Garden Last updated · owner ratings verified July 2026
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Side by side
| Our pick Husqvarna Husqvarna 350BT Backpack Blower Better overall $330-400 Check price | Husqvarna Husqvarna 125B Handheld Blower Best handheld $180-220 Check price | CRAFTSMAN CRAFTSMAN B215 Handheld Gas Blower Best value $110-150 Check price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What owners rate it | |||
| Owner rating | 4.6 / 5 (3,225) | 4.3 / 5 (5,351) | 4.2 / 5 (3,874) |
| Specifications | |||
| Engine | 50.2 cc, 2.1 hp, 2-cycle X-Torq | 28 cc, 1.1 hp, 2-cycle | 25 cc, 2-cycle |
| Air volume (CFM) | 692 CFM at the housing | 470 CFM at the housing | About 430 CFM at the housing |
| Air speed (MPH) | 180 MPH | 170 MPH | 180 MPH |
| Format | Backpack with padded harness | Handheld | Handheld |
| Weight | About 22.5 lb | About 9.4 lb | About 10 lb |
| Starting system | Choke and primer, air purge system | Choke, primer and air purge | Choke and primer bulb |
| Service and parts | Full dealer network, parts stocked for years | Full dealer network, parts stocked for years | Retail brand, no dealer network; third-party repair |
| Who it suits | |||
| Best for | Half an acre or more, wet leaves, and long fall cleanup sessions | A quarter-acre lot where a backpack is more machine than the job needs | A small suburban lot and an occasional driveway clear |
Ratings are aggregated Amazon owner ratings, not our own testing. Figures verified July 2026.
Pros and cons
Husqvarna 350BT Backpack Blower
- 692 CFM is more air than anything else here by a wide margin, and CFM is what actually moves a wet leaf pile
- Backpack harness puts the weight on your hips instead of your forearm, which is the difference between twenty minutes and two hours
- X-Torq engine design cuts fuel use and emissions against a conventional two-stroke of the same size
- Sold and serviced through Husqvarna dealers, so carburetor kits, fuel lines and impellers are genuinely obtainable
- At about 22 lbs it is a commitment to put on for a ten-minute driveway clear
- Costs two to three times the CRAFTSMAN
- Loud enough that many towns' noise ordinances apply, and neighbors will notice
Husqvarna 125B Handheld Blower
- 470 CFM from a handheld is genuinely strong, and well ahead of the CRAFTSMAN
- Cruise control holds the throttle so your finger is not locked on the trigger for an hour
- Adjustable tube length, which matters more than it sounds if you are tall or short
- Same dealer parts and service path as the backpack machine
- At 9.4 lbs on one arm it still gets heavy well before a backpack does
- Owner rating is the weakest of the two Husqvarna machines here, with starting complaints the recurring theme
- Costs noticeably more than the CRAFTSMAN for a similar format
CRAFTSMAN B215 Handheld Gas Blower
- Cheapest gas blower here by a clear margin, and cheap enough to be an impulse replacement
- Light in the hand and simple to operate, with nothing to learn
- Sold in big-box stores, so you can buy one on a Saturday morning rather than ordering it
- Handles dry leaves and grass clippings on a small lot perfectly adequately
- The only gas blower CRAFTSMAN fields, so there is no larger model to step up to within the brand
- Lowest owner rating on this page, with starting and carburetor complaints the dominant theme
- No dealer service path — a fault usually means a third-party small-engine shop or a new blower
- Air volume is well short of either Husqvarna, which shows immediately on wet leaves
Decision factors
What you actually pay
The CRAFTSMAN undercuts the Husqvarna handheld by a meaningful margin and the backpack by two to three times. If the decision is being made purely on the number at checkout, it is not close. The question is what happens over five falls.
Where the Husqvarna money goes. Into air volume and into the service path. The 350BT moves roughly half again as much air as the CRAFTSMAN, which on a wet leaf mat is the difference between pushing the pile and rearranging it. The rest goes into a dealer network that stocks the parts a two-cycle engine actually consumes.
Running costs are identical in principle and different in practice. Every machine here burns a 50:1 two-cycle mix, and every one of them will need a spark plug, an air filter and eventually a carburetor rebuild kit. On the Husqvarna those are counter parts at a dealer. On the CRAFTSMAN you are hunting a generic kit online or paying a shop's minimum labor charge, which on a $130 blower is most of a new blower.
The cost nobody budgets for is fuel discipline. Ethanol-blended pump gas left in a small two-cycle carburetor over a winter is the single most common cause of a blower that will not start in October. Ethanol-free fuel or a stabilizer costs a few dollars a season and prevents the repair that ends most cheap blowers. See how to mix gas for a leaf blower for the ratio and the storage rules.
Which one fits you
- Half an acre with mature trees Husqvarna 350BT 692 CFM and a harness are what make a two-hour fall cleanup possible rather than an endurance test.
- Quarter-acre suburban lot Husqvarna 125B Genuine handheld air volume with cruise control, and the same dealer parts supply as the backpack.
- Small lot, tight budget CRAFTSMAN B215 Enough blower for dry leaves and a driveway, at a price where a few seasons of service is a fair return.
- Wet leaves and pine needles Husqvarna 350BT Air volume, not air speed, is what lifts a matted wet pile, and this is the only machine here with enough of it.
If neither is right
- Echo PB-2620 Handheld Gas Blower 456 CFM from a 25.4 cc engine, sold through the same kind of servicing dealer network as Husqvarna, with a professional reputation and a long consumer warranty. The strongest handheld alternative if the Husqvarna 125B's starting complaints put you off.
