As pumps go, the B’Twin 900 track pump is a simple beast. It doesn’t have a plethora of features enabling it to seat tubeless tyres, setup suspension or inflate a paddling pool. It just pumps up tyres.

In its favour, however, is the fact it costs less than twenty British pounds. A price that puts it way below many of its rivals. And while you might expect an inferior level of performance or construction, it’s actually not bad. The baseplate is made of steel plus the main barrel and plunger are aluminium. It’s only really the plastic twin-head air chuck that gives the game away, mainly down to its unrefined connection.

Comfy handles.

Pump up the jam

As for performance, it will happily inflate a 27.5″x2.3″ tyre from flat to 20psi within 35 strokes. However the barrel is relatively thin in diameter so it struggles with plus sized tyres to inflate efficiently. It seems to be little more at home dealing with higher pressure/lower volume hybrid or road tyres. The good news is the T-handle is relatively comfortable so at least pumping tyres with the 900 isn’t a painful experience.

Setting your tyre pressures

Losing balance

Where the 900 really loses marks though is in the design of two critical features. Firstly, the steel baseplate has a narrow footprint making it easy to topple over when attaching it to tyres. Another fallout of this instability is the pump is a little wobbly in use, it’s tricky to use one handed for example without requiring both feet to stabilise it. Whereas a little wobble can be coped with, the tiny size of the gauge reduces the efficacy of the pump. Due to it reading to 160 psi, the area populated by most MTB use is woefully inaccurate.

It’s a bit tricky to read the numbers….

This is especially the case when a single digit psi change can have a bearing on your bike. Even with decent eyesight I struggled to read all of the digits whilst pumping. There is an adjustable arrow to help but again, this just puts pressure into a ball-park area.

It is available in black, red or neon yellow though.