You must live someplace that gets powder and not real snow. There is no way a battery powered snow blower can handle heavy moist snow.
I live in New England. We get all kinds of snow. Many of my neighbors with smaller driveways (say three car lengths by two car widths) have been using electrics in the last couple of years. I have a 100 ft long driveway that ends in a large “court” so electric isn’t going to work. Yet. Until the last couple of years I never saw electrics at all around here.
I have a 2 stage self propelled 27" with AC electric start. What I would look for in a new one is better positioned handles. They seem to universally have the 2 handles come straight back on the larger units. This is awkward and hard on the wrists when muscling it through heavy snow. The shorter you are the worse it gets. If we start getting a lot of snow I will cut the handles and rotate them 90 degrees out so one’s wrist sits normally like a lawnmower.
My Toro has the horizontal bar handle (like a lawnmower), which is, I agree, a good feature.
Yes, that’s what I would look for. otherwise every time you turn it’s going to be the weight of the snowblower against your wrist at an awkward angle.
I can’t see a battery powered machine working in our extreme cold conditions that usually follow a western Canadian blizzard.
I’ve always had good luck with Toro. I find snow blowers need very little in the way of maintenance. Fuel stabilizer, occasional oil change, air in the tires, maybe a spark plug.
Nothing new to add except electric start is a must and don’t skimp on size. Buy the widest model that fits your budget. Fewer passes means less time out in the cold and more time inside sipping the beverage of your choice by the fire.
If you get more than an occasional inch or two, avoid anything single stage and ones that aren’t self propelled. Pushing one of those little bastards repeatedly into a 10" snow drift will ruin your day fast. I’d rather just shovel.
I was up using ours on Friday, after I had read this thread. I got to thinking about it, and I haven’t done Jack Shit to this machine in all the years its been up at the house. I used to run the carb dry at the end of the season, but my brother also uses it now and then, and who knows if he bothers. I don’t think so. I think I may have dumped some Sta-Bil in it once. Had to replace a bolt and Nylock on the chute once.
Bubkis otherwise. Maybe I’ll change the oil this year.
I don’t have anything to add to the snowblower advice already given, as when I finally decided to put away the shovel I had to get into the snowplowing contract game because I simply have no place to store a snowblower. This is now my third year or fourth year of paying for driveway snowplowing, and while it’s certainly very convenient, the cost by now would easily have paid for a really high-end snowblower with probably many hundreds of dollars left over.
Every year I think that because of warming winters and less and less snow I should maybe not hire a snowplowing service this year. But I know what would happen. I can see the headlines: “Record Snowfall – Millions Stranded – Drifts Up to Ten Feet High!” 
What are they charging for driveway plowing where you are.? It was $40 here last year, and I’m betting it’s gone up again this year.
It’s a seasonal contract, currently CAD $600 for the winter. It was originally $500, then $550, then $600, and stayed at $600 again this year. So yeah, now that I think about it, it’s been four winters, total CAD $2250. You could buy one hell of a snowblower for that!
Yeah, that’s what I spent on plowing last winter, $600.
Actually, now that I think about it even more, it’s been five winters! The first winter was after I got back from a week in the hospital and a heart operation, and thought, to hell with snow shoveling! It was a partial season so he charged $400. So in fact I’ve paid $2650 for snowplowing service so far, over five seasons! Yikes!!
Wise decision! Enough people have heart attacks shoveling snow already, no need to add to the list.
I wish I only paid $600 for snow removal at our secondary house. We’re often not there for weeks at a time so we pay $1,100 US/year. That runs from Nov. 1 to April 1. Anything after April 1 is “free.” And it’s snowed there in May.
When I got my first blower about 25 years ago, I changed the oil every fall for the first couple of years. I decided it was a waste as the oil always looked brand new. From then on I just change it whenever I feel like it. Never had a problem.
See my thread from 10 years ago, Ask the professional snow removal guy.
It contains discussion of snowblowers, and other relevant info.
Ha! A day or two before I took myself to the hospital because of chest pains, there was a major snowfall, and I was out there shoveling. Little did I know that I was shoveling snow while actually having a heart attack! Fortunately it was a mild one, as such things go. When I did arrive in ER the next day or thereabouts, the triage nurse took my blood pressure and it was through the roof. I thought I’d be sent back to the waiting area for the usual long wait, but no, I was in an examination room immediately.
So when my next door neighbour is shoveling his driveway and looks enviously at the plow that zips up and down my driveway clearing it out in a few seconds, I think to myself, dammit, I deserve it. I nearly died doing that shit.
But as I said earlier, a snowblower is much cheaper in the long run, and running a good powerful snowblower seems like kind of a fun winter activity!
It actually is, in a way. No matter how much I might bitch and moan before and during the actual snow blowing, at the end I always look out at the result and appreciate the good job I’ve done. 
You might check out local full service dealers and buy from them vs big box store. The garden center near me does pick up and drop off repair service, which is essential for a big blower, but they give preference to customers who purchased from them and during busy times getting dropped to the bottom of the repair queue can be a major inconvenience.
Wow, I never heard of that. Sure enough, both Lowes and Home Depot have 10% discounts for vets. Who knows how much money I have been leaving on the table over the years.
Hopefully the exclusions aren’t too onerous. I remember how my wife would get coupons for Macys that had dozens of exclusions on the back that pretty much made them useless for anything we really wanted.
I think the only exception so far was on shipping. Little stuff, all the way up to our dishwasher got the 10% discount.