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We tested snow shovels from True Temper, ErgieShovel, Snowcaster, and others in a Tahoe winter to see which was the best for a wide variety of snow conditions
The class of 2024. We tested over a dozen shovels side by side.
The right snow shovel will clear your driveway while keeping your lower back healthy. The wrong one might break within a month, sending you inside to recover from the strain. To find out which is which, we purchased 15 popular snow shovels and tested them side-by-side in every snow condition, from light powder to heavy wet snow and even ice.
The ErgieShovel is the best shovel for most conditions. It is sturdy enough to move heavy snow and has the best design for reducing back strain. If you want to save a little money and are ok with a more floppy handle, the Snow Joe Shovelution is the best value we have seen in a snow shovel. It is not as robust as the ErgieShovel, but ours have lasted for many seasons, as long as you don't overstrain them.
As implied in the name, the The Snowplow is the best for pushing wide swaths of lighter snow. It can't scoop, but it is as robust as your ability to push snow. It was the fastest shovel to clear our test driveway with 1-3 inches of snow.
Read on to see our favorite shovels for your car, electric snow shovels, and icebreakers.
Editor's Note: On December 14, 2024, reviewed the Garant Yukon 36 and added detailed comparisons to the SnowPlow.
The ErgieShovel is a great all-purpose shovel. Despite having a short 47.75-inch shaft, the ergonomic dual-handle design made it the most comfortable to use for extended periods. It pushed just as well as the other competitors and is sturdy enough to move heavy snow. Our reviewer noted, “It feels a little awkward the first time you grab the mid-shaft handle. But as soon as you toss your first scoop of heavier snow, it all makes sense.” The ErgieShovel is also disassembled into a smaller size for easier storage.
Some people will be confused by the dual handle; some of our testers weren't fans of the design at first, but it quickly became second nature. The protruding handle forces you to use a more ergonomic posture, which has pros and cons. It limits the posture you can use but forces good body position. Its plastic scoop lasted us a few seasons but then developed a slight bend. Our reviewer notes, “It is still effective, it just doesn't sit perfectly flush to the pavement when scraping.” We don't think this is a deal breaker as most shovels in this review are less durable. But it's not as durable as a model like the The SnowPlow. Its main competition is the Snow Joe Shovelution, which is lighter, less expensive, and has a more flimsy handle design. The Snow Joe also comes in a 20-inch option, while the Ergie Shovel is limited to 18 inches. The 20-inch size is better for pushing light snow but is less ideal for tossing heavier accumulations. Some people love the play that the flexible Snow Joe handle gives. However, most of our testers preferred the solid grip and feel of the ErgieShovel.
The Snow Joe Shovelution design is unique. Like the Ergieshovel, it has dual handles, but the shaft of the lower handle is flexible. When you throw snow, that flexibility acts like a spring, increasing your leverage and making shoveling easier. The Snow Joe is also one of the lightest shovels we tested, weighing only a few pounds. Due to its price, one reviewer who owns a rental home noted, “This is the shovel I have been buying most often for rental properties. I can put one just about everywhere: by the driveway, by the stairs, and on the deck.”
The disadvantage of this design is that when you push snow and want to switch to shoveling, the second handle on the spring shaft moves a lot, making it difficult to grab and slowing down the entire process. This is one advantage of the ErgieShovel with its fixed handle design. Still, the Snow Joe Shovelution is a great buy for the price and takes up less room than the ErgieShovel. We also love it comes in both 18-inch and 20-inch wide blades. If you want an even lighter model in a traditional handle design, see the Emsco Group 1199 Bigfoot. However, keep in mind that the Bigfoot is far less robust and not suitable for tossing heavy scoops.
The SnowPlow is our favorite shovel for pushing a few inches of snow. As our reviewer noted, “This is one of the few snow shovels I expect to last more than a decade.” It has a very durable blade, and its nearly 36-inch width means half the number of passes as most other shovels. It is a specific tool for a specific job. We tested this in two distinctly different conditions. The first was after two inches of snow; this model shined when clearing our sidewalks and driveway. It did it much faster than any other shovel could, requiring much less effort from the user. While some other plastic scoops feel fragile and thin, this is notably thick and durable.
The second set of conditions was while a severe Sierra storm laid down 18 inches of wet and heavy snow. In these conditions, this shovel was unusable. There was just too much snow for it to move. While you can technically lift and toss snow, this shovel is not designed for this purpose. As the name accurately declares, it is a snow plow or a snow pusher, not a great shovel. When you try to shovel, a frustrating amount falls off before reaching the intended location. It scoops just well enough so that after pushing snow, you can lift it a little bit. Also, this shovel requires a little more assembly than most other options. You need a drill and a few wrenches. It's not a big deal and only a 10-minute time commitment, but it's more work than most other models that either come assembled or require tightening a few bolts by hand.
