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The Shark BlastBoss is a unique air-shooting sweeping tool that can be configured as a super-powered broom or compact air duster. While it’s really meant for home and kitchen use, I thought it might also come in handy around my shop and during car detail work. After a few weeks of playing with it around my property, I ended up reaching for it more often than I expected to. Here’s our Rundown on the BlastBoss.
Shark BlastBoss Rundown
Verdict
OK
Solid
Great
Elite
Class
Casual
Enthusiast
Prosumer
Professional
Price
$
$$
$$$
$$$$
Disclosure: Shark provided this unit for testing. We kept full editorial control over what we said about it. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission, at no cost to you.
Where to Buy
MSRP is $149.99. Check current pricing on:
Key Specs
- Model Number: AB2111GY
- Max Air Speed: 190 mph
- Nozzle Attachments Included: 3
- Accessories In Box: AC charger, nozzles
- Run Time (low-power “Indoor” mode): 49 minutes
- Run Time (high-power “outdoor” mode): 7 minutes
- Charge Time: 3 hours
- Weight: 1.46 lbs
- Warranty: 2-year
Best Uses
This thing is advertised mainly for cleaning up the kind of thing you’d normally sweep with a broom or dustpan—crumbs on a keyboard, dirt on your doorstep. It’s nice when you want to blast debris clear of something rather than trying to vacuum it up.
For car detailing, it’s good at blowing dust particles off screens and sensitive dashboard bits before getting after them with a microfiber. The wind-beam it shoots is nowhere near wide enough for whole-car drying, but it is perfect for things like side mirrors, door handles, and pieces of trim that water gets stuck behind after a wash. That helps you prevent those annoying single-tear streaks that can sometimes end up on your paint after washing.
It would also be useful in situations where you want to use compressed air, but need to be gentle. Like, cleaning out sunroof drains, for example.
The very best use I found for it was actually not automotive at all: My family’s dogs (all of them, for some reason) insist on digging themselves little sleeping nests right next to the drainage rocks I have below my deck. As a result, they fling heaps of dirt onto my nice white rocks, encouraging weeds to grow. Normally, sweeping dirt off of rocks is incredibly arduous and annoying, but the BlastBoss brilliantly whooshes the dirt back off the rocks without moving the rocks at all. It’s a weirdly perfect tool for this deeply specific problem—but perhaps you can imagine a similar situation on your property.
I also found it to be incredibly effective with mower maintenance. I have an electric zero-turn lawn mower, and I scrape the deck clean after every mow. The BlastBoss has the perfect level of air power without being dangerous to blow grass out of the electric motors. And then afterwards, I move the mower, attach the broom nozzle, and blow all the grass clumps off the driveway. Again, very specific, and yet, pretty neat.
What it’s not for: Cleaning tight crevices in a car interior—grab a vacuum crevice nozzle instead. Sweeping huge open floors is tedious with the little broom attachment. Drying a whole car would take two business days.
High Points
- Three-hour charge time to seven-minute runtime sounds horrible, but I never ran out of juice. You’ll never be using this device with the trigger held down for seven straight minutes—you’ll be squeezing it for five to 15 seconds in a shot. Even at full power, the battery lasts longer than you’d think.
- Form-factor and ergonomics feel high-end. The BlastBoss is really nice in your hand, it’s well-made, materials feel premium, the switch is satisfying, and the trigger is really nicely weighted for precision.
- Nozzles snap on and off securely and decisively.
- The device does a nice job of feeling durable while still being light.
- Surprisingly quiet.
Weak Spots
- The integrated lithium-ion battery means you can’t swap; once the battery’s done, the device goes to the landfill.
- Expensive—far cheaper alternatives exist if you don’t mind sacrificing some style.
- Blower power is fine for household crumbs and dust, but struggles to move garage debris.
- The lower end of the air-power range is only useful in specific situations—I pretty much exclusively ran it at full power in “outdoor” mode.
Verdict
It became apparent pretty quickly that Shark’s little air gun here is really more for lighter-duty household dirt and dust than industrial junk and large-area cleaning. One of the BlastBoss’s main features, the high level of air-pressure precision you get with the device’s sensitive trigger, is not really useful in an industrial-type setting where you pretty much want max power all the time.
This is one of those toys where the “worth it” question depends on your values. Is $150 a lot of money to you? Do you care a lot about user-friendliness? If you appreciate nicer consumer products and have the budget, the BlastBoss is appealing. You’re paying a real premium for refinement here; if light-and-quiet matters more to you than raw power and you’ll use it around the house, it’s defensible—if you just need to move debris, your money goes further elsewhere.
I have a cheaper plug-in air gun I use for power-sweeping (will link to that below, too). And even though that one has a little more oomph, I did find myself reaching for this more than my higher-powered plug-in air duster because of how light and quiet it is.
One workshop setting where it could actually really rock in is electronics tinkering. If you’ve got a circuit board or gauge cluster dismantled on your table, and just want to gently blow dust out of it without getting spit from your mouth or moisture from one of those air-in-a-can things on it, a low setting on the BlastBoss would work perfectly.
As a dedicated shop tool, the Shark BlastBoss isn’t it. Shark is a home-appliance company, not a tool brand, so we are kind of pushing this thing into an edge-case situation in our garage here. But for light-duty dusting and sensitive-area clearing, it’s a nice home appliance that comes in handy all over the property.
Check Pricing on Amazon and the SharkNinja official site if you want to give it a try.
Alternatives
There are about 1,000 handheld air-blower tools available online. The best power-per-dollar deals are plug-in ones, but you do make some real sacrifices by going downmarket. I personally own this X-Power corded unit—it’s a third of the price of the Shark unit with the same amount of power, if not more. However, it’s also about twice as loud, much heavier, and I once saw it emit a spark that was a little unsettling. But it blows reliably—it’s been in my garage arsenal for about a year already.
Any other products we should look into? Send me a note at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.