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Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
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Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
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True to its name, the Tru Tough can stand up to heavy use. We like how lightweight it is, but also the head's heftiness, making for smooth raking. Read More
The blunt tines on this rake can get easily clogged with pine needles, and the interesting rectangular head is only okay at picking up leaves. Read More
The Razor-Back is a sturdy rake that will handle heavy use well and stay comfortable in your hands. Read More
This Bully Tools rake is an average rake that will get the job done, it just might damage your lawn. Read More
The Orientools is an all around average rake that will get the job done. Read More
Leaves are a pain to clean up—especially when they're covering your whole yard. You need a reliable rake to help you to take care of the mess—and to rake your leaf pile back up again after you've jumped into it.
Choosing the best leaf rake is more involved than adding the first search result to your online shopping cart. To make your work easier, we tested the most highly recommended rakes on the market to see which ones performed the best.
To really put the best rakes to the test, we spent some quality time raking in a New England lawn that was so overgrown you wouldn't want to approach it without gardening gloves. After raking through piles of leaves, pine needles, acorns, and rocks, we liked the lightweight Truper Tru Tough 24-inch Leaf Rake (available at Amazon) the best, due to its solid performance and ease of use.
A quality rake is an essential garden tool to keep your yard in tip top shape and will likely last for years. Whether you’re looking for a metal rake or a plastic one—or one of each—we’ve rounded up some of the best rakes on the market.
Adjustable
Lightweight
Doesn't clog easily
Flimsy construction
Uncomfortable to use
The best rake for you will largely depend on what kind of landscape you want to be raking. Here are a few things to consider before buying a new rake.
What kind of lawn debris do you have in your yard? You may have leaves, acorns, small sticks, pine needles, or anything else that falls off of trees. If you’re often dealing with something more complex than just leaves, it may help to have rake tines that are further apart. This way, it’s less likely to get clogged with sticks or pine needles.
On the other hand, tines that are spaced too far apart may start to miss leaves and require you to rake the same swath of ground over and over again. Also, look for rakes that have "Medium Duty" or "Heavy Duty" labels; "Light Duty" rakes are best for raking jobs that just involve leaves.
Do you have a relatively flat lawn space, or does your backyard have slopes, hills, or dips? Plastic rakes, which are more rigid, will do a good job clearing leaves from a flat lawn, but the tines may have more trouble reaching all of the leaves located in ditches, divots, or hills. The tines on metal rakes are more flexible, and it will be easier to pull leaves and other lawn debris out of non-flat places.
The best rakes will get the job done without damaging your lawn.
Do you have low grass that just peeks out of the hard ground, grass that fully covers your lawn, or tall grass? While metal rakes can work well on all three types of grass, the sharp edges of the metal rake may leave marks or gouges on the lawn if the ground is exposed. Additionally, tall grass may get tangled in the spaces between the metal tines. Plastic rakes generally do not leave scratches on a hard ground surface.
While it’s common for rakes to have wooden handles, they may not be comfortable if you’re raking for long periods of time. Fiberglass and metal handles are smoother, lighter, and often come with grips on the end of the handle that can make it easier and more comfortable to hold and wield the rake for however long you need.
The length of a rake handle is very important when thinking about your comfort.
While long handles can make it easier to reach leaves farther away, they can prove to be cumbersome if you’re shorter or if you have shorter arms. Make sure the raking motion feels natural, and that your backhand doesn’t have to stretch a long way to grab the end of the handle.
In our experience, if you stand a rake upright next to you, the end of the handle shouldn't be much taller than you or too much shorter than your chin. If it's too long, the arm that reaches for the back end of the rake will hurt from constantly stretching beyond your normal range of motion, and if it's too short, you'll be bending over a lot.
Most of the time you see a measurement in a rake's product name, it's referring to the maximum width of the rake head, the horizontal distance from the first tine to the last. This number also translates roughly into the width of the swath of lawn you can rake in a single sweep.
Most rake heads are about 24 inches wide; usually, it's a trade-off between rake head width and the size of the debris you'd like to rake. A wider rake head means that the tines are probably further apart, leaving space for smaller lawn debris to slip through the tines. The reverse is true for a narrower rake head—it's best for smaller debris, since it may end up clogging quickly otherwise.
Metal and plastic rakes each have qualities that are praiseworthy. In general, metal rakes tend to be more sturdy than plastic ones, but they are also heavier. Plastic rakes tend to be less expensive and lighter, especially if you have a wider rake head to cover larger areas in one pass.
We put each rake to the test to see which ones reigned supreme.
Unsurprisingly, the core of the testing for these rakes involved actually raking leaves. However, we made sure that these rakes were tested out in a variety of circumstances, including the terrain type (hilly vs. irregular vs. flat) and lawn debris (leaves, acorns, small sticks, pine needles, etc.).
In addition to raking performance, we also took note of some more subjective aspects of each rake, such as how quickly the rake clogged with lawn debris, how comfortable it was to hold, and how well-built it was.
Julia is the Senior Scientist at Reviewed, which means that she oversees (and continually updates) the testing of products in Reviewed's core categories such as televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, and more. She also determines the testing methods and standards for Reviewed's "The Best Right Now" articles.
Cailey Lindberg
Staff Writer, Updates
Cailey Lindberg is a Staff Writer at Reviewed and full-time Dog Mom to @sandor_thebassethound. In her spare time, she writes about music and history for Mental Floss.
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