Portable Off-road Air Compressor Shootout | Viair vs. HarborFreight vs. Smittybilt

we are david and tiffany and oh yeah there's larry our land rover and here at over landing world we're diving into reviews and how-to's that you as an overlanding enthusiast want to know so buckle up and join us on this adventure all here at overlanding world hey everyone welcome to overlanding world and this video is actually not going to be including larry too much um he's actually under construction dave is working on reviewing the differentials so he's a little bit all over the car however we are going to help you guys solve maybe a question that you have so you know when you're like off-roading you have to air down your tires but then you do have to air back up to get back home right so in this video if you we're going to talk about three different air compressors so you can decide which one is right for you so there is an arb setup that a lot of people do that runs about 500 so if you don't want to spend 500 on air it's understandable that's why other companies made different air compressors and we're going to try to show you which one passes our little test today all right so we have three different brands of air compressors that we're going to be comparing today we have the harbor freight one we have the vi air and then the smittybilt we're going to put them to a little bit of a test and just overall go in what would come in a box when you buy it all right so each of these compressors actually fall in a bit of a different price range that might be right for you this harbor freight run runs about 70 dollars you could get money off with coupons maybe get it down to 50 i would say i'm not sure about that but and then the vi air actually runs um the most expensive and that one is about 220 dollars and then the smittybilt runs about 155 dollars so you really just have to choose one that's in your budget however that might like um affect the dependability and you know the quality of the products which is uh what we're gonna get into all right so first up is the harbor freight one this is the one that runs about seventy dollars um so when we first were getting into over landing this was the first one that we purchased because we're like you know it's a compressor is a compressor it takes air from one place to another right so we didn't really get into like all the logistics of how the quality is and everything so long story short this is probably i want to say our fifth one of these each one has blown the hose and this has happened one it was pretty hot weather and we weren't really paying attention we were just you know filling up the tires trying to get out of the desert um but most of the time the hose does like burst and it's either it's usually either at either of the ends whether it connects to the compressor or where the gauges and so actually with this one we were finding that we had to like put water on it like not constantly but every like maybe a minute or so to keep it from one bursting and like overheating and not even putting air in the tire anymore another thing to note is that this one fills the tire up ex like extremely slow like we our friends would be done in the car ready to go and we'd be still there like on the second tire trying to get um chad to air up so yeah this is something to note about the harbor freight one however but you can't really complain it's 50 dollars what do you expect okay another thing to note about the harbor freight one that i forgot to mention is that the gauge is extremely inaccurate we would have to have another handheld tire pressure gauge to actually check like take this off check see what temp or i was gonna say temperature what psi it's at and so that is something that kind of sucks about this one so moving on to the vi air this is the 400p one and this one once you take it out of the box it already has a completely different look everything is much more high quality again this is the 220 price range one and so just comparing the hose to this hose number one it's much bigger in circumference and the quality is much better you can feel that right away another thing is that the this looks way better obviously it has a complete handle a like very nice big gauge and this gauge is actually extremely accurate we have found this is the one that we are currently using um and also how you put it on the um the stem of the tire is a little bit different this one really seals it on there and comes nicely instead of screwing it on like the harbor freight one so this one is really nice um we haven't had any issues with this one so far but um again we're gonna put them all to a little bit of a test today and see if this one will beat the smittybilt one we don't know all right so the final air compressor we're comparing in this three is the smittybilt air compressor we were actually considering getting this one over the viair however after a little bit of research and just comparing the prices we decided that we don't want to have to deal with it bursting and we're going to have to you know return it get a new one so we just went with the buyer however we are going to be trying this out today for the first time like the hoses in the plastic so this is going to be a completely honest review we might be surprised by the results all right one thing to note about the smittybilt um the hose that it comes with it's actually very similar to the harbor freight one as you can see this is the smittybilt this is the harbor freight one they screw on the exact same way we've had some issues with this one you know getting like a tight fit on the stