I had a small collection of Ego tools prior to getting divorced...and until recently I no longer had that small collection. The ex-wife really wanted them and I was nice enough to give them to her (okay, so the true story is a little more complex than that, but I digress...)I'd been antsy to get my Ego setup back, after having tried and utilized several other brands and models, including battery and gas-powered. I fix small engines on the side for fun and overall, prefer those for most cases. However, there are a few things where I think a good battery setup is superior, and trimmers and blowers are a couple of those areas. My general toolkit consists of Ridgid products, and I did a LOT of research on the new offerings for a trimmer/blower they have. It would have made some sense so I could inter-change the batteries on all my tools...but at the cost and the reviews I saw out there, I couldn't justify doing that and simply went back to the Ego products.They're not light, but they're well-balanced and easy to use. You can get some great deals with high-capacity batteries and I jumped on a couple of those. The batteries are great and the trimmer has power to spare. I can fully blow off the driveway, the patio, the excess that inevitable gets in the road from mowing and still have battery life left. I use this blower with the added short nozzle from Amazon and while it's not quite as good as the dryers on the out side of the automated car washes, it blows off a fair amount of water and only requires me to towel-dry a little bit, and cut my time probably by 75%.I can't say that I've tried every brand out there, but for the performance and value you'd have a hard time convincing me that you're going to do better than Ego.