Air Checkers - gimmick or useful accessory?
Jan 22 '05
The Bottom Line Air Checkers claim to increase safety and fuel efficiency... is it true or just a money-making ploy?
After much deliberating I decided Technology was probably a better home for this review than Travel… so here goes!
“There has to be a better way of testing your tyre pressures than going round kicking the tyres”, states the advertisement for Air CheckerS. Well yes, but its it as much fun??!?
Erm… anyway… here’s the low-down on these air checkers.
Facts
Your tyres can be under-inflated by up to 30% without it being particularly noticeable to the human eye, and kicking the tyres is a pretty unreliable method. Taking the caps off to check the air pressure can be fiddly and time-consuming.
Enter the Air Checkers…
Cost
The cost is £3.50 each (£14 for a set of 4), which represents pretty good value for money since, safety factor aside, inadequately inflated tyres also increase fuel consumption, so they’ll pay for themselves for that reason alone. If you buy two sets of four air checkers, you will get anti-theft lock nuts for both sets for free.
Fitting
Fitting the air checkers themselves is a doddle – you simply screw them onto the place you’d normally have your valve cap. It’s easy to tell when they’re on enough since you get the reading from the pressure gauge immediately after the tiny hiss of air escaping. Fitting the lock nuts is a little trickier – you have to put them on first and then tighten them onto the air checker, which means you need to rotate them anticlockwise (counter-clockwise). This doesn’t seem right but it does work! The spanners provided for the nuts are not exactly a great fit for them so it will take a bit of messing about. This is also a bit of a pain when it comes to changing tyres but it doesn’t add a huge amount of time to it. The instructions aren’t the clearest in the world but it’s so simple that even though they’re poorly written, it’s not a big problem.
Readout
The readout system is very simple – fully inflated = green, slightly under-inflated = yellow, under-inflated red. Unfortunately when you get one colour partially hiding another, the “tell at a glance” claim falls down slightly and it takes a bit of peering to work out exactly what the readout is trying to tell you. Generally though it works well – as long as your tyres are kept clean. Obviously this could be seen as either a good thing or a bad thing – it encourages you to wash your car more often but if you’re not able to, or if local conditions get very muddy, it renders the air checkers about as helpful as a particularly awful Express Review on epinions. Of course, you could simply clean the air checkers themselves rather than the whole tyre, but then is it really saving you much time from taking the cap off and using a normal air pressure reader? Admittedly it probably would be a bit quicker, but something you buy for speed and convenience (and for some with arthritic problems perhaps not having to get on their knees would be a factor), it could do without something that adds time and inconvenience to the process.
Verdict
Air Checkers as an inexpensive and useful piece of equipment, but they have a few drawbacks. Overall they’re a very worthwhile buy if you clean your car frequently or seldom drive through cities / muddy areas. If that description doesn’t apply to you but you still think they’re worth a shot, at least you won’t be getting them ignorant of potential problems. I’m not entirely sure what their lifespan is supposed to be but I would be surprised if you car outlasted them.
This was going to be an entry for the Challenge Yourself 2005 Write Off and my first ever review in the Cars category. Sadly due to reasons too weird and wonderful for me to fully comprehend, there isn’t a space in the category for it to go into, and the CLs are willing but unable to help in this instance. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to review my car instead then! :-D
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.