The Mellif portable battery operated air duster is an alternative to using expensive compressed air cans, a compressor air blower or a mains air duster. I’ll see how the Mellif compares to all these other options.
Compressed air has limitless uses, from blowing out dust from your keyboard or the inside of your computer, to cleaning stray dust from intricate components like a bike shifter and drying small parts on your bike too. In my workshop I use one all the time to blow away saw dust and metal shavings and to clean the dust filter on my vacuum.
Mellif makes a range of gadgets and tools that run off popular battery platforms, namely Milwaukee, Dewalt and Makita. Their tools aren’t supplied with batteries so they only really make sense if you’re already on one of these platforms.
I’m testing the Milwaukee version which runs off Milwaukee’s 18V M18 batteries and I’ll be using one of their 5Ah batteries that comes with lots of their tools.
The air duster is basically a knock-off of the Makita DAS180Z at around a third of the price. It costs about £40 or $40 and comes with a load of accessories including 5 nozzles, a flexible hose for reaching awkward areas and an adapter hose that connects around the back for suction.
It’s pretty well built with a rubberised grip and Mellif branding around the sides. The red plastic doesn’t quite match true Milwaukee red but it could easily pass as a Milwaukee tool and the battery clicks positively and securely in place.
You install a nozzle by clicking it into place aligning the locking notch. Just twist the nozzle in the direction of the arrow to release it.
There’s a trigger switch to power it on, but unfortunately and rather unnecessarily there’s a side button you need to depress to unlock the trigger. Below this button there’s a round button that keeps the trigger depressed and the duster running until you press the trigger again. This is handy for inflatables which may take some time to inflate, but does sometimes take a couple of tries to engage.
The first thing you notice is just how noisy this thing is. I measured over 100dB close to the duster and still 94dB one metre away. In this high mode you should really use ear defenders, particularly if you’re going to use it for any length of time. There’s a power button on the base of the tool that switches from this default high mode to a quieter 87dB medium mode and 77dB low mode – all measured one metre away. This button is confusingly labelled as Start but only changes the mode – you can’t turn the duster on and off with this button. I’ll discuss performance and power usage in these differing modes shortly.
An LED lights up to confirm the mode you’re in, and there’s a battery level indicator which I’ll discuss further shortly too. There’s also an LED light that illuminates when you press the trigger. It’s really not very bright – but might be useful if you have no other lighting available.
Once you get over the noise of this thing, it is pretty powerful in high mode. I’ll discuss some more quantitative measurements shortly, but qualitatively it’s not far off my Metro DataVac mains duster. I’ve had this thing for well over 10 years and served me well when I had a computer repair business.
It takes a few seconds for the brushless motor to get up to speed, and it doesn’t have anywhere near the potency of an air blower on my compressor – but it still has enough power to be useful. There is a clicking sound as the motor slows down, which I’ve observed on two units so I don’t think it’s a fault, but it is a little disconcerting.
With the 7mm nozzle I tried using the air duster to blow out the internals of my desktop video editing and gaming machine. It was easily up to the task. I used this same nozzle to clean my computer keyboard.
This nozzle also fits inside the hose to my SUP and in just over a minute got most of the air into it.
You’d need to finish off with the supplied hand pump, or something like a tyre inflator like this one from Milwaukee or this budget one also from Mellif (above).
The air duster is a high volume, low pressure device. It’s basically a compact leaf blower. Mellif reckons it’s capable of 1.1m3 per minute.
Their low volume high pressure tire inflator is rated at 12l per minute which is only 0.012m3 per minute, but it can get up to 160 PSI – easily enough to get the SUP to its 15 PSI with the right adapter. But it’d be far too slow to fill up the SUP only with the tyre inflator.
You can also use the duster to deflate the SUP by removing the back vent and attaching the suction hose.
There is a foam filter behind this vent which will need removing and cleaning after use in a dusty environment. You can do this with the duster itself outdoors.
The suction mode worked quite well and took around 85 seconds to deflate the SUP.
I also used the 13mm nozzle to dry components on my bike and in the workshop to blow away sawdust. The 13mm nozzle probably worked best overall in my testing and it’s just about passable as a leaf blow with this nozzle if you’re close.
It worked very well for all these tasks although it’s still no match for an air compressor and air blower attachment if you need to get to stubborn dirt deep inside something. But then it is entirely portable which makes it very convenient.
To visually show how it compares to a SIP 100 litre 14.6 CFM compressor, canned compressed air and my electric blower I used these small digital scales to measure the force of the dusters, directing the jet of air around 2 cm away. I’ve tried to use a similar size, roughly 7mm nozzle for the Mellif, compressor air blower and electric duster. That wasn’t possible with the canned air – but I used it without the straw which resulted in about a 3mm nozzle. I don’t have it anymore, but I also tested this brushless Kacnon portable air duster off Amazon which has an integrated battery and might be a better option if you’re not on any of the major battery platforms. It was pretty good considering its size, but it doesn’t produce anywhere near the volume of air the Mellif produces and you need to be quite close for it to be properly useful. It did still measure around 70g on the scales which isn’t at all bad.
The Mellif got up to a constant 94g.
The electric duster got around 113g. The air blower off the compressor peaked at well over 300g and could hold over 260g.
The canned air works best upright and makes quite a mess. And I couldn’t get much over 30g which is not particularly impressive. I could get over 100g with the larger 13mm nozzle on the Mellif. Off the compressor I also tried changing the tyre inflator which has a wider nozzle to a more standard air blower with a tight nozzle.
You can see just how much power you can get with a compressor. Quick blasts to well over 500g and holding well over 400g. Nothing gets close to this.
I connected the duster to my bench power supply to see exactly how much current it draws in its different modes to estimate the battery life off a 5Ah battery.
I measured around 14A in its 50,000 rpm high mode, 7A in its 35,000 RPM medium mode and 3A in its 18,000 low mode. That’s around 20 minutes, 40 minutes and 100 minutes in high, medium and low respectively, which isn’t bad. I mainly use it as an air duster in short bursts, rather than to fill inflatables, so even 20 min in high mode is ok for me.
I wanted to also check if the duster cut out when the battery got low. To avoid damaging these batteries, their individual lithium-ion cells shouldn’t drop much below 3V, which for the 5Ah pack is around 15V combined.
I dropped the voltage to below 14V and it still didn’t shut off, so it seems to rely on the battery’s own protection.
The duster’s battery level LED does drop to one bar and starts flashing at around 15V so I would charge your battery then. Or better still err on the side of caution and keep an eye on the battery’s own battery level indicator.
With a fully charged battery at around 21V you’ll get over 300W of power which is pretty impressive, but this drops down to well below 200W as the battery depletes, with noticeably less power.
Overall I’ve been fairly impressed with the Mellif air duster. It is able to pretty much replace my electric Metro DataVac where the cord really gets in the way. It does have a few irritations though, most notably the noise. But also the awkward safety switch and I would have liked some sort of hard cut off when the battery gets below a certain level. And I will report back in the written article on how it fares over time – the clicking motor is a little concerning.
But considering the price, and all the accessories you get, it’s a pretty good deal if you’re already on the Milwaukee, Dewalt or Makita battery system – I tested the blue model for Makita batteries and it worked identically. I’ll have links down below, so check out the current price.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
Amazon link:
Mellif Air Duster: https://amzn.to/43XMkuU
(As an Amazon affiliate, I get a small commission from purchases made via any Amazon links.)
Leave a Reply