Are cheap tire pressure gauges accurate enough to trust? – Jalopnik

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Tire pressure gauges come in different sizes, styles and price ranges. Using an accurate tire pressure gauge regularly to maintain proper tire pressure is an easy way to make your tires last longer. The automotive engineers who designed your vehicle paid close attention to the ideal air pressure your tires should hold. Proper tire pressure is important enough to prompt regulations requiring a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) in passenger cars and light trucks since 2007.

Even if your vehicle is equipped with pressure monitoring, the TPMS is not always reliable enough to override manual monitoring of your tires. You should have access to a tire pressure gauge that is accurate enough to trust, but it doesn’t always have to be the most expensive model on the market. In a test conducted and shared on YouTube, Project farm compared the accuracy of 23 tire pressure gauges, with prices ranging from less than $5 to more than $35. Project Farm exposed the gauges to temperatures similar to those found in vehicles and recorded their accuracy against a pair of calibrated digital pressure gauges.

Although the cheapest meters didn’t have the best accuracy, the most expensive model only ranked 10th overall. Ultimately, the top three models in the test cost between $28 and $30 each, and the brands that made it that high were Jaco, Merlin, and SKS.

Simply put, you can’t rely on cheap tire pressure gauges to properly maintain the pressure in your vehicle’s tires. That said, if a $2 tire pressure gauge is all you have at your disposal to check the pressure in a spare tire before you trust it with your life, it’s still worth using. That meter is probably more accurate than hitting your tires with a stick like a truck driver – at least if you’re not an experienced truck driver. Then go straight to the nearest source of a better meter and check its accuracy.

Accurate tire pressure gauges, some in stick type, dial and digital style. Stick types (also called pencil gauges) are easy to operate, but sometimes difficult to decipher. Dial indicators have a needle that points to a number that indicates the pressure in the tire. Digital meters are the easiest to read, often featuring backlit LCD screens with numerical readouts. However, a digital meter will malfunction if the battery runs out.

The top three pressure gauges on Project Farm’s list are digital models with prices around $30. While not prohibitively expensive, the CZC automatic tire pressure monitor – a pencil meter available on Amazon with a typical price of $8.99 – finished in fourth place. The largest inaccuracy occurred during the cold temperature test, where a reading of 39 psi was recorded, which was 2.5% lower than an accurate reading of 40 psi.

The recommended pressure for vehicle tires depends on the vehicle model. Although tire pressures of 32-35 psi are common, it is best to consult your owner’s manual or look up the prescribed values ​​on the sticker on the driver’s door frame. Do not use the psi value on the side of the tire. It is better to measure the tire pressure of cold tires, which is reached after the vehicle has been parked for several hours, and the values ​​may be different for the front and rear tires.

If we consider a tire that is intended to be inflated to 35 psi, 28 can be considered the lower end of normal – a difference of 7 psi. Using the above CZC Auto gauge with a 2.5% deviation, we can be confident that the tires are still at a safe level when the gauge reads 35 psi. Other gauges had a difference of more than 20% in Project Farm’s test, and such inaccuracies could lead to overinflated tires.

Too high tire pressure is not a good condition for your tires. Tires are designed to have a relatively flat contact patch with the ground, which distributes the vehicle’s weight evenly across the tread. When overinflated, the center of the tread carries more weight than the outer parts, causing it to wear out faster than the rest of the tire. Underinflated tires can be even worse by contributing to poor fuel economy, poor handling and an increased risk of a tire blowout. Inaccurate meters may give you some leeway, but it’s a bad idea to get too complacent with them.