I was shocked to even see this new product in the store. I have heard zero information on any website that Ryobi was going to have a cordless snow blower this year. The only reason I noticed it as I was bored out of my mind at customer service to pickup an internet order which happened to be the new Ridgid Professional modular storage boxes. The Ridged boxes seem great already. Back to the snow blower. It’s a single stage unit that uses the Ryobi 40x battery platform. This isn’t a snow blower for 6 to 8 inches of wet and heavy snow, but I think it could do a pretty decent job on 6 inches of powdery snow just from looking at it. I have said a cordless snow blower would be awesome to have. It can be so hard to start a freezing cold engine in the middle of winter, so with this all you need to do is keep the battery and changer inside the house, plug it into the blower, and start cleaning off your driveway. Another cool thing is it has dual headlights on the front so you have light when you use it in the dark. A lot of snow blowers do not have that feature.
The only other company that has a cordless snow blower is Snow Joe. They released theirs last winter and sold out quick. I think this will be a very popular unit this winter, and if you are interested in getting one I wouldn’t wait too long. The only thing I didn’t see was a price on the unit. I hope TIA gets a review unit so we can get some in action shots of the snow blower and a in depth review.
Here are some pictures of the unit I snapped in the store sorry about the quality my I phone 4 doesn’t take the best pictures in low light. 
Here are the stock Ryobi photos of the unit from the Home Depot webpage
This is brilliant! If it’s anything like Ryobi’s 40v lawn stuff, then it should be pretty awesome! Love their newest 40v lawn tools. They last long and have wonderful power. This is great news! Thanks for the heads up guys!
I wonder how the cold would effect the battery.
I’m concerned about this also, cold weather and lithium batteries don’t play nice together usually
true
I’m not a fan of leaving lithium ion batteries out in the cold long term like an unheated garage or shed I had some battery packs die after being out in the cold all winter luckily they were under warranty. I personally would keep the charger and battery packs in a heated area like a garage or basement. That said the newer lithium chemistry is supposed to deal with the cold better than the first few generations of cells.
Couple of days into owning my unit and it won’t work now. I suspect it’s because I’ve been charging in the garage. I’ve moved it into the house and will try again in a couple of hours. The times I’ve used the unit (2-3″ snow, pretty dry) I’ve been very very satisfied.
Nice as always to see more and more things battery powered. But here in California I won’t be needing a snow blower anytime soon. It was 95 degrees yesterday, but who knows with this global warming what’s going to happen.
I would have been surprised to see this in my Home Depot also. Snow is something I see on television. Christmas is shorts weather here.
Are you close to anyplace with snow? I’m kinda shocked Home Depot would stock something like that in an area that doesn’t get snow. Did they have other snow blowers or just the Ryobi? Keep an eye out for me when they clearance it out please 🙂
I just bought one today and it’s going back. I put it together as directed, charged that batteries completely and nothing. The lights don’t come on and the on switch doesn’t turn anything on.
That’s a huge bummer sorry to hear your unit didn’t work. I wonder what the problem was with the unit being brand new you wonder about those kind of things. The batteries are not that old and having 2 bad ones would be abnormal. It would have to be that the snow blower itself was bad. I really like the idea of a cordless snow blower for those 4 to 6 inch snowfalls.
Mike Lindsay .. I thought I was going to send mine back as well .. The start procedure is a little weird ..you have to hold the grey button for 5 seconds and pull back on the bailer .. starts up .. It is actually not a little kit .. I am not a fan of the chute rotator bar .seems flimsy but does a decent job
I meant not a bad little kit .. does the job ,,easy to get on my deck as well
You are the man Darryll! I was going to complain that one season later… mine was not working either until I read your startup instructions. Not very intuitive.
I just bought one a week ago and i tryed it yesturday with 5 cm of light/wet snow and its great, I just have to try it in heavy snow and will see how it works, I told my wife that i should go to Buffalo NY to try it in the 65″ of snow HA HA….I also like the fact that it comes with two batteries for the same cost as the Snow Joe 18″
I own two 40 volt cordless snowblowers now. This new one from Ryobi which is a week old and the Snow Joe Ion snowblower that came out last year.
I used the Ryobi last night in three inches of moderate thickness snow. Not wet, but not powder. It worked amazing. Very powerful. It throws snow farther and harder than the SnowJoe does, the headlights are brighter and I like the quick rotate chute. I used a battery pack and a half doing my driveway, 120 ft of city sidewalk and three sidewalks by the house, and the deck. Not bad. I was quite pleased.
I took it out this morning to do the new three inches that fell since last night and it worked for 5 minutes and quit. For those five minutes it was every bit as good as it was last night. All it does is make a noise like the motor control is telling the motor to move but it’s not doing anything at all. The headlights come on, so the motor activation switch is working. There are zero obstructions and the belt is not broken, the motor is simply not running. I didn’t hit anything on the sidewalk either. It just stopped dead.
