Best Tire Pressure Gauges: Under Pressure

Top 7 Best Tire Pressure Gauges

Most mechanics – shadetree and otherwise – will advise you that once a driver can actually see an air pressure deficiency in the tires on one’s car, the amount of atmosphere in those rubber hoops is far below recommended inflation. This is why most modern cars have some sort of tire pressure monitoring system, blaring a klaxon worthy of the Enterprise-D under Romulan attack.

Even with TPMS sensors, there’s the chance a person has swapped rims for the winter (raises hand) or simply has occasion to check the tire pressure on an ATV or bike. Here are a few good options we found on Amazon.

If you’re inflating passenger car tires to 100 psi, we recommend you take a step back from the air compressor and calling a professional. Still, many of us never use the full sweep of our car’s speedometer, so the markings here are not without precedent.

This curiously capitalized JACO brand seems to pop up all over the place on Amazon when searching for tools like these, with most of them collecting positive feedback along the way. This unit is no different, earning a 4+ star rating with over 1300 reviews. The round dial and red needle are easy to read and its shape, meant to - har har - look like a tire, is easy to grip.

When digital readouts started popping up on car radios and dashboards in the 1980s, your author coveted them massively. This gauge, which looks an awful lot like an ear thermometer, reads out tire pressures in digital numerals to the nearest tenth.

This is great for precision, so if you feel the family CR-RAV-5 needs 32.1 psi instead of 32.2 psi for the run to soccer practice, this thing has you covered. It’s available in a natty red finish and includes a helpful light on the nozzle so you’re not fumbling for the Schrader valve like a rookie QB fumbles a football.

Sounding for all the world like a hostile alien race on Star Trek, the Vondior gauge shares much with the unit heading up this list. It is, however, a slightly better choice for off-roaders airing down their truck’s tires before heading out on the sand dunes.

Why? Climbing to just 60 psi reading means the hash marks for individual steps of pressure are much easier to read, so go ahead and plan an air down to 15 psi instead of guessing “somewhere around 20”. Its dial is glow-in-the-dark for those late-night dune runs.

The classic. The original. The “my dad had one of those”. Shaped like a pencil and as straightforward to use as one, this basic as dirt tire pressure gauge might be all you need to ensure you’re not rolling down the road on a set of underinflated pancakes.

Made of stainless steel, you should be able to chuck this thing in the trunk and forget about it until needed. There are three units of measure on its readout - psi, kPa, and bar ... not that anyone outside a German manufacturing plant refers to tire pressures in bar. Maybe in a bar over a grog of Beck's, perhaps.

This gauge is actually more than a gauge (“But wait! There’s more!”) as it includes the proper hosing and chuck to work with an air compressor. This is another digital readout on our list, shutting off in about 20 seconds after its last use in an attempt to save on batteries.

Plenty of consumer reviews exist on the selling page, a testament to the psychosis enthusiasm of people who splash out nearly 50 bucks for something like this. However, for a professional, or simply someone who likes precision, this unit provides all the toys.

Actually, if I was carping about the price of that last unit, someone should hand me some smelling salts while I type out a description of this thing. With a list price exceeding what your author paid for several derby cars, this pressure gauge may put pressure on your bank account.

Touted as“the most accurate tire inflator gauge available anywhere on the market”, it is supposed to be accurate to within 0.05 percent. Great for race teams or other pros, its screen has a clear readout that far exceeds any other LCD readout on this list and is apparently able to automatically rotate from portrait to landscape view.

Playing slightly outside the rules of this list is the tire pressure monitoring system shown here. The best pressure gauge is the one you never need to use right? These little electronic readers can be installed by a tire pro the next time you change over a car’s winter rubber.

Using a built-in sensor, these readers beam information back to a screen inside your car, one which draws its power from a 12V socket. It is supposed to sound an alarm if pressure is outside the recommended range. It can provide a readout of tire temperatures as well.

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(Editor’s note: This post is meant to both help you be an informed shopper for automotive products but also to pay for our ‘90s sedan shopping habits operating expenses. Some of you don’t find these posts fun, but they help pay for Junkyard Finds, Rare Rides, Piston Slaps, and whatever else. Thanks for reading.)

[Main photo credit: Soonthorn Wongsaita / ShutterStock.com. Product images provided by the manufacturer.]