Today I have for you a review of the TGBOX Portable Air Pump With Gauge, Light, and Emergency Charger.
Three or so years ago I received an Airxwills portable rechargeable air pump that I really liked – here’s my review of it here. It worked extremely well, I used it at home for my bikes and other things as well as took it with me before biking events and races. But recently the battery power had deteriorated and it barely held enough of a charge to pump up one tire. So it was time to look around for a new version.
There are hundreds of rechargeable air pumps so the choices were a bit overwhelming. But I checked many reviews, evaluated best sellers, and featured units that seemed to match my requirements and pulled a trigger on buying one, the TGBOX Portable Air Pump With Gauge, Light, and Emergency Charger. The company claims to be founded in 2005 in Chicago by a pair of MIT grads so that was kind of nice too.
I can’t say that this particular model stood out leaps and bounds over others, as many had the features I wanted and others also had good ratings, but I needed to give one a try and this is the one I chose. It was not the cheapest but I figure that even though the rating might be good I am a bit suspicious of the multitude of super cheap ones that are out there.
So far I have to say that I am around 99% happy with this TGBox air pump. I’ll get to the only slight downside later.
It came packed nicely in its box, very professional and nice box, inside there’s some light foam packing around everything with the pump inside a nice little felt-like drawstring bag along with the air hose, some quick instructions, a USB-C cable, and some standard air tool nozzles like the needle to blow up sports balls, and other possibly useful tips including a narrow ended one that I use to dust out computer and electronic equipment. All stuff you’d kind of expect.
The pump came mostly charged but I topped it off. Charging time from a full discharge is around three to four hours, but my top-off took much less.
Weight is just over a pound or around 450 grams, it feels like it’s more substantial than that but that is pretty damn light. One thing mentioned in the Amazon description is the possibility of carrying it on the bike but it’s a bit bulky for that I think, except maybe for touring and bikepacking maybe.
The pump is relatively rectangular which I think is better than the longish air pump I had before, it seems to fit easier in storage though maybe a bit less easy for quick gripping. The size is 3.1 x 1.9 x 5.1 inches or 79 x 48 x 129 mm, so it’s still pretty easy to hold in the hand.
The hose attached to the top of course increases the length for storage as you don’t want to crimp that hose of course.. Attaching the hose is standard, it’s threaded on and easily tightened via an orange rubber sleeve around the threaded section for quick attachment and detachment as well as protection.
One kind of handy thing is that when not in use the hose can be bent in a U and the unattached end can be attached to a plastic threaded section on the top-left side of the pump, and this can be used something like a handle for carrying it. I do not use this particular feature, for reasons that will be apparent in a bit.
So pumping is fast, the stats say 0-36 pounds in 7-8 minutes but to top off a 60 pound or so bike tire is just a few seconds. Trying it on a car tire takes much longer of course as there is much more volume involved. Pumping up a bike tire from 0 or a ball would be fast, but I don’t think I would want to pump a whole car tire up as it would take quite some time but also would probably heat up and stress the pump and motor on this.
Topping off a car tire seems fine, and takes a bit but not long timewise, and pumping up or topping off smaller things are much, much quicker.
The hose end itself has a standard Schrader type end, like a car tire.
For balls and other things there are a number of included adapters, the standard stuff that fit into the end via threads. There’s not much to say about them, they are pretty standard fair and work fine. Including the one with a narrowed end that works great for allowing this pump to blow dust out of electronics and computers (after vacuuming first of course – you never want to blow dense dust INTO an electronic device). There’s also a DUNLOP adapter, but nothing I have uses this.
There’s also a screw-in Presta adapter, that is used for most bikes nowadays.
This works fine I suppose, but requires you to screw the adapter into the Presta valve first (after opening it) and then threading this onto the existing Schrader end of the pump’s hose. A little awkward, but works.
So this is one of the only negatives about this pump, though looking at other ones this is pretty standard so I can’t really blame this particular pump’s manufacturer for not doing something differently, really. I’d love the hose to be a bit longer too, though but it’s fine.
I remedied the awkward Presta adaper conenction by using the adapter that I had bought for the previous Airxwills tire pump which had the same end on the hose as this one.
Here is a similar (but not exact) adapter on Amazon.
This adapter screwed directly into the existing hose on the TGBOX pump hose and now gives me quick snap-on access to both Schrader and Presta valves. It’s a great solution and makes this pump a nearly perfect unit, though it really could have come with it and it does stop the hose from being able to be screwed into the dummy socket at the top so the hose can be used as a handle. Though I was a bit reluctant to really carry the pump around with the hose in this configuration like it was a handle anyway; so no great loss there.
Another nice thing about the adapter is that it can be angled any which way which makes holding the pump a little easier, again – the hose could be a bit longer but isn’t a big deal and the adapter pretty much overrides the shorter hose nitpick.
To use the pump is pretty simple, holding the middle button turns the power on and pressing it again engages the pump. It seems to start up in the last config it was set at, of which you can set the upper limit cut-off for by using the + and – buttons on either side of the power.
There is bicycle, motorcycle, car, ball and a manual mode – any of which can have an automatic cut-off/shut-off set as above, any pressure up to 150. These settings work well and you can manually bypass it as needed.
The bottom button cycles through these preset modes.
On the display it will indicate which mode you are in, battery power remaining, and of course pressure. You can select between PSI, KPA, and Bar for the pressure readout.
As I did with the previous pump I tested the gauge display against a calibrated stand-alone presta tire gauge as well as the old pump’s gauge, which I knew and trusted also.
For every test the gauge seemed to be spot-on exact, down to a decimal point (not sure if that is needed). This was one of the most important factors for me and it passed each spot test.
The display is easily seen under most conditions, though bright sunlight at certain angles had a bit of a glare if not angled right.
You can go up to 150 PSI with this and according to the specs the pump capacity is 32L/min airflow. Pressing the middle button stops inflation if you want to end it before the auto-shutoff or you are in manual mode.
Unlike my old pump, holding the power button on this one powers it down completely.
On top of the unit is an emergency light of sorts, it’s really nice in a dark garage. And pressing the light button again switches to an emergency red light, then a flashing red light, and then again to turn it off. I find that the light is a really good feature for an air compressor when using it in a garage without a lot of lights, or on a darker day in the garage.
On the bottom is the USB-C charging port, of which you can of course use any USB-C cable in place of the included one. The included cable is not real long, not real short.
Also on the bottom is a standard regular ol’ USB port so you can plug any USB cable into it of any sort for some extra battery power or charging power for your phone or whatever. I really can’t say I was much interested in this feature but I did test it to make sure that it worked.
So far I have checked and topped-off my bike tires for weeks as well as a few other things, and only recently charged it when the battery power started to show at the lower end of the little indicator, though likely it was up for many more charges.
This TGBOX tire pump works great, very useful and quick to use and I’d say that I’m real happy with it so far, absolutely no issues and it works great and quite fast. Though it is slightly nicer with the adapter for the end of the hose.
Update a month later. Unfortunately I have noticed a decrease in battery life according to the battery indicator. I haven’t had it ever run out of power, but after charging and using it a few times it quickly drops a bar on the indicator, and it seems to not have the same battery life as when I first got it. Kind of disappointing, but from looking at the reviews on Amazon it generally seems to work fine, so I may have just gotten a mediocre or bad one.
Addendum October 2024 – I suspect that there is actually nothing wrong with the battery but more with the battery indicator itself. After getting tired of charging it I just started using it with one little bar showing, and it runs forever on that. So I suspect that the batteries themselves are fine but the electronics for the indicator is off.
