Accessories Review Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems

I bought one of these for myself ages ago, and its already paid for itself at least twice.

I paid almost GBP40 for mine, but they have come down a lot in price. As with most of these Chinese gadgets, there are several different types from several different sources, but I suspect that the chips and other components come from the same factory.

It takes about half hour to install. The caps which send pressure and temperature info to the main unit just need screwing onto the valves. They are marked FR (Front Right), RL (Rear Left) etc so it difficult to get them wrong.

The main unit just sits on the dash. Its solar powered (as the description says) so needs to sit in daylight, but mine also has a USB socket so it can be initially charged and I suppose you could mount it in the shadows if you dont want to advertise it on your dash top.

There is a bit of faffing around to set up the high and low warning points and to set the unit to recognise each of the sender units, but aside from the Chinglish instructions its pretty easy.

The first time that I got impressed was an early warning of a low pressure on the rear right, which turned out to be a slow leak from the valve, which wasnt a big deal as I was about to go in and get new tyres anyway. Nevertheless it gave a warning long before I noticed anything through the seat of my pants.

The second time was in Spain while heading for the ferry to Morocco when it warned me of low pressure in the Rear Left. If not for the unit I would probably not have noticed until this went almost flat, and I could have destroyed the sidewall or lost the tyre completely before I had noticed the deflation as I was heavily loaded at the time.

Ive since bought one for the other half and ordered one for a mate who has a van to go touring.

They are currently priced at around GBP20, and if it only saves one tyre then its paid for itself!