Good Housekeeping’s Outdoor Lab put more than 20 leaf vacuums through blow, suck, noise, and durability. The winner is not a rake. It is a Toro Ultra Electric Blower Vac that lists around $130 at Ace Hardware. 405 cubic feet per minute. 260 miles per hour. 8.5 pounds. Plug-in.
If your fall “cleaning routine” this week is a robot mop inside and a leaf pile you plan to ignore until it becomes sludge, you are cleaning the wrong surface. We already wrote the indoor robot vacuum and mop and the dryer vent that starts fires. This GH chart is the yard version of that split. The lab measured machines. Your gutter measured last year’s oak.
20-plus machines is not a Saturday impulse
The Institute’s Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab looked at how well each unit blows and vacuums, how a normal person handles it, how loud it is, and whether it feels built. That is a test protocol. It is not a Home Depot endcap.
GH’s own method is the routine. Blower mode first, to move the lawn. Vacuum mode second, for the stuff under bushes and along the foundation. The macerator is the third job: chop the leaves so the bag is not a wet mattress, or dump the bits as mulch in a bed. If you only own a blower, you have done job one. The foundation strip is still a compost experiment.
A rake still works. A rake also puts the entire volume in a paper bag that the city may not take after a certain week. The GH pitch for a vac is volume reduction, not status. If you have a patio the size of a bathmat, buy a broom. If you have a maple, you have a volume problem.
Do not read “best overall” as “best for your lot.” Toro won typical yard conditions. GH says that out loud. Typical is not a half-acre of wet oak and acorns. Typical is not a townhouse with one ginkgo. Match the machine to the debris, or you will own a cord you hate.
The chart is also a noise chart even when the headline is suction. Municipal ordinances show up in the Stihl write-up for a reason. A Saturday 8 a.m. blower is how you meet your neighbor in the worst way. If your town actually enforces hours, quiet is a spec, not a personality.
Price in the GH modules moves. Craftsman is $99 then $89 with a 10 percent tag. Worx is $80 on Amazon and higher at Walmart and Lowe’s in the same roundup. Treat those as “under $150 corded” versus “$229 cordless” versus “$470 Stihl,” not as a cart you can screenshot next month.
The Toro won because it is a cord
The Ultra is corded on purpose. Variable speed on the handle. GH liked the mulching and the weight. They also called the cord a nuisance that limits range. On a larger yard you add an outdoor-rated extension cord, which is more money and more something to roll over.
405 CFM and 260 MPH at 8.5 pounds is the trade. You are buying airflow that does not die at minute 31 because a 4.0 Ah pack sagged. You are buying a leash. If your outlet is on the garage and the back fence is 150 feet of maple, the leash is the review.
People buy cordless because the commercial is freedom. GH’s cordless pick is a different article in the same list. For the overall badge they picked the plug. That is the most useful sentence in the roundup if you have a small-to-medium lot and a GFCI that works.
Do not “upgrade” to battery because the Toro felt embarrassing next to a truck. Embarrassment is not CFM. If the leaves are dry and the lot is short, the $130 corded machine is the cleaning tool. If you already own a 40V Ryobi platform, skip to that section and stop shopping Toro as a brand identity.
Mulching is why the bag does not explode. GH credits Toro with an excellent ratio and less bag waste. They did not print a 20:1 number on this SKU. Ryobi got that number. Do not steal it. If the Toro bag fills in two passes, empty it. A packed macerator is how you get the jam the other machines are famous for.
Store the tube where you will trip on it or you will not use it. Fall cleaning fails the same way closed-house fall routines fail: the tool lives in a bin you do not open until Thanksgiving.
$80 Worx and $89 Craftsman are the other corded argument
Best value in the GH list is the Worx TRIVAC 3-in-1. Amazon around $80. Walmart around $110. Lowe’s around $105. 450 CFM. 260 MPH. 11.3 pounds. 10-gallon reusable bag. Three jobs on one motor: blow, vac, mulch.
Eleven pounds is not 8.5. You will feel that on a shoulder after the second bag. The 10-gallon bag is the actual value. Fewer trips. GH notes you unzip it to empty, and that unzip can jam. A jam is a cleaning interruption. If you hate kneeling on a driveway with a zipper full of wet leaf mash, this is not a bargain. It is a chore with a receipt.
Craftsman CMEBL7000 sits in the deal module: 12 amp, corded, up to 260 MPH, $99 then $89. GH did not hang a “best overall” tag on it. It is the cheap 260 MPH object in the same shopping page. Use it as a floor. If Toro is $130 and Craftsman is $89, the $41 is variable speed, weight, and the lab’s overall vote. It is not automatically $41 of CFM.
Do not mix the spec tables. Worx is 450 CFM in the tester notes. Toro is 405 in its table. Craftsman’s module leads with MPH and amps, not a CFM GH printed in the extract we have. If a listing says 600, that is the Ryobi row, not a Craftsman miracle.
