Thanks for tuning in today we're going to be reviewing the Cycplus A8 electric air inflator.
The Cycplus A8 is one of the most powerful inflators Cycplus currently offers.
It's taken a lot of the great features of their previous inflators but added an oversized
rechargeable battery to increase the lifespan of it. You can see packaging-wise really simple
cardboard box you have a little graphic on here that shows the actual inflator.
Some of the features here on the side and the what's in the box details and then after sales
warranty information all written here on the bottom. So we'll go ahead and take out the box
and go over these specs. Retail price on this is about 50 currently it goes up to 150 psi so it
can be easily used on a variety of applications. It has an LED display which really has nice crisp
backlight to it. With this model it's one of the larger inflators they offer and because
of that they're able to put a much larger battery pack so this has a 2600 milliamp
lithium ion battery inside it. It's actually USB Type-C rechargeable which is pretty rare.
It also has an aluminum construction for a really nice premium appearance. In terms of what comes in
the box you get quite a few things. You get the instruction manual in multiple languages.
You get different adapters so you have a usb type-c charger a little ball inflator and
then the little nozzle head for like yoga balls as well as schrader or dunlap valves.
You also get the inflator head and this simply screws on to the cap here and this can be used
with standard valves and include the separate ones so if you have a mountain bike or road bike can be
used with both. You also get this nice fabric carrying case that you can put the inflator in to
keep it clean. Now take a look at the weight of the inflator so the inflator without any attachments
comes in at 468 so a bit over a pound if we add the little nozzle that brings it up to 490.
Now let's take a look at the fit and finish of the A8 inflator. It's a pretty sleek design
so it's aluminum construction it's only currently offered in this gray color but i imagine they're
going to offer more color variations. You have the vents on top and the attachment point for
the nozzle. So you simply screw this on and this is a nice rubber construction
it's a very flexible and quite long as well so you can have good reach with it
and then you can see there's a little light here so if you hold the led button with the
inflator off it'll turn on. You can see it
it's a nice low power led so if you need to find your way around at night you can use it.
On the bottom you have additional air vents and the USB Type-C charging port and that's really
nice to see a lot of smaller gadgets still use micro usb so it's great to see usb type-c.
The display itself is really nice so it's a led display and it's been upgraded from the previous
models. You can see a really bright good contrast and the interface is pretty simple so you only
have four options here and then the power button holding the power button will turn it on or off.
You have the up down arrows to adjust the current value and if you hold it it'll go into the rapid
mode if you hold it down or go into rapid mode. Pressing the led button will turn it on or off
with the A8 on when it's off you have to hold it. Then you can also go through five
different modes so you click the left button you get a little icon here so you have a bike icon.
You can do a motorcycle then you have car and then you have the ball mode and finally with nothing
displayed you're in the custom mode. So custom mode allows you to go all the way up to the 150 psi.
To change the units you can see here it says bar simply hold the left button and it will switch to PSI.
So you can see pretty simple display and then you have battery status here
with good readability it's nice and large as well so you can set it to the desired
value and then simply press the button. It's quite loud so you can hear that
it'll automatically stop once it reaches the desired pressure and you can simply press it again
to pause or stop. Now what's weird about this is that some of the modes each mode has a different
limit. So with the bike mode specifically you're only topping out at 65 psi so if you have a
road bike you're always gonna have to use custom mode and then it can only go down to 30.
So it's a little bit arbitrary i'm not sure why they set these bounds and it makes the modes a
little less useful, so for road cyclists you just want to leave it on the custom mode all the time.
Otherwise really easy to use power button turn it off it is still loud but with the
aluminum construction and larger battery pack you can definitely inflate more tires before
having to recharge this it also dissipates more heat because you have these air vents on there.
The one downside to the setup is you don't have a power bank functionality anymore some of their
other models offer that functionality where you can simply charge another device by plugging in
the usb type-c cable but with this you can't really take advantage of that so it's only
used as inflator. It's also quite heavy so not something you really want to ride around with
something great to leave in your car or if you're doing longer trips you
can bring it instead of a normal floor pump just to inflate a little bit quicker.
Now let's get the a8 in action we're going to turn it on with a single press
we're going to go into our car or truck mode
and then I usually do about 30 so we'll change the units by holding the button. So now we're in psi
so really easy to see i really like the larger screen here as it's easier to read and
has a higher contrast. Now we're going to simply thread it on what's great about this is actually
it works as a tire pressure monitor too so you can actually see your pressure as you connect.
So you can see we're about 28.5 so we'll take it to 30 by just pressing
the power button. Now this is still loud so you'll hear that in a second.
Now you can see it auto stops once it hits that pressure
and it does get hot too so you have to be careful if you do this a lot
you might have to wait as for it to cool down a bit. Now what's great about the A8 is you
get other attachments so you can inflate balls as well so we'll go into ball mode
set at about 6 psi and then let it run and this definitely beats a traditional little
pump for your ball so much quicker. Now let's use inflator on a bike tire it has a special bike mode
and as you can see it's unfortunately limited to 65 psi which is not enough for a gravel bike
or something with little thinner tires we usually like to run 85 so we'll just throw
it in the custom mode put out 81 and a half. We have to put the attachment on here and you
can see this little attachment for the presta valve then we'll simply slide it on and inflate.
So now let's compare the A8 with the cyclus A2 which we previously reviewed.
Now one thing that's obvious is that the A8 is larger. It's about the same height but you can see
it's just a wider design instead of being round it lets them put a higher capacity battery. They've
also listened to some of the criticism from the A2 and they've made the nozzle head longer so
you can see it's almost double the length. Where this is half of its rigid and then the top is
flexible really short overall length this one is all flexible and longer so you can reach
further along instead of having to hold it up. The other more obvious change is the display
so with the A2 you have a small lcd display that's backlit but you can see comparing the
size of the numbers here it's almost double or triple the size with the A8. It's a lot easier
to read higher contrast instead of having this blue color here the interface is also simplified.
You have five buttons here rather than the four which means things like turning on the light have
their own dedicated button instead of having to hold on the unit button on the A2 with the A8
it actually has its own button. So similar little leds which is nice for getting around at night
otherwise same functionality. The A2 does have a power bank feature which is not available on
the A8 currently that's the only downside. Otherwise they've really improved the interface
and it feels a lot more premium as this aluminum rather than this plastic construction.
Now let's go over the pros and cons for the A8 inflator. What we like about it is the led display
it has high contrast and nice large lettering. We also like the larger battery capacity which
means you can use inflator on multiple tires car tires or bike tires before you need to recharge it.
Finally the premium construction with the aluminum body and the usb type-c charging port
which is great to see on new devices. Some of the cons for the inflator is the fact that it's rather
bulky. It's not something to put on your cycling jersey and ride with. It's definitely something you
want to leave in your car or carry in a backpack. The other thing is the bike mode is limited to
65 psi which is a little bit strange. It's more geared toward mountain bikers and road bikers
and finally they have removed the power bank functionality which is in the A2 and the other
series inflators which would have been nice to see here as you could have used the device when
you're not inflating tires. Taking everything into account would give the aid inflator an 8.3 out of
10. It's a nice portable electric inflator that doesn't quite replace a compressor or a floor pump
gives you a nice in-between. Thanks for watching this review and don't forget to like and subscribe
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