Lezyne Digital Pressure Over Drive Floor Pump [Rider Review]

Our "Rider Review" article series features the honest reviews from verified purchasers of Worldwide Cyclery. They contain the photos, thoughts, feedback & overall review you are looking for. 

The Lezyne Digital Pressure Over Drive Floor Pump is thought to essentially be everything you need for a minimalistic setup that still allows you to set up tubeless tires even without an air compressor. We have a lot of love for inventions like this! However, our buddy Alec recently purchased this pump and didn't have the expected results. Let's see what his thoughts are on the Over Drive Floor Pump.

Alec's Review

I like what Lezyne does, I think they are a cool company making high-quality things for the sport I love. While I think that the build quality on the Digital Pressure Over Drive Pump is great, there are 3 reasons that this product is fundamentally flawed and why I would point you to other products from Lezyne rather than this item. The comments below are based on 1 year of using this pump as my only floor pump. I maintain my MTB, and gravel bike as well as doing lots of shop work for my friends and wife.

Build Quality

As I said above, Lezyne builds things that feel great. The wood handle is wonderful, the abs chuck is lovely, all the parts look and feel great. The pump action is smooth and has remained that way and the pump travel, the height it can be pulled up is very long so you get great full pumps.

The ABS-1 Chuck

This chuck is absolutely amazing! If I had any pump from any company, I’d likely find a way to splice this chuck onto the end. It does a couple of things great. First, it threads on and off with ease making a secure lock onto valves and making it very simple to fill a tire. Second, it has a valve core remover on the backside which is just brilliant and works perfectly. It is the best valve core remover I’ve used and frankly if I’m removing a valve core, I’m likely to be pumping up a tire in the near future so it makes sense to have it on the pump. Last, it just feels so good, its got a high-quality good feel that makes you think, yep I made it, I’ve got a good pump.

Digital Pressure

I’m a technology optimistic person so when I saw the option for a digital floor pump, I thought great, bring on the precision and clarity. This gauge does provide that, but what it doesn’t do is work with a dead battery. I’m not sure if this has an auto-off function or not but if I forget to turn this thing off, it kills the battery. It is so frustrating to go to fill your tires only to realize you need a battery to know the pressure in your tire. I will be pursuing analog gauges from now on, unless I read a review saying the battery actually lasts at least a year. I’ve had this pump about a year and have needed to change the battery at least 3 times. In fact, it’s actually giving me the low battery signal now.

How This Pump Works & Inflating a Tire

This pump has 2 functions, a pass-through function for pumping up tires normally and a pressurize function for seating tubeless tires with the built-in chamber. The idea is that when just topping off tires or pumping up already seated tubeless tires, you can set the pump to pass through and pump up your tires normally. Unfortunately, this pump is designed so that in order to pump up a tire you also must fill the chamber on the pump at the same time. The air flows through the chamber before moving into the tire itself. This means that in addition to pressurizing your tire, you must also pressurize your chamber. The unfortunate effect of this is way more pumping than necessary. If you were to pump up a 35mm gravel tire, I’d venture to say that this pump takes 1.5 to 2 times more pumps than a standard chamberless pump. This ends up being very annoying and feels a bit like running up a sand dune, “I’m getting there but damn it is taking a long time and a lot of effort.” If the pump could bypass the chamber, this problem would be resolved and the pump would be much better.

Additionally, because the air is moving through the chamber before moving into the tire, the chamber pressure builds faster than the tire pressure.

If I connect this pump to my 40mm gravel tires and pump quickly (normally pumping) until the gauge reads 50 psi and stop, the gauge will slowly fall back down to something like 40-45psi over a few seconds. This is because the air is slightly restricted in its flow from the camber to the tire so each pump takes a bit before psi is equalized. Again, I feel like I’m running up a sand dune and sliding back down. This all sounds like a lot of complaining and it is, but for a pump that costs $164.99 I think it’s fair to expect a great experience.

Setting Tubeless tires / Conclusion

Unfortunately, this just doesn’t work well. I actually have never seated a tire first try with this pump and I’ve tried with many tires and many tire sizes from 35mm gravel tires to 4.6” fat tires. The problem here is that the air simply doesn’t flow through the pump as fast as it needs to seat a tire. The only times I’ve had success with this pump are with lots of lubricant to help the tire slide over the bead and by setting one side of the bead with a tube, then removing the tube and using the chamber to seat the other side, in addition to pulling the presta valve core and using an adapter to connect to the stem so air could flow more freely (this adapter was from airshot, Lezyne doesn’t seem to provide one). You may think I just don’t know how to use this pump, or how to seat a tire but I also have the Airshot (http://www.airshotltd.com/) and on all tires even as large as 27.5” x 4.6”.

"For this reason, I think you’d be much better off buying a product such as the Airshot in addition to a Lezyne Sport Floor Drive. The two together cost a bit less and you’ll have a much better time using your pump for regular inflation, and you’ll actually be able to seat tubeless tires." - Alec