The Nitetech BB2 Electronic Blower is an impressive, all-in-one compact cleaner packed with features. It’s small enough to fit in tight spaces, but has a powerful fan and runs for extended periods of time on its battery. Plus, it comes with three power settings and two removable brushes that connect magnetically—making it easy to switch between lighter and more aggressive cleaning tasks.
Check it out here
BB2: Amazon
BB2 With cleaning Pen: Amazon
*These are affiliate links and Pergear who is a distributor of the BB2 Electronic Blower sent me a free sample to review. Thank you Pergear for the opportunity!
NiteCore BB2 Electronic Blower Impressions
Pergear reached out asking if I wanted to take a look at the new electronic blower by Nitecore. I actually wasn’t even aware that Nitecore had made blowers like this before – they’re mostly known for their flashlights.
To be honest I was a little skeptical at first and not that interested. Most electronic blowers just aren’t that good or aren’t very compact and the last thing we want as a review site is to get some gear that’s just not very good and then have to write a mediocre review which is never fun.
The good news is, this little blower turned out way better than I was expecting and I’m already finding it very useful. Game-changing? Maybe.
Let me explain some of the backstories of why I was willing to try this little invention out and what happened when I got it and tested it out for the first time.
It all started one morning when I was shooting product shots for the Voigtlander 32mm f2. This is a lens I’ve had for over 6 months and it was a bit beat up. After doing my typical cleaning with microfiber cloths, and rocket air blowers, I confidently set up my strobes and started shooting away. Everything looked good on the rear of the tiny Fujifilm X-T3 screen, but then once transferred the files onto my computer to review on my massive Dell screen, the horrors revealed themself, followed by an hour of spot removal in LR.
Strobes can often lighten up little pieces of dust you never see with the naked eye and this little Voigtlander lens was a disaster. Even after giving it an initial cleaning, it wasn’t enough. I needed something better that could give me more confidence when cleaning for shoots.
Pergear followed up with another email, and this little Nitecore electronic blower started looking very tasty, I followed up and two days later it was at my house.
Before the BB2 blower, I used a Rocket Air blaster and a brush that comes in a red lipstick-type container that alarmed my wife when she first saw it.
I’ve actually needed a blower for a while now, not just for cleaning camera gear but also for cleaning my computers, I just never bothered buying one because most blowers out there are too big and overkill for what I want. If maybe I was trying to clean out a big tower PC they might be useful, but I’m mostly using a Macbook Pro and Mac Mini and don’t really need anything super serious.
Why is a blower useful?
Typically when cleaning any electronics, you don’t want to vacuum the dust, you always want to blow the dust off as it’s the safest and most effective way. This includes computer fans, motherboards, keyboards, or even speakers. What’s cool about the BB2 Electronic blower is that it is strong enough to get the job done for most things and maybe even strong enough for cleaning out a large tower PC – but not too strong where you would have to worry about damaging your fans. I really wasn’t expecting the level of power in such a small device. For visualization, if you turn it on to max power and place it on your mouse pad, it will start spinning in circles or you could also blow your mouse around if pointed at the mouse from a few inches away.
The blower is not even the best part. It comes with two little brushes, a black stiff-bristled brush and a softer white bristled brush. Both are useful and I have other camera cleaning brushes, but most are of the softer kind. The stiff bristles really help clean out the little groves on the focus rings, or the tight little corners around and under the dials on the cameras. The first thing I did was give my dirty Leica M11 a nice cleaning and the stiff brush made it so easy to get into all the little grooves. The softer brush is great for cleaning the lens or other sensitive areas of the camera like the EVF.
You’ll still need something like a microfiber cloth to get rid of all of the major fingerprinting and grime of the camera, but once that’s done, this is all you’ll really need.
I also have been using it for keeping things clean while changing lenses or various filters.
So it’s super cool. If I wasn’t sent one by Pergear and knowing what I know now, I would definitely buy one of these without even thinking about it.
