The Boot Gift: Useless Fifty-One Weeks a Year

Underinflated tyres are close to universal and almost nobody checks. Pressure drops steadily on its own, faster in cold weather, and the consequences are worse fuel economy, longer braking distances and tyres that wear out early. A pump in the boot turns a task requiring a trip to a petrol station into a five-minute job on the driveway.

Cordless is the specification that decides whether it gets used. A 12V inflator that runs off the cigarette lighter means starting the car, unwinding a cable and threading it out of a window. A battery unit you simply carry to the wheel removes every step between noticing a soft tyre and fixing it.

It covers more than car tyres. Bicycles, motorbikes, footballs, an air mattress before guests arrive — a household that owns one finds uses for it, which is what stops it becoming a thing in a cupboard.

• A husband or father who drives an older car
• Anyone with a long commute or who drives family around
• A household with bicycles as well as a car
• Someone who has had a slow puncture and dealt with it badly

• Genuinely a safety item, not just a convenience
• Cordless means it actually gets used
• Useful across cars, bikes and everything inflatable

The things worth checking before you order — this is where gifts like this most often go wrong.

• Gauge accuracy varies at this price, and an inflator that reads a few PSI off will consistently over- or under-inflate. It is worth checking it once against a forecourt gauge or a separate pressure gauge, then remembering the offset.
• Read the battery runtime as tyres inflated, not as minutes. Topping up four tyres by a few PSI is a very different job from inflating one flat tyre from nothing, and the headline figures usually describe the easy case.
• It will not fix a puncture. An inflator gets a soft tyre to a safe pressure so the car can reach a garage — it is not a repair, and a tyre that goes down again within the hour needs a professional rather than another top-up.
• Charge it occasionally even if unused. A cordless tool that has sat in a cold boot for eight months is frequently flat at the exact moment it is wanted, which defeats the entire purpose.