Truth be told, all pumps are pretty decent. “Anything you get at a bike shop, if you don’t use it as a hammer, you’ll be fine,” said repair-manual author Lennard Zinn. With that in mind, here are the reasons we’ve set aside these other models:
Floor pumps
The Lezyne Steel Floor Drive is very similar in build quality to our top pick. It was, however, the worst performer in our pump test, requiring 10 to 15 more strokes at all psi levels than the better performers.
The biggest ding to the Specialized Air Tool Sport was the illegible dial. Lots of leaning down to read this one. We also prefer the wooden handle on our budget pick.
The Crankbrothers Sapphire had the best pumping performance, taking fewer strokes than any other model. Even so, our budget pick was only five to eight strokes behind, is more stable, and doesn’t have a plastic handle.
The Crankbrothers Klic attempts a solution to an annoying storage problem––the floppy tube gets stored in the handle. Our testers liked it but felt that the gauge seemed breakable, and losable, since it was no longer attached to the pump. In addition, not all the edges of the base are flush with the ground, just the foot contact points, and we noticed less stability with all pumps designed this way.
The Silca Pista has one of the strongest builds (all metal everything), but it’s small. That’s as intended––it’s meant to be easy to carry around in a car trunk. But the two-footed base is wobbly, the handle was too small to be comfortable, and testers were afraid they’d lose the detachable Presta valve adapter. The Pista Plus remedies these issues but for more than twice the price of our top pick.
The Bontrager Dual Charger pressure gauge appeared to be defective. It hovered at 60 psi on the dial even while attached to an uninflated tire. We’re assuming this was random, and not endemic, but either way we found sturdier pumps that cost less.
The Topeak JoeBlow Sport III has consistently positive user reviews, but our budget pick is the same price and has a wooden, not plastic, handle. Plus, the gauge sits in a bad spot––too low on the barrel to easily read, but high enough that the pump sometimes tips over.
Both the Pedro’s Prestige and Super Prestige pumps have wobbly, two-footed bases that couldn’t outperform three-footed options.
We tried the Vibrelli for due diligence, but with a shorter height and shorter hose than anything in the test pool, it felt like a toy in a giant’s hands. Our testers also disliked the plastic base. If your biggest worry is cost, it will get the job done, but as we said before, the difference in quality between a $30 pump and a $60 pump is enormous.
The head of the Park Tools PFP-8 blew off a total of three times for two testers—a surprise, considering Park Tool’s good reputation.
We also tested two pumps from Serfas, the FMP 500 and the TCPC. The first had a maximum pressure rating of 260 psi, which added so many digits to the dial that it become hard to decipher; the second pumped 30 percent slower than virtually all other pumps and came with a plastic base. Both now appear to be discontinued.
The Lezyne Sport Drive we tested broke. The plastic fingers on the plastic base that holster the head snapped off while riding in the trunk of the car. There is a new version of the Sport Drive that incorporates the same dial as our top pick, but the base remains plastic.
Hand pumps
The Silca Tattico Mini-Pump worked well with Presta valves but did not stay attached to Schrader valves when we pumped vigorously.
Like our runner-up pick, the Lezyne Micro Floor Drive HP/HPG functions like a small floor pump (similar to the Mini Morph), but it was bigger and more cumbersome. It does come with a mounting bracket, but the pump is so big that it’s hard to find an out-of-the-way place for it on smaller bike frames.
Another in the mini-floor-pump camp, the Topeak Road Morph G was the fastest pump in our tests, but its size—it’s nearly 14 inches long—seriously pushed the boundaries of portability.
The Crankbrothers Klic HP folds out into a T shape for a good grip. The length of the stroke is unusually short, though, which meant we had to work hard for results. T handles are generally a good thing, but this one has some weirdly sharp edges.
The Birzman Infinite–Apogee Road recorded a much higher number of strokes than average to fill the three test tires, and it just couldn’t make it to 100 psi for the 700c tire.
The Topeak RaceRocket was also not able to pump a 700c road tire to 100 psi; with this pump, it took us 60 more strokes to get our mountain bike tire to 30 psi than it did with our top pick. It’s true that it’s not a high-volume pump, the kind that is best suited for mountain bike tires. But neither is our top pick.
The Planet Bike MicroPro Mini Bike Pump uses a thumb-lock valve in a fixed position on the end of the pump body. While it’s a classic setup, we believe a pump with an extended tube design is an all-around superior design. It took 370 strokes to inflate the mountain bike tire and 260 strokes for the hybrid—second to worst of all the pumps in the test. We were not able to get the road bike tire to 100 psi at all.
The Planet Bike Mini Versair Bike Pump has a hose that’s much too short to be effective. We had to keep the pump uncomfortably close to the tires.
Any old-school cyclist will recognize the Topeak Pocket Rocket, but it’s a below-average performer. It took us 200 pumps to get the hybrid test tire to 35 psi. Topeak describes the Pocket Rocket as a pump for roadies, but we couldn’t get our 700c tire up to the 100 psi mark.
This article was edited by Christine Ryan.
