Stihl built its first battery-powered snow thrower to offer plenty of power with minimal maintenance
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A gas snow blower spends most of the year parked, so the first storm tends to start with stale fuel and a shoulder injury from yanking the cord. The Stihl SFA 120 is the company’s first battery-powered snow thrower. Stihl says it goes on sale November 1 at $699.99 as a bare tool or $899.99 with a battery and charger.
It runs on the same AP batteries as more than 60 Stihl yard tools, and the kit’s battery comes from the new ALLPRO system that won best cordless tool battery system in our 2026 Home of the Future awards. Rubber paddles on a steel auger do the scraping, and a handlebar control swings the chute through 180 degrees without stopping.
Why Stihl went with a rubber auger
The SFA 120 is a single-stage machine, so one auger scoops up the snow and throws it through the chute. Stihl’s auger is a steel frame with rubber paddles. Louis Danet, Stihl’s product manager for push mowers and snow equipment, says the rubber absorbs the impacts a driveway hands out, which takes stress off the auger. They also reduce noise compared to the steel competition. And because the rubber paddles are designed to be easily replaced, it cuts down on degraded performance over time without requiring a trip to the repair shop.
Those paddles clear a 22-inch path, an inch wider than the 21-inch swath common on battery single-stages. The extra width means fewer passes on a two-car driveway, but every inch is more snow to lift and throw, and that load lands on the battery. Danet says depth and density swing the work so much that Stihl rates the SFA 120 in driveways cleared rather than minutes.
The scraper bar underneath and the two polymer skid shoes on the sides are replaceable too. Past those, there’s no oil to change, no spark plug, and no carburetor to gum up over the summer. Getting the SFA 120 ready for a storm means unfolding the handlebar and sliding in a battery.
A chute you can aim without stopping
The chute rotates through 180 degrees, and the control sits on the handlebar, so you can move the stream from one side of the driveway to the other without stopping or walking around to the front of the machine. Vertical angle is still set by hand, with a quick-release lever on the chute itself.
Two LED headlights point ahead of the auger for clearing before sunrise. When the season ends, the handlebar folds nearly flat, and Danet says the machine can be tipped up on end to take up less floor space. A tool that runs a handful of times a winter shouldn’t eat a parking spot the other nine months.
Two battery bays that take turns
The brushless motor draws from a single battery at a time from a dual-battery bay. When the first pack runs down, it switches to the second on its own, and a single battery works in either slot. Danet says Stihl skipped drawing from both packs at once because that approach is mostly about peak power for commercial machines, and it adds cost. That’s a running theme with this machine, as it’s meant for the consumer market. It intentionally eschews overkill features and power levels that often cost users money they spend for features they don’t need.
Stihl rates the SFA 120 to clear a 7-car driveway in wet, heavy snow or a 10-car driveway in 2.75 inches of fresh snow. Both figures assume two AP 300.0 P batteries, and the $899.99 kit includes one. A second AP 300.0 P costs $329.99 on Stihl’s site as of early October.
Because of the more reasonable power level, this machine isn’t built for clearing a two-foot wall of snow. Instead, the company recommends a few smaller passes during the storm to keep things running smoothly and easily. That’s a better strategy, even with a gas-powered machine.
Going electric
During a Stihl product demo earlier this year, I watched the company use an extremely cold ALLPRO battery with no issue. That may seem like a pedestrian feat, but temperature can have a profound effect on rechargeable batteries. That’s an obvious challenge for a snow thrower, which only gets used in frigid temps.
Lithium-ion cells slow down in the cold. Ions move more sluggishly through the electrolyte, internal resistance climbs, and the pack can’t push out power as quickly, which shows up as a tool that bogs down or quits early on a charge that read full in the garage. Charging a frozen pack is worse, since lithium can plate onto the anode and permanently cut capacity. Danet says finding a battery that holds up in those temperatures was the number one challenge in developing the SFA 120, and that the fridge test I saw is close to what Stihl runs internally. The company doesn’t publish a minimum operating temperature for the ALLPRO packs, so I’m looking forward to getting real world experience during our review.
Stihl SFA 120
Stihl SFA 120 Snow Thrower
If there’s already a Stihl trimmer or blower in the garage, this is the version to get. The bare SFA 120 takes the AP batteries you own, with bays for two, and a single pack works in either slot. You get the same 22-inch rubber-paddle auger, handlebar chute control, and LED headlights, just no battery or charger in the box. One AP 300.0 P battery and an AL 301.1 charger come in the box, about $248 less than buying them separately. The AP 300.0 P is the 333Wh pack from Stihl’s new ALLPRO line, and Stihl’s 7-to-10-car driveway rating assumes you have two of them. We have an SFA 120 coming in for testing once the snow shows up.
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