The other pusher-style shovel we tested it against is the Garant Yukon 36 Snow Pusher. The Garant has a more ergonomic handle until you hit a crack. If you are not comfortable, the Garant can then crash into your chest where the SnowPlow, because of how you hold it, has the handle slide by your chest. We also found the SnowPlow just doesn't catch on small cracks as often due to the much thicker blade material. With the Garant, you also can't easily lift snow other than the “soccer kick technique,” where you use your foot to lift the blade up while pushing. One upside to the Garant is the vertical edge at the end of the blade. This helps keep snow from “overflowing” to the sides and reduces the number of passes. Overall, the are some big pros and cons to each. Overall, we prefer the SnowPlow, but we love the Garant Yukon as well. Another push-style shovel we tested was the The Snowcaster 30SNC, which has a similar width. We prefer the SnowPlow because the more traditional handle design makes it easier to maneuver. Even though the SnowPlow is not great at scooping, it lets you schoop a little while the Snowcaster does not.
The SnowPlow is part of our dream snow shovel quiver. We reach for this anytime there is only a little bit of snow. When the snow starts piling up, we reach for the ErgieShovel or the Snow Joe Shovelution.
The Snowplow in action on both cold and light snow at first and then heavier and slopier snow.
The Emsco Group 1199 Bigfoot is about as basic and affordable as snow shovels get. There are no fancy features, and the shovel arrives fully assembled. It is the lightest shovel we tested by a large margin. This is generally good but especially handy for “sweeping” stairs and maneuvering into awkward spots. The 100% plastic blade is easy on wood decks since it is less likely to scrape paint without a metal blade edge.
The lightness of this shovel is an advantage but also its downfall. This is the most flimsy shovel in our tests. As your reviewer notes, “It works well for soft and light snow. But if you try to remove heavy volumes of snow, it feels like the blade and handle will snap.” This is one of the least expensive shovels we tested. While we feel most people will be better off with the Snow Joe Shovelution or the ErgieShovel, we also recognize those models are much more expensive. In addition, many people may want a classic shovel design and not need as robust of a shovel, especially if you rarely get more than 3-6 inches of snow. In that case, the 1199 Bigfoot might be a great option. Just take care not to break it.
The Emsco 1199 is not that sturdy but is very light and works well in soft and light snow.
The AstroAI 39" Folding Snow Shovel is a high-quality compact shovel that fits easily in your car. It is great for getting out of a jam, deploys quickly, and is quite burly. The meta blade is strong enough to chip at ice and hard snow. It can also be used in sand and dirt to unstuck your car on a sandy dirt road. It is also the perfect size for kids; our one- and 4-year-old testers loved using it. Its narrow blade and light design make it ideal for precision work, like removing snow from stairs or around furniture. It is also great for making snow jumps, carving banks on a sledding hill, or cutting snow blocks to make a fort or igloo.
This shovel does not move much snow. That, along with a short handle, makes it not ideal for clearing a deck or a driveway. If you use this for more than 30 minutes, it takes a toll on your back, and anyone taller than five feet has to crouch down. While the shovel is burly overall, there's some play in the shaft, which is not ideal. This is a great emergency shovel for snow, ice, mud, and sand.
Folding up the AstroAI and then storing in our car trunk and side storage in a truck door.
The Ego Power+ Multi-Head Snow Shovel Attachment is the best electric snow shovel we have tested. It throws snow much further than you can with a shovel. It is much easier to transport than a snowblower, making it ideal for decks and other areas where getting a snowblower on wheels or tracks is hard or potentially messy. It performed very well in lighter snow less than 8 inches in depth.
When used with the recommended 4.0AH battery, this system is not light. It is less effort than shoveling snow but takes more effort than Ego's excellent battery snow blowers. There is less strain on your back, but you must still be aware of your posture to avoid strain. This strain increases in heavy snow, and we found this snowblower was ineffective in very heavy or deep snow. This attachment is relatively affordable if you own Ego batteries and the Multi-Head system. But this is expensive if you are buying all those components just for this snow blower head. While this is our favorite electric snow shovel, the Ego snowblowers, especially the smaller models, are much more effective in most applications.
Ego Power+ Multi-Head Snow Shovel Attachment with 3 inches of heavy snow.
