a better made and more powerful blower this time. I had seriously considered getting a battery-powered Worx or Ryobi one, since I already have batteries for those two brands, but read too many reviews from people who said they weren't powerful enough and the batteries didn't last long enough. I was used to using an extension cord with my old blower anyway so figured sticking with that wasn't a problem. I'm so glad I picked this Worx blower. It's got some serious power. I like the fact that the power-on switch is a roller-type that also varies the power according to how far I roll it on. It's designed so your thumb falls right on the power switch so it's very easy to control on the fly if you like to vary the power according to the work at hand. It speeds up the job quite a bit since it's so powerful. One minor fault is that the whole back end of it is an intake vent so sometimes when I'm working with it my t-shirt gets sucked up to that vent. I just need to keep my shirt tucked in when I do this so it doesn't become a problem. This will be updated if problems arise, but 3-weeks into using this I'm very happy with the results.

I can’t say enough good things about the WORX WG520! This thing is an absolute beast—600 CFM of pure blowing power. It cleared my yard in record time, and even tackled wet leaves and pine needles like a champ. I love the two-speed control, especially the low setting for corners and flower beds. It’s lightweight and ergonomic, so my arms weren’t sore afterward, even after 30+ minutes of use. For a corded blower, this is as close to perfect as it gets. Highly recommend for anyone tired of underpowered tools—this one gets the job DONE.

We have a 100 foot tall white oak that drops what feels like billions of leaves every year. Have worn out/burned up other blowers. The two speeds are actually helpful. Weight is not an issue--Wife uses it all the time. Wear ear pro as you would with any other blower.Our first one is still going strong. We acquired a second one because our kids keep borrowing the first.An amazing deal. Highly recommended.

The blower offers high power and great performance, ideal for demanding tasks. However, it requires constant electrical power. In my case, it serves its purpose.

The highest setting is strong. The variable speed is the feature I did not know I needed. It provides better control when moving leaves and debris to a smaller area where you can pick it up and place in bags. The unit's plug did not accommodate my extension as my plug was oversized, something not unique to this unit, but I have a couple of shorter extensions of appropriate gauge that do fit. Overall, I love the unit.

Highly recommend!! This thing is a beast and well worth the money! I couldn't say enough good about it! Where has this been all my life lol our house is surrounded by a bed of rocks and I actually had the battery operated version of worx And it was much smaller in blew way less wind, I could never get the leaves out of the rocks! With this thing, the leaves are gone up out of the rocks! Shoot it'll even blow your rocks out of the garden lol everything else in his path because it blows like I think 120 plus mile per hour winds! It's got a low medium and high and high one, let's just say I didn't have to rake my lawn at all.