Corded value only works if the outlet exists. Apartment courtyard with no exterior GFCI: you do not have a Toro problem. You have a building problem. Buy a rake or wait for whoever actually owns the trees.
These two are indoor-adjacent in one way only. After you dump mulch, the bag is a wet biological object. Rinse it. Let it dry. A sealed damp bag in a garage is how you grow the smell you then try to kill with a scented cleaner that GH is not selling in this test.
Ryobi 20:1 is a battery and a twig warning
Best cordless: Ryobi 40V Vac Attack. $229 at Home Depot. Kit includes a 4.0 Ah battery. GH timed more than 30 minutes even at full speed. Industry-best 20:1 mulching ratio, which is the sentence that should decide you if your bags are the expensive part.
600 CFM. 100 MPH. 15.2 pounds. 10.5-gallon bag. Read those together. High volume, lower speed than the 260 MPH corded units, much more mass in your hands. This is a leaf eater, not a precision edger. Alec Scherma, a GH test engineer, said the metal impeller jammed more on twigs and harder debris. His line for the target user is loose leaves on a lawn, not a woodlot.
The handle knob switches vacuum and blower, then you still change attachments. GH called that less seamless than convertibles that share a tube. If you planned to flip modes every two minutes along a fence, you will swear. If you blow the lawn, then commit to vacuuming the beds, the attachment change is one interruption.
Thirty minutes is a clock. A big maple is not a clock. Two batteries is the real cordless SKU. GH did not price a second pack in the extract. Do not invent one. Know that one 4.0 Ah is a half-hour at full send, then you are holding 15 pounds of plastic that will not start.
If you already live in Ryobi 40V, this is the only row that uses the batteries on the shelf. That is a real cost argument the Toro cannot win. It is also how people buy a leaf vac they did not need because the battery was already in the cart. Need is still the pile.
Jams are a maintenance job. Same family as brush rolls and filters on indoor vacs. Kill the power. Pull the twig. Do not keep squeezing the trigger because the motor sounds brave. Brave is a melted impeller.
Stihl SHA 56 is $470 of quiet and extra tubes
Best for tough debris: Stihl SHA 56 at about $470 on Acme Tools in the GH module. Testers called it a beast on twigs, acorns, and a thick autumn blanket. One of the quietest in the test. Mulching good enough that the 10.5-gallon bag hit capacity with coarse shreds instead of whole leaves.
Quiet matters if your town actually means the ordinance. $470 is how you buy that plus Stihl’s reputation GH waves at as value-over-time. It is not how you clean a townhouse maple once.
Separate tubes for vacuum and blower. Conversion is not a switch. Extra parts need storage. GH thinks that is a small price if toughness is the job. Storage is never small in a garage that already lost the dryer vent brush behind paint cans. If you cannot hang two tubes, you will lose one and own a blower that will not vac.
Do not put Stihl on a credit card because the word “exceptional” appeared in a roundup. Exceptional was suction on rough debris. If your debris is dry maple on grass, Toro already won that test for a third of the money.
Acorns and twigs are why Scherma dinged Ryobi’s impeller. If that is your yard, GH is telling you to leave the $229 platform and pay Stihl, or to rake the heavy stuff first and vac the rest. Raking first is still a valid routine. The lab is not allergic to it. They just did not test rakes.
A leaf vac is a fall cleaning slot, not a personality
Put it on the same calendar as the closed-house list. After the first real drop, not after the pile ices. Wet leaves in a macerator are heavier and meaner. GH’s jam notes get more true in October rain.
Wear glasses. A vac throws grit. GH did not have to say that for it to be true, but I will not pretend they lab-tested eyewear. They tested machines. You still have eyes.
Do not vac near gravel you care about. Impellers eat stones and then eat themselves. The Ryobi note is the warning even if you bought Toro.
Empty the bag before you park the tool. A wet packed bag is a science fair. Hang it. If you use the mulch in beds, that is a garden decision. If you bag for the city, check the date they stop collecting. A perfect 20:1 ratio does not help if the truck already passed.
The indoor robot does not replace this. The robot is floors. This is the property line. People who “hate yard work” still own the line. Hire it or do it. GH’s chart is for the people who will do it and do not want to buy twice.
If you have no yard, this article is not your routine. Go back to the dryer vent. If you have a yard and a $20 rake that still fills paper bags in twenty minutes, keep the rake. The lab’s winner is for volume and mulching, not for moral improvement.
Buy Toro if the lot is normal and the outlet is real. Buy Worx if $80 is the budget and you will empty a zipper. Buy Ryobi if the 40V pack is already yours and the leaves are loose. Buy Stihl if the debris is mean and the town is loud about noise. That is the whole GH table, turned into a Saturday.
