AirBank Puffer Pro.
Received the Puffer Pro from the wife at Christmas, so I thought I would give a quick/short initial review.
As the blurb states it's pretty small, takes up less room than a hand pump and probably weighs a little more. It appears to come with all the attachments that your ever need, however I added my duotone one, which I probably didn't need to do but wanted to make sure it worked with my slick wing.
I have only used it to inflate 3 different types of wings being 8m North Loft Pro, 8m Duotone Ventis and SLS Slicks (multiple times).
Mostly, its pretty easy, set your pressure, hook up the hose, press start, off it goes and it stops at the required pressure. We used a hand pump to reference the pressure and it was pretty close.
It has a two-stage pump, high flow/low pressure and low flow/high pressure. It appears that the high flow/low pressure is able to pump the wing/kite to 1psi and then the second stage kicks in. I found that the North valve has enough back pressure that the pump will continually cycle between the two and requires the selection on either stage manually. Duotone valve doesn't have any back pressure and seem seems to work flawlessly in auto.
It takes 3 - 5 minutes to inflate a wing, so not really that long at all. My mates Ventis took 4 minutes, but I didn't time my Loft. Big wings appear to take a fair chunk of power from the battery and you could probably do 4 or 5 of them. Smaller wing obliviously takes a lot less and the battery level indictor may not even decrease. 4 minutes may sound like a long time, but its barely enough time to attach your mast.
It comes with a US style wall plug, USB and 12volt charging options. I have just ended up using the 12v charging port in the rear of my 4x4 wagon.
The only negatives I can up with are:
- If your inflatable device has back pressure from the valve, then you may have to manually select between low and high pressure. Making the inflation process a little complicated.
- It gets a little warm when used, but not hot.
- The inlet for the pump doesn't have a filter and there is a potential something could get sucked in there and destroy it. So, I probably wouldn't use it on the beach.
Its a bit of a luxury item and I eager to see how long it lasts.
Pump is great when it works, but quality is terrible. I had one replaced under warranty because it stopped working after a few charges. (Cooling fan stayed on perpetually, draining the battery) The replacement also has issues. Ticking sound happening that drains the battery, but this issue has been intermittent. In short I would absolutely not recommend buying this pump.
I have mine since last may and it works like a charm. Best investment ever regarding wingfoiling. I don't understand what OP means by 'manual switch between high and low pressure' or 'back pressure from the valve'. I pumped up a ton of wings and inflatable boards and never had to do anything else besides setting the desired pressure.
You can cycle between auto, high and low pressure by pressing the left button.
The Boston type valve on the north equipment is a one way valve and this causes resistance of airflow into wing.