It’s stored inside the house, so it’s not frozen up. The batteries are charged fully. It just doesn’t work.
I did some googling and I’m not the only person with this issue arising soon after it’s first usage. I’ve seen more and more reviews popping up on the screen with this problem. And a couple You Tube videos with the same issue. The blower works for a bit and then poof, nothing. It stops dead and stays dead.
Meanwhile, the SnowJoe finished the job the Ryobi started and is going just as strong as it was on day one a year ago. Not one issue to date. (knock on plastic)
Pretty bummed this Ryobi broke so soon, and I wonder when or if Ryobi will fix it or replace it. I have an email with the video of what mine is doing (not doing actually) and am waiting to hear back.
Man I’m really disappointing with these problems Ryobi should pull the unit from being on sale. There is obviously some kind of flaw in the unit somewhere. I wonder what it could be though. It sounds more like an electronics problem than a mechanical issue, but who really knows. I really wanted this to work as its perfect for those light snows we get. Maybe the Green Works 80v system will be the first battery powered snow blower that is the mass market hit. I haven’t seen a Snow Joe in any of the stores, but they seem to rely more on direct marketing than other brands, and I’m on their mailing list and Snow Joe can’t seem too keep any inventory of them, so its up in the air if and when you can get one. I see tons of gas powered units on the sales floor. I just wanted something that would be a nice compliment to my big two stage Toro. It’s a great unit but the weight with no auto steer is just brutal on my shoulder. I wish I waited and got the Ariens with that slick new auto turn differential. It blows my mind how much a 2 stage snow blower weights most of them are 250 some pounds that is a lot of machine to wrestle around and snow doesn’t make it any easier. Back to the Ryobi I had really high hopes for this unit.
well as of today(december 19-2014) the cordlesss snow joe seems to be at full factory run with no inventory issues, so you should be able to get one.
I bought one of these and it cleared about five feet of a 1-inch deep powdery snow before it died. I’ve seen many other reports of similar experiences. This is a piece of absolute JUNK!
Wow, I’m surprised this unit is having so many problems. I’m not seeing too many people having positive experiences with it. It works great for a short period of time and then just dies.
I just bought one of these, worked great for the first snow fall. Today went to use it and stopped after 20 seconds. If I move it out of the snow it will spin but the second it hits any snow it stops. Took it back to HD and they already had 3 returned today. The guy in the snow blower department said that ALL of the units they have sold have been returned with this same issue. Got a refund and tried the greenworks 80volt unit. SAME exact issue. Almost seems like the issue is how cold it is today. Been in the single digits. But it is a snow blower for goodness sake it should operate in the cold. That is the only time it snows is when it is cold. I really don’t want to mess with a gas blower but it sounds like I don’t have much choice.
Was the battery and charger kept in a warm area before you used the snow blower, or was charger and battery kept in a cold garage? That makes a big difference with Lithium cells the do not like to be discharged when its cold out
I just bought one of these two days ago for the blizzard we’re now having in the Northeast (1/26/14). I have about 45 feet of double driveway and 80 feet of sidewalk. Over the past 36 hours I’ve used it 4 times… about 2.5 full batteries worth of work. This morning was the heaviest snow, between 5-6 inches of light to moderate powder. This blower has worked really well so far. It’s exactly what I was looking for. Extremely convenient and easy to use. Throws the snow farther than I thought it would. By the time my neighbor got his blower from his backyard shed, I was practically done with my driveway and walk. It even did a pretty good job with the pile of snow the plow left in the street at the end of my driveway… although the plow had just gone by and the snow was still pretty loose.
It definitely needs at least a couple of inches of snow to operate effectively. The first time I used it with one inch of snow, I could hardly walk fast enough to get the blower to throw it far enough. I don’t consider that too much of a downside.
The batteries are being charged and kept inside and I don’t leave the battery in the blower between uses. So far, no issues like I’m reading about. I hope it continues to work because I don’t want to have to take it back.
If I have any issues I’ll post more comments.
The issue with it stopping when hitting the snow is caused by vibration and the battery not fitting securely, I have this problem with one of the three batteries I have for my collection of ryobi tools. I placed some thin folded cardboard into the battery holder alongside the battery and it does the trick.
As soon as my rich uncle gets out of the poor house I,m going to see if he will buy me one. Or just hit the Power Ball
Wow. I am a great fan of plastic and cordless innovation. Cordless system brought another revolution in power industry. By the way this product looks great. Probably I will have this someday.
Worked great twice and the next Colorado powder we had only 5 inches quit working. Being a retired auto tech, this pos needs to be in the bone yard like Yugos.