Toro 60V Power Shovel vs. ECHO PAS-2620 Pro Paddle: Which is Better for Snow Removal?

What's going on everybody, I'm Jake the Lawn Kid. Welcome to the first ever video here on the ECHO Means Business YouTube channel by me, Jake the Lawn Kid.

If you want to check me out, you can subscribe to me on YouTube.

Today guys, to kick off our first video of the 2021 launch season, I would like to go ahead and settle a debate that I've been having in my head now for the last couple of months that I've been doing snow.

And that is: which handheld tool is better for snow removal and hard-to-reach areas that you really wouldn't be able to take a bigger snowblower?

Is it:

• A) a power shovel like the Toro 60V that came out this year, or
• B) the Pro Paddle, an attachment you could buy for your ECHO 2620?

That, my friends, is what we're going to be talking about today. Let's get into it.

Okay guys, so let's go ahead and dive right in. So the first thing we're going to be talking about is going to be specs. Now, typically when I do reviews, I don't like to dive into specs. I like to focus more on the performance—as I'm sure we all do, right?

But I believe these couple of specs that I'm going to mention here are going to be very, very important as they're probably going to help you in deciding which one you want to buy.

So we're going to be comparing the ECHO 2620 with the Pro Paddle attachment to the Toro 60V power shovel. So let's go and look at some numbers here.

So the Toro power shovel—you can find at pretty much any big box store such as a Home Depot—for around $239. That's typically what it's going to retail for.

As far as your 2620 goes, it's more of a professional-end model, so you're going to have to go to your dealer for that. That alone is going to be about $319.

And then to top it off, the Pro Paddle attachment—that's going to be another $299. So that's going to be well over $600 for that attachment.

Now I know what you're thinking right away when you hear the price of the ECHO 2620 and the Pro Paddle attachment. You're thinking, "Whoa, why am I paying so much money?"

You can actually save a little bit of money with the ECHO 2620 because what you can do over time, as you continue to grow and diversify with your equipment, you can actually purchase more and more attachments, which in turn will make your 2620 more useful in everyday jobs.

So one more thing I want to talk about as far as specs goes is going to be width. Now with the power shovel, you're getting about a foot of clearing width. Whereas with the Pro Paddle, you're getting about two feet of clearing width.

Now, in my opinion, I think the power shovel might be a little bit better in this regard, because aside from it being a little bit smaller, you get a dedicated auger assembly for snow, which might help it dig a little bit deeper compared to the Pro Paddle, which is more of a sweeper for more broad, everyday tasks—including snow.

So that's something to think about. With that being said, let's go ahead and start a review and do some side-by-side comparisons with both of these units.

First thing I want to talk about is transportation. I think it's very important to talk about transportation, because with tools like this, we're taking them around with us all the time and doing different jobs. So when we can condense them down and take up less space in our trucks or our cars or our trailers—you name it—that is very important. So you can condense both of them down, meaning you could take the shaft on both of them apart.

Power shovel does have a disadvantage, because yes—you can take the shaft apart—but when you take the shaft apart, you're actually left with this insulated wire that runs all the way through the shaft, all the way from the motor to the auger to supply the auger power.

When you take it apart, the only thing you could really do with it is fold it up, otherwise you can risk breaking the wire, right? You need to keep that wire in there at all times. Whereas with the ECHO 2620, you have the metal shaft that runs down, that connects to the unit on the inside when the unit's connected—and comes out when the unit's disconnected—which I believe is better.

When you take the unit apart, you don't have to worry about any wires coming through it. You could just take them apart, maybe put the unit on one side of the truck and the sweeper on the other side of the truck. If that's something you need to do to save space—you can do that.

However, with the Toro power shovel, it's pretty much together all the time. And with that wire hanging out there—which again is insulated and sealed so you don't have to worry about getting shocked—I believe that's a little bit of a problem.

Because if you're throwing this around, being a little bit rough with it—because let's be honest, we are lawn care professionals here, right? We do throw stuff around in our truck sometimes, even when we don't mean to—that can make it more susceptible to breaking, and over time just cause a lot of problems, in my opinion, as far as storage goes in your truck.

So with the power shovel—definitely not my favorite tool when it comes to those aspects. So I think this is where the 2620 would definitely win, considering we have not talked about performance yet. So 2620 takes the gold on this one.

So now we're gonna go ahead and talk about performance. So what I got here is a little side street area alongside my house that actually accumulates quite a bit of snow.

Nobody plows it in the wintertime, so it's very easy to come out here and do some testing. That's exactly what I did.

Over here we had quite a couple different situations to test out with both units that I thought would be pretty cool—pretty common situations that we would come across, especially if we wanted to try and replace a shovel.

Such as: Light snow accumulation, heavy snow accumulation, as well as some compacted snow that has been walked on and/or driven over.

This is going to be a perfect test for both of them to see which one is better. So let’s take a look at it. Mmhmm.

Okay—so final verdict, Jake: which one do you think is better?

In my opinion, I think both are great in their own way. I like the Toro power shovel—especially with that auger assembly. I think it's going to make clearance a lot easier, especially in the compacted stuff, as you saw earlier.

Having that dedicated auger and a little bit more weight added to it, if you will, just made it easier to get through all that heavy, compacted stuff that I was doing at the end of the street.

Now as far as broad usage goes, I think this is where the Pro Paddle is going to take home the gold. Because considering that this is only one of many attachments that the 2620 can take, this attachment can do more than just snow. You could use it to clear off street residue off of your driveway after the snow melts. You could use it to clear off fertilizer pellets. You could use it to pretty much do anything at any time of the year that involves clearing off hard surfaces.

Whereas the power shovel—it is a dedicated snow tool. It’s great. But when it comes to overall broad usage and what you can do with it, you don’t really have as much freedom, if you will, as to what you could do with it. It’s pretty much strictly for snow.

If you like this video, please leave a like. Leave a comment down below. Let me know what you thought about it.

And if you'd like to see more videos like this—leave comments down below. Let me know what you thought about it. Let me know: what would you like me to compare next?

Would you like me to compare attachments? Would you like me to compare two units?

Let me know down below and hopefully we can make that happen here on the ECHO Means Business YouTube channel at some point here in 2021 as the season progresses.

So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, please let us know down below what you thought about it, and we will get back to those as soon as we can.

With that—I’m Jake the Lawn Kid. Thank you for watching.

As I say on my channel: I’ll see you in the next video.

If I don’t see you in the next video, your lawns are gonna be dominated.

See ya.