And I’ll say I highly recommended it if you’re changing your lenses or filters a lot and like things being clean or if you shoot any sort of product photography.
Feature Walkthrough
I’ll walk you through all the details of this little device.
In The Box / Specs
The BB2 Blower, an instruction manual, and a charging cable. USB-A to USB-C. It doesn’t come with a wall adapter, so you’ll have to share it with one of the 300 other wall adapters lying around your house.
It comes in a nice box that you can use for storing the blower if you want, also the additional brush should come in an extra little case so you don’t lose it.
Battery Power: 7.2Wh
Weight: 210g / 7.4oz
Max Fan Speed: 30,000 RPM – As a comparison, the bigger more industrial handheld blowers that are nearly the size of hair dryers usually will run at 90,000 RPMs with larger fans. So don’t expect that level of power where you can clean the radiator of your home AC unit.
Usage Time & Power
Turbo: 90 Times – 80km/h (49.7mph) – About 15 minutes
Optical: 210 Times – 55 km/h (34.2 mph) – About 35 minutes
Silent: 800 Times – 30km/h (18.6 mph) – About 133 minutes
Times = 10 seconds.
1h charging time.
Build Quality
The electronic blower has an aluminum body, it’s kind of heavy, and just feels really well built – on the front of the blower is a filter screen and the control dial. The filter screen can be opened so the blower fan can be cleaned out. It’s a Nitecore product so everything is high quality as you would expect.
On the side are a USB-C charging port, a power button, and the brush retractor. On the two sides of the tip of the blower are the light and the brushes which are held in magnetically. This makes swapping out the brushes very easy while still being well-secured with fairly strong magnets.
To use the power button, you press and hold it to keep the blower on and it will turn off when you take your finger off the power button. Alternatively, you can push the power button twice quickly to have it turn on and stay on.
The dial on the bottom of the front lets you cycle through three different power settings.
Silent – is not super silent but not super loud either. Maybe use this on a film set where you don’t want to annoy everyone.
Optical – is pretty powerful, more powerful than what I can get from a Rocket Air Blaster. Optical is gentler than Turbo, which would be more practical for IBIS sensors or other more fragile things like if your cleaning your speakers and don’t want to push in the dust cap.
Turbo – is very strong and pretty loud. With the blower maybe 6 inches from your face, it feels like sticking your head out of the window of a car going about 40-50mph.
Lock / Light – The lock mode turns the blower off and lets you safely charge it. You also can use the blower while it’s charging. With the lock mode set, if you hold the power button and turn the wheel, this will activate the light. Very useful when looking for any stray dust or maybe even trying to clean your sensor. Sensors like on DSLRs and cameras like the M11 are pretty deep and it can be hard to see inside without using your iPhone light. This light is pretty similar to that, but not as strong as an iPhone light.
As far as how long it lasts, I’ve been messing with it for a while and still have not run out of power using the different settings through a few different product shoots. It’s said it can run about 15 minutes on turbo, which is a pretty long time considering you only use it for a few seconds at a time. As long as you keep it charged it will likely last you the day with no problem even on a busy film or photography set that might change lenses and gear often.
Bottom Line
What I’ve really been liking about this little device is not only how well it works but how it simplifies my life. Now when I’m cleaning my camera, I don’t have to hunt down my brush pen, my phone, and my rocket air blaster. I just have one device on my desk always ready to go that does everything.
The BB2 Electronic Blower is well built, comes in cool packaging and all the features are well thought out and work very well. Whoever designed this little device not only ‘gets it,’ but is also very talented. These days I feel like it’s so rare to see cool little well-thought-out gadgets that actually are designed well and work well.
This blower was designed and is being marketed as a camera and lens cleaner but really it’s so much more. It’s easily strong enough to clean out your computer keyboard or any other electronic device that requires a more gentle touch, so if you have this, you won’t need to buy those canned air sprayers ever again.
