Bike Accessories Reviews

Honestly, I like frame pumps best. My Blackburn FP-1 has served me well for about eight years now, it never runs out of air and you don't have to buy cartridges for it. But on many bikes today, there's no easy place to mount a full-size frame pump - at least, not without limiting yourself to one bottle cage. And I've yet to find a mini-pump that can honestly get a road tire to 90psi without taking five solid minutes of carpal-tunnel inducing work.

There are a number of CO2 inflators out there, but the Genuine Innovations Ultraflate Plus combines the right mix of features and portability. The chuck is compatible with both Presta and Schrader valves and the head unit accepts threaded cartridges as well as unthreaded ones. There's a trigger lock so you don't accidentally discharge the unit when you don't want to, and the system does a remarkably good job of holding pressure in an opened cartridge. I inflated a dead-flat road tire to about 100psi with one 16g cartridge and, 10 days later, still had enough pressure to fix a second roadside flat and get it to about 60psi - your mileage may vary, but that's not bad for sitting unused for a week and a half.

The system is small, relatively light at 74g without a cartridge (although I always carry one cartridge in the chamber and a spare), and easy to use. There are fancier inflators and inflator/pump combos but, for the price, I'll stick with the simple, effective Ultraflate Plus. -Joe Lindsey