This is the Dewalt DCM562 which is a 18v cordless blower. This cost approximately $200. This blower uses 18v Dewalt batteries from the XR range.

If you use this blower with a 5AH battery you can get about 20 minutes of continuous use on full speed or about 6 minutes using a 2Amp hour battery. I’m not sure how many charge/discharge cycles my batteries have had and so this figure could be improved slightly.

The blower is light weight and very easy to use and benefits from a brushless motor. The blower has a variable speed trigger just like you get on most power tools but a useful feature is this lever which can be turned to hold in the variable speed trigger. This means that the speed of the machine can be set using this and you do not need to hold in the trigger. This is great for blowing leaves, even though these leaves are damp the blower still moves them easily and is comparable to a petrol version but without the noise and the toxic fumes.

This blower is well worth considering if you already own a Dewalt 18v XR battery especially if you have a small to medium size garden, of course you can use this on larger gardens providing you have enough batteries. The advantage of this blower over a petrol version is that it is much quieter and there are no maintenance issues or starting problems like you get on some petrol blowers.

To demonstrate the noise difference I’m going to switch the blower onto maximum, you can see that the reading in decibels is about 90 decibels. I have now switched the petrol machine on to full and that is reading about 97 decibels. I’m now going to measure the airflow using a meter which is measuring the airspeed in metres per second. You can see that the petrol blower has a maximum air speed of approximately 29 metres per second or 95 feet per second. The battery blower has a maximum airspeed of approximately 26 metres per second or 85 feet per second.

Its also very useful if you get an oxygen starved fire, although you do have to be very careful if you do this. Although the petrol version is slightly more powerful I still prefer the battery version as it is far easier to use and much quieter So that’s the Dewalt 18v blower, its really light weight and much quieter than a petrol blower with much less vibration than a petrol version.

EGO 56V brushless cordless leaf blower

We got a really exciting tool to review, this is the brand new EGO 56V brushless Blower. It’s just way too nice a day after our long winter here to lock myself up in the garage, so I’m outside. You’ll have to excuse a few traffic noises.

So this is EGO’s second brushless blower, and I’m really impressed that they’ve brought it out because their first one was already kickass, it was just fantastic. It’s a testament to them that they wanted to go and improve it again.

So anyway, I’m going to show you a few features on this thing and then we’re going to put it to the test, see just how hard it goes. This one is 900 metres cubed an hour in turbo mode, compared to the previous one which is 810. And it’s already also a little smaller and a little sexier. So let’s get into it.

So first up you’ve got your speed gauge, from low 90 degrees to high, so it’s actually variable speed. That’s an improvement from the first generation which was a two speed plus the turbo. This one is variable speed, from low to high plus your turbo button up here. Once you pull the trigger down here you can put your thumb on the turbo, with one hand obviously, and away you go. A lot of us just use turbo all the time because it’s so good.

It doesn’t have a safety as well, so on the first generation you had to depress the safety and then pull the trigger. But they’ve gotten rid of that and I think that’s fine because its only a blower. It’s not a very dangerous tool, so good on them for taking that step.

A couple of other things to note, you’ve got a little bracket here for putting on a shoulder strap, if you want, it doesn’t come with one but you could easily get yourself one to suit. And just wanted to show you how they’ve changed this, they’ve opened this right up all around for the turbine fan in there so it can now suck in air from any direction, not just the bottom like the old one did.And then of course you’ve got your little catch here for taking off the nozzle.

That’s all there is to show about i, let’s go test it. Just going to test it on low with some grass, that I just spread all over the place with my whipper snipper. If the dog doesn’t eat it all first. Just a bit of fun with the dog. OKso a few more things I’ve discovered. First the model number is LB5300E and it’s IPx4 rated which means that it’s splash proff. Which means that you shouldn’t have any concerns about using it in a shower or even rain.

Also it comes with a 2.5Ah battery. The original blower came with a 2Ah, so you’re going to get even better runtime on this. 75 minutes they reckon it’ll get, that will be on low, so that’s pretty cool.

The low and the high settings, this one has a variable speed range, the low through to high are very similar to the original blowe, they’re just a little bit higher. But the the Turbo is that full 10% higher. I also just wanted to mention actually while you’re here, EGO have just released a 7.5Ah battery, this is a big whopper. It’s the same size as the 6Ah battery, so that’s really cool, especially for running your chainsaw and your mower. That extra juice in a 7.5Ah battery is going to be really valuable. You could also easily stick this on your blower, it’ll absolutely fit no problems. Of course the extra weight is going to be fairly noticeable in your hands, so that’s when I would recommend going and getting yourself a shoulder strap. But man, the extra runtime, triple the runtime, compares to the 2.5Ah battery could well be worth a look if you use your blower a lot.

So anyway, I am really impressed with this. I can’t see how you wouldn’t be either, you saw how easily it blew around the big pile of scoria rock on turbo. And right down to the low setting which i was thought was just right for blowing around grass, sawdust, that sort of thing without throwing it all up into the air and making a big mess of everything. I’m super impressed. I’ve not actually owned a blower myself really, I mean I’ve got an electric one and I never use it. But having a cordless one now, I think I’m doing to start cleaning my patio a lot more regularly.