- Poulan Pro PR48BT Backpack Blower A 48 cc backpack at a noticeably lower price than the Husqvarna 350BT, with 475 CFM. Less air and a thinner service network, but the cheapest legitimate route into a harness-mounted machine if your back is the limiting factor rather than your budget.
- EGO POWER+ Cordless Leaf Blower, 650 CFM The honest question behind this whole comparison. A modern 56V battery blower now matches a mid-size gas machine on air volume, starts instantly, needs no mixed fuel, and is quiet enough for early mornings. Runtime under load is the trade, and batteries are the real cost.
Which should you actually buy?
Buy the Husqvarna 350BT if you have half an acre or more, mature trees, and any interest in owning the machine for a decade. Buy the Husqvarna 125B if a backpack is overkill but you still want real air volume and a parts supply. Buy the CRAFTSMAN B215 only if the lot is small, the leaves are dry, and the price difference is what decides whether you buy a blower at all.
Does CRAFTSMAN still take gas blowers seriously?
This is the fact that shapes everything else. CRAFTSMAN's gas blower line-up is the B215, a single 25 cc handheld. Husqvarna sells a ladder of gas machines from small handhelds through to professional backpacks, alongside a parts catalog and a servicing dealer network built around them.
That is not an accident or an oversight. CRAFTSMAN is a retail brand whose future is the V20 battery platform, and it keeps one gas blower on the shelf for buyers who specifically want one. Husqvarna is an outdoor power equipment manufacturer whose gas engines are the core business. When you buy the CRAFTSMAN you are buying a product; when you buy the Husqvarna you are buying into a service relationship. Whether that is worth a hundred dollars depends entirely on how long you intend to keep it.
Which number matters, CFM or MPH?
Every blower box leads with miles per hour because it is the bigger number. It is also the less useful one. MPH describes how fast air leaves the tube; CFM describes how much of it there is. A narrow, fast jet scatters a leaf pile. A large volume of moving air pushes it as a mass.
Look at what that means here. The CRAFTSMAN quotes 180 MPH, matching the far larger Husqvarna 350BT, and on the box they look comparable. In air volume the Husqvarna moves substantially more, which is why one clears a wet lawn in a steady sweep and the other has to work the same patch repeatedly. If you take one thing from this comparison, make it that you should compare CFM first and treat MPH as a tiebreak.
Handheld or backpack, and what your arm can actually take
A handheld blower is fine for ten or fifteen minutes. After that the weight is entirely on one forearm and one shoulder, and people start cutting the job short. A backpack moves that load onto a hip belt, which is why professional crews use them exclusively and why the 350BT weighs twice as much as the handhelds yet is far more comfortable over an hour.
The rule of thumb worth applying: under a quarter-acre with light leaf fall, handheld. Half an acre, mature deciduous trees, or a property you clear several times each fall, backpack. Our guide on handheld vs backpack blowers covers the middle cases.
What actually breaks, and who fixes it?
Two-cycle engines fail in predictable ways and almost never fatally. The carburetor gums up from stale ethanol fuel, the fuel lines go hard and crack, the primer bulb splits, the spark plug fouls. Every one of those is a cheap part and an afternoon, provided you can buy the part.
That is the practical difference between these brands. Husqvarna dealers stock carburetor rebuild kits, fuel line sets and impellers for machines years out of production, and will do the work if you would rather not. CRAFTSMAN's gas blower has no equivalent path: a small-engine shop will service it, but on a machine costing a little over a hundred dollars the labor charge frequently exceeds the value of the repair. That asymmetry is the real reason the recommendation lands where it does, and it is worth reading alongside our leaf blower maintenance guide.
Noise, neighbors and local rules
All three machines are loud, and the backpack is the loudest. Gas blowers sit in a range where hearing protection is genuinely warranted, not optional, and where a growing number of towns now regulate use by hour or by season. California has restricted new small off-road engine sales outright, and other jurisdictions are following in narrower forms.
This is a live consideration rather than a footnote, because it affects resale and long-term usefulness as much as convenience. If your municipality already restricts blower hours, the case for a large gas machine weakens considerably, and a battery blower that can run at seven in the morning without complaint starts to look like the practical choice regardless of raw performance.
What does a two-cycle engine ask of you?
More than a battery machine, and this is the part buyers underestimate on both brands. Every blower here runs on gasoline pre-mixed with two-cycle oil, normally at 50:1. Get the ratio wrong in one direction and you starve the engine of lubrication; get it wrong in the other and you foul the plug and smoke out the neighborhood. Mixing by eye is the most common way a new owner ruins a new blower.
The second demand is storage discipline. Pump gasoline with ethanol in it absorbs moisture and separates over a few months, and the residue it leaves in a tiny carburetor is what causes the October ritual of pulling a starter cord forty times. Either run the tank dry before the machine goes in the shed for winter, or fill it with ethanol-free premixed fuel, which costs more per can and removes the problem entirely.
Neither of these is difficult. But if the honest answer is that you will not do them, that is a legitimate reason to buy a battery blower and skip this entire comparison.
The call
Husqvarna 350BT is the better machine and the right buy for anyone with real leaf fall to deal with: the highest air volume here, a harness that makes long sessions possible, and a dealer network that keeps a two-cycle engine alive well past the point most cheap blowers are discarded. The CRAFTSMAN B215 is the value pick and an entirely reasonable purchase for a small lot, provided you go in knowing it is a single-model line with no service path behind it.
All rankings come from aggregated Amazon owner ratings and published expert consensus rather than first-hand trials, as set out in how we rank. For a related head-to-head, see CRAFTSMAN vs Toro. The full field is in best gas leaf blower, and if you are reconsidering fuel type entirely, gas vs battery leaf blower is where to start.