Crank Brothers Power Pump Alloy

If you don't want to fit a big, efficient pump like the Topeak Road Morph or Zefal HPX to your bike frame, you'll at least need a mini pump in your pocket – something like the Crank Brothers Power Pump Alloy.

That's because you will puncture if you don't have one. The prime purpose of a mini pump is as a talisman to ward off punctures. Its secondary purpose is to get you home if you do puncture. You secretly hope you'll never have to use it, because mini pumps are maxi hassle. They take forever to inflate your tyre to a usable pressure and they're not comfortable to use.

Saying that, the Crank Brothers Power Pump Alloy isn't bad. It's a well made, aluminium-bodied pump with a T-shaped head that has presta and schrader valves on opposite sides. You rotate the pump head to lock it onto either type of valve.

A dial at the bottom of the pump enables you to switch between high volume pumping for fat tyres and high pressure pumping for thin ones.

The pressure gauge, which is accurate to within 5psi according to my Topeak digital gauge, reads up to 160psi. It only claims to reach 130psi, however. Like all mini pump claims, you can take this with a pinch of salt.

This is its theoretical maximum, if you happen to look like the guy in those old Bullworker adverts. After 200 strokes, I got a 700x23 tyre to a get-you-home 90psi and gave up because my arm hurt. (Fifty strokes got the tyre to 30psi, 100 to a little under 60psi.)

The problem, as with most hand pumps, is that you're both pressing with one hand and resisting that pressure with the other hand. So it really is like some kind of horrible Bullworker exercise. And you have to do it again and again and again, because you're pumping a small volume of air per stroke.

Pumping with the Crank Bros Power Pump Alloy was quicker but not any easier or more comfortable than with a Blackburn AirStik SL, a pump so tiny you can fit inside a little seatpack under your saddle. And it was much harder than using a Topeak Mini Morph, which is what I would take if were carrying any bag bigger than a tin of baked beans.

With any Morph – or the Lezyne Micro Floor Drive or any similar pump – the floor pushes back and you can put all your effort, and even your bodyweight, into getting air out of the pump and into your tyre. It's so much easier that, apart from maybe fitting a Zefal HPX to a road bike for aesthetic purposes, I can see only one reason to use anything else.

That reason is portability. But at 24cm long and weighing in at 182g, the Power Pump Alloy isn't that mini a mini pump. Compared to the presta-only AirStik SL, it's enormous. It's essentially the same size as the smallest Morph, the aforementioned Mini.

On the other hand, the Power Pump Alloy does have some useful features that similar sized pumps lack. It has a fairly accurate gauge, it switches effortlessly between presta and schrader, and you can change the volume pumped per stroke.

If you need one compact pump for all occasions and you don't need to reach high pressures, this will do the job, given time and effort. There's a lifetime warranty too.

There are smaller versions of the Power Pump, though none so small as an AirStik. What Crank Brothers need, I think, is a mini floor pump of their own.

The Power Pump Alloy comes with a plastic cover for the pump head, with which you can velcro-strap the pump to your bike frame. I preferred to chuck the pump in a bag instead.

The pump is available in black or silver.

Verdict

A decent, all-round mini pump that's eclipsed by others on performance or portability