I purchased this pump for use on my inflatable kayak, but this would be a godsend for anyone with lots of floats to blow up at the pool or beach. I especially like the deflate feature which allows you to remove all the air quickly so that you can fold up your float. Inflation and deflation are really fast with this pump. Coleman 12-Volt DC QuickPump
It does what it is designed to do, and pretty quickly. However, I should have read the product description more closely; I assumed that the car plug-in was a bonus feature, not the only means of powering the pump! So to blow up an air mattress for an incoming houseguest, I had to drag the mattress to and from the garage. No big deal, my fault, just took me by surprise. I have since bought a $2 wall outlet-to-car plug converter so that I can inflate it indoors.
The pump works fine off my car's 12v power socket. But I should have looked at power converters before I bought. If you want to inflate a Coleman bed inside as well as camping, I realized after the fact that it's much cheaper to get a decent quality inverter that converts automotive dc power to AC than vice versa. So while the pump works fine off car power for camping, I'll have to inflate the mattress outdoors for home use. I'd recommend buying the AC-powered pump and then a 12v to ac adapter for the car. That way you could run the air pump, your cell phone charger, laptop or anything else that plugs into an AC outlet in your car too. Wish I'd thought that through before I bought.
We are so glad we got this pump for our inflatable kayak. Thank you, Amazon recommendations.
We've used this about 3 or 4 times so far. It's straightforward and easy to use. Plug it into the cigaratte lighter of your car, attach the appropriate nozzle thing (there are 2; I don't know whether there are standardized hole sizes for inflatable objects or something, but they fit perfectly), then turn it on. You can tell when the object is fully inflated because the pump gets louder. Oh, the pump is pretty loud, maybe as loud as a dustbuster. Not an issue for us as we've always used it outdoors.
Probably even cooler than the fact that it inflates is that it also deflates. Have you ever tried to fully deflate an air mattress manually? Or a kayak? It's maddening. I wish my air mattress' inflater were also a deflater, because no amount of body contortions and patience ever seems to fully deflate the bed, which makes the bed harder to fold and store, etc. Same went for our kayak when we took the deflater for granted. It's just so worth it.
I think the only issue with this pump is that it feels kinda cheap. It's plastic-y and really light, neither of which is actual criteria for gauging quality, really, but I'm just putting it out there FWIW. We haven't had a problem with it, and it does what it's supposed to do.
Pros:
Works fast, moves a decent amount of air.
Does a good job of filling most rafts and inflatable kayaks to 80% capacity. You should top it off with a good hand pump anyway.
Deflate port for getting air out quick.
Cons:
LOUD. They are all loud, but this one really screams like a vacuum cleaner on steroids.
No hose. Pump must be held right up against the valve the entire time.
Boston valve adapter is not tight enough, has some blow by.
Power cord is very short. About 9 feet. Good if you cut the cord and put on alligator clips, but inconvenient if you want to use a power port on your dashboard. You end up right next to and under the door with a big raft or mattress.
The directions say to have a 15-20amp fuse in your car's power tap. Most cars will have a ten amp. Putting in a 15 or 20 amp will cause a problem and will not be covered by your cars warranty if you then fry your car wiring. Do NOT put a bigger fuse in there. EVER. Later in the directions it says a ten amp fuse is fine. As if they can't make up their mind. For the record, running this pump for 20 minutes straight it was just fine with a ten amp fuse.
Overall, a good pump for the money. Less than $15 and does the job it was intended to do. You take the noise and the poor connectors when you go this inexpensive. It still works fine. I think Coleman should extend the cord at least five more feet and add alligator clips as a snap on attachment for clipping right to a battery.
This is an excellent pump for high flow and low pressure applications like a floating inner tube, raft or inflatable kayak. It should work great for beach balls, too. I adapted my hand pump hose to fit this pump by putting a couple turns of electrical tape on the hose end. There is a long 12V cord that fits car outlets. I've only used it for a couple days, so later I can report the reliability.
==> It's been over a year now and I've used it about a dozen times. Still works great. I even bought a second one for my son-in-law this year (2010) and likes it also.
This worked for basically one summer. We used it on vacation in August of 2005 to inflate a few items, then we used it again in June and July of 2006 and in mid-July it stopped working completely and we had to throw it away.
It worked great when it worked. - Air Pump - Air Mattress - Air Mattress Pump - Electric Air Pump'
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