But there are some car accessories which we hope never to use them but often come very handy during emergencies. One such accessory is a Tire Inflator. Whether you get a low-pressure warning on your dash or you have a flat tire, a tire inflator can quickly refill air into the tire and make your car move. We recently got our hands on a tiny little tire inflator, the TUSA A6. It is a compact unit with an ergonomic design and decent build quality. Apart from car and bike tires, you can also inflate balls and small mattresses (air cushions) using this inflator. This is a review of the TUSA A6 Tire Inflator. We are writing this after thoroughly testing the unit for different possible scenarios such as how long it takes to fill a completely flat tire, how long can you run it, accessories, and many more. Continue reading to find out more about our thoughts and impressions of the same. Opening the zipper of the bag, you get a tiny zip-locked plastic bag with a user manual in it. Next, we have the Tire Inflator itself (which is wrapped in a similar plastic bag, only slightly larger). Let us keep the main event aside for the time being. At the back of the inflator, you have four tiny accessories. Of those, one is a spare 15 Amp fuse. The other three are nozzle attachments for the inflator. Using these nozzles you can fill air in balls, bikes, and even small air cushions or mattresses. We will talk more about the elements of the tire inflator in the next section. But that’s it for the contents. On the front, just above the TUSA logo, you can see a wide white strip. This contains the LEDs. It has three white LEDs and two red LEDs. The white LEDs act as the main flashlight while the red LEDs light up for SOS mode. Speaking of modes, the lighting on the TUSA Tire Inflator has three modes: regular flashlight mode (all three white LEDs glow), flashing mode (all five LEDs flash on and off), and emergency SOS mode(two red LED flash in SOS). Start your car’s engine and plug the 12V Adapter into the cigarette lighter port inside the car. Do not use the inflator without starting your car as it puts a lot of strain on the car’s battery and even discharges it significantly. Using the Pressure Increase (+) and Pressure Decrease (-) buttons, set the pressure that you want to fill in the tire. We highly recommend referring to your car’s owner’s manual to get more information on the right pressure for the tires. The tire inflator starts inflating the tire. As soon as it reaches the set pressure, the tire inflator automatically turns itself off. Just unscrew the valve connector and remove the 12V Adapter from the cigarette lighter port. Don’t forget to place the dust cap back on the valve. The tire inflator can fill the tire from completely flat (0 psi) to 35 psi in 3 minutes and 40 seconds. This is impressive. We did not give any break and immediately switched to the next tire (the only time gap is for removing the valve adapter and reattaching it to the new tire). It could fill all four tires in under 16 minutes. Very good. While the inflator is working, we tested the temperature of the body and also the air hose. Some interesting results here. The air hose became slightly hot to the touch. Its temperature crossed 65 °C. So, be careful and do not touch the air hose, especially near the inflator. An important point we noticed during our testing is that despite the rubber feet at the bottom, the tire inflator doesn’t stay put while inflating. The vibrations from the compressor and very strong and you can see it drifting away. As a bonus, we have taken apart the TUSA Tire Inflator to see the internal construction and the quality of the components. You can see from the following image; everything is laid out neatly. There are compartments for the motor, compressor mechanism, the DC Wire and Adapter, and the main control circuit board. All components are fixed firmly to the outer plastic shell and there are a couple of vibration suppressing sponges as well. One of them is the spare fuse. If you aren’t familiar with tire inflators, then the 12V Adaptor has a fuse built into it. You can unscrew the front part of the adapter and replace the fuse, if necessary. Using the black plastic nozzle, you can fill the air in small air cushions, pillows, leg rests, etc. LED flashlight is very useful when inflating tires at night time and the SOS LED Flashing comes in handy during emergencies. The TUSA Tire Inflator can inflate a tire from 0 to 35 psi in less than 4 minutes, which is very impressive. Although they say you can use this inflator for up to 60 minutes (at 35 psi) without any break, we would not recommend it. If you are in the market for a well-built tire inflator that offers excellent performance, then we highly recommend the TUSA A6 Tire Inflator. Apart from a couple of tiny nitpicking, there isn’t much that can go wrong with this one.
