It is possible that in comparing this blower to the ancient handheld one i had for years, this may merely be a case of being 'relatively' better.But that's not the case. This blower kicks butt.I have a half acre portion of my yard that is cleared, but wooded with lots of leaves, twigs, branches, acorns, and a portion of this is a landscaped hill that's filed with ground / creeping juniper that is difficult to remove leaves from each Spring. without damaging the juniper.Between concentrating the full blowing force on the dense creeping juniper bed to get the leaves out of it, to broadly sweeping the large blower force in the more wide open portions of this wooded area, it took me about 3 hours to push EVERYTHING in this half acre into one long line of leaves/acorns/twigs (and also pretty large 1" diameter fallen branches) to be tarped and moved. By hand, this had taken about 8-9 hrs of hard work. These 3 hrs were easy. This was WELL WORTH the money spent.Longevity and reliability is an open question, buy my brother in law has had this same model for 8 years now, with no issues except the need once to rebuild the carburetor, which is pretty simple on these engines.When I look back at how much time i'd spent doing annual yard cleanup historically, and how fast and easy this blower made it, I regret not having made this purchase 5 yrs ago. Live and learn.