The Garant Snow Pusher 24 was our testers' favorite for scaping and pushing. The 24-inch steel blade found concrete the fastest of the models we tested, cutting a wide path well. As its name implies, it wants to push snow more than shovel it. The shaft is wood, the blade and scoop are all metal, and the handle is plastic to keep your hand warm. These materials build confidence in this snow shovel's durability to withstand harsh conditions.
The Garant's scoop lacks sides, which means picking up snow and moving it is more challenging with this shovel than with models featuring more traditional scoops. At over six pounds, this is also one of the heaviest snow shovels we've tested, which can add to the fatigue of clearing a large driveway.
The Garant Snow Pusher 24 is ideal for clearing a path down to concrete as efficiently as possible.
The AMES #12 Aluminum Scoop was best for moving snow. Its deep scoop collected a lot of snow, and its short shaft was easy to choke up on to get more leverage. Although it's light, it still scrapes well. This shovel is also a multi-season tool, performing well at moving all sorts of materials, including snow, mulch, soil, and gravel.
This shovel comes with one major downside: ergonomics. Its short shaft forced us to hunch over to scrape and shovel. Consequently, the Ames was one of the hardest on the backs of the shovels we tested. You could add an ergonomic handle attachment, which would help a little, but the shorter length forces you to scrunch down.
The Ames moved big volumes of snow better than any other shovel we tested.
The True Temper Poly 18 is a more mainstream take on an ergonomic shovel than the ErgieShovel or Snow Joe Shovelution. It doesn't give the same ergonomic relief but is also more approachable for people used to a traditional snow shovel. It's a good entry product to the ergonomic shovel world.
The scoop flexes dramatically, causing it to deflect over more firm snow or ice while scraping. It has a nylon wear strip, which makes it safer for the materials you are shoveling on, but it also adds to it not scraping as well as other models that we tested.
The Bully Tools 92200 is our favorite tool for breaking ice on sidewalks and driveways. In a perfect world, we would all be so on top of our snow removal that thick ice would never build up. But when 1-4 inches of ice does form, a flat metal shovel often can not break through, and a typical snow shovel is useless. An icebreaker is key in these moments, and the 92200 is the burliest model we have tested. The blade has withstood years of use, and the handle is robust and heavy to help build inertia when attacking the ice. Many other models we have tested are either too lightweight to build the force needed or have a blade that eventually bends or loosens.
While this is the best ice breaking option we have tested, it doesn't work that well when temps are sub-freezing and the ice is fully bonded to the cement or asphalt. It works much better when the ice has been exposed to the sun and can release a little of its grip. Time your ice breaking sessions for the warmest part of the day. You must crouch lower with a relatively short shaft to save your back from strain. Once you break the ice, you need a second shovel to clear the ice chunks. We are testing the DIIG Ice Chopper against the Bully. So far, we have been impressed with the DIIG's ergonomics due to the much longer shaft. However, it feels much more flimsy than the Bully, so we need to evaluate its durability in more detail before recommending it.
Here, we show the ice-scraping difference between the Snow Joe Shovelution and Bully. The Snow Joe can’t come close to penetrating the ice while the Bully gets down to the thin layer bonded to the pavement. To get that last little bit of ice up, use ice melt or wait until the pavement heats up.
Credit: Chris McNamara
How We Test Snow Shovels
We tested these shovels near Lake Tahoe, which averages more than 400 inches of snow a year. We tried each shovel through different snow conditions, from deep and heavy slush to light and fluffy powder. We devised five tests to evaluate how well each shovel moved significant volumes of snow, pushed light snow, and scraped ice. We spent hours shoveling walkways, driveways, roofs, and our parking lot.
Some shots from the dozen plus snow shovels we tested in 2024.
Credit: Chris McNamara
Why Trust GearLab
Our lead tester, Chris McNamara, has been living in the snow for nearly two decades and has been gear testing for 14 of those years. He has now tested more than a thousand outdoor and consumer products. He regularly removes snow for three houses and local businesses in South Lake Tahoe. He has tested over 30 snow shovels, ice breakers, and snow blowers in pretty much every snow condition imaginable. Jason Peters has been living in Wisconsin for the last five years and is no stranger to moving snow. His most recent snow removal adventure was hitting a three-foot-tall snow berm in the middle of a highway and spending the next three hours extricating his Toyota truck by shovel.
The Ultimate Snow Shovel Quiver
Based on our testing in various snow conditions, here's the ideal snow shovel combination:
30-36 inch pushing shovel: Perfect for clearing large areas during light snowfalls.
Ergonomic handled snow shovel: A must-have for efficiently handling heavy snow.
Ice breaker: An essential tool for breaking up and removing built-up ice (although ideally, you never let the ice build up in the first place)
Car shovel: fits in your trunk and can get you out of a bind if you slide off the road
Credit: Jason Peters
Analysis and Test Results
Below is a summary of our test findings and how each shovel performed in side-by-side tests.
Shoveling
The Ames #12 Aluminum Scoop was the best at shoveling snow. Its deep scoop and short shaft make it super efficient at getting that snow over the snowbank at the edge of your driveway. That said, it is so effective you have to be extra careful not to grab too much snow and hurt your back. It was followed by the Snow Joe Shovelution and ErgieShovel, which could not move as much snow as the Ames but were much easier on our backs.
The Ames #12 shovels are great with one major downside, ergonomics. After about 20 minutes, our lower back felt it.
Credit: Jason Peters
Scraping
The Garant Snow Pusher 24 excelled at scraping; nothing else we tested even compared except the ice breakers, which are narrow and just for breaking up ice. This shovel is ideal for clearing ice and compacting snow from driveways or walkways. Of the shovel designs, the AMES #12 Aluminum Scoop did much better than the rest because of its full metal blade. Most plastic shovels, even if they had a metal insert, did not scrape nearly as well, and over time, that metal blade often became bent. When you need to break up solid ice, nothing performs even close to as well as an ice breaker like the Bully Tools 92200.
Garant Snow Pusher 24 would rather be pushing snow then shoveling it, that doesn't mean it cannot.
Credit: Jason Peters
Pushing
The SnowPlow and the Garant Yukon 36 Snow Pusher are our favorite tools for pushing snow. The SnowPlow edges ahead because the nearly 36" blade and burly construction made it our first choice anytime we had a few inches of snow or less. Some of our reviewers preferred the Yukon 36 because of the ergonomic handle and the vertical edges, which help prevent snow from leaking out the sides. The Garant Snow Pusher 24 was perfectly suited to pushing snow. Its wide, flat blade got below the snow and moved it efficiently. An interesting competitor to the Garant was the Snowcaster 30SNC, which is super efficient in light snow. Its wide blade means fewer passes are necessary to clear off a surface. The caveat here is if it snows more than a few inches, the Snowcaster gets heavy, and there is no practical way to clear its blade. In the nine-inch storm we tested, we found this trait incredibly frustrating.
Ergonomics
The ErgieShovel wins hands down for its namesake ergonomics. Its dual-handle design prevented us from hunching more than we had to. Right behind it is the Snow Joe Shovelution, which has you scrunching a little more but still provides good body positioning when you throw snow. Other shovels with a bent handle design, like the True Temper, were also easy on our backs, just less so.
3 Snow Shoveling Tips
Never drive over snow on on your driveway. It can make it 10 times more effort to remove and leads to forming an ice layer
Push instead of lift whenever possible. It's much less effort and much less likely to lead to a back injury.
How to Choose The Best Snow Shovel
Below are four key considerations when choosing the right shovel or developing a quiver of snow shovels.
How Wide of a Shovel Do You Need?
The width of your snow shovel determines how many passes you need to clear your driveway or walkway. A wider shovel (30-36 inches) can clear large areas quickly for light snowfalls but becomes cumbersome with deeper snow. Standard 18-20 inch blades are more maneuverable and better for lifting heavy snow.
Is a Pusher or a Scooper Better for You?
Pusher shovels excel at efficiently and ergonomically clearing light snow (less than 3 inches), but require space to deposit the snow. They're ideal for quick cleanups after snowblowers and for areas with minimal snowfall. Scooper shovels are better for lifting and throwing heavier snowfalls. Some pusher shovels offer a hybrid scooping function, which can affect ergonomics. Snow pushers can be great on decks if your railing design lets you push snow over the edge.
Should You Get an Ergonomic Handle?
Ergonomic handles reduce back strain by minimizing bending during scooping. They may take some getting used to due to their extended design but they are highly beneficial for handling large snow volumes. We noticed considerably less back strain using ergonomic shovels. For light snowfalls, standard handles may suffice.
How Light or Heavy Should the Shovel Be?
Lighter shovels are easier to handle during small snowfalls but are often less durable. They are a great option for occasional use or minimal snowfall. We appreciate having a lightweight shovel in our collection, but we use it sparingly for precise work with light snow. If you rely solely on a super light shovel and aren't careful, you're likely to break it.
Conclusion
Although there is no perfect shovel for all snow conditions, you can get a versatile shovel that will perform great in most situations. As always, the most ergonomic and effective shovel is the one you use the most often before the snow builds up and consolidates.
Another useful item to have on hand for clearing your sidewalk or driveway is a container of ice melt. Our reviews can help you find the best outdoor tools, whether you're tackling snow or shoveling dirt with a gardening shovel.
