I am a firm disbeliever in mini pumps. I’ve used enough useless mini-pumps to become very cynical of the whole idea. My mountain bike sits resplendent in my front room, fitted with a plastic racing bike frame-fit pump. The thing is mini-pumps used to be small and light; but were useless at blowing up tyres. Now they are bigger and work much better, but cost and weigh a ton. My racer pump cost £4 and weighs 130g! and works brilliantly, so there!

However, I’ve just been on holiday abroad, and you have to let your tyres down on the plane, so you end up sitting in the baggage reclaim sweating like a pig trying to get 60psi into your slicks. So I bought the new topeak road-morph. Almost everything Topeak makes works well, and lasts well, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The Road Morph is one of the best products I have ever used.

I know pumps are hardly sexy items, but we all hate blowing up tyres. Well this thing does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a mini track pump. Tyres are inflated super-fast without getting pecs like Arnie’s. Because it has a hose, you can even inflate your tyres while sitting down on a park bench. The MBR review did it no justice at all (but they tested the MTB version); it inflates 2″ MTB tyres or 120psi racer tyres equally well (I always prefer ‘racer’ spec pumps to low pressure ‘MTB’ pumps as I run 40-55psi in my MTB tyres).

Yes, and it doesn’t have one of these fancy heads that adapts to different valve sizes, but I always use presta anyway. The head is really secure and never blows of the valve at 120psi (like my real track pump!). The gauge is accurate enough, but sometimes ‘sticks’ and ‘jumps’ between readings.

The only downsides; pretty darn heavy and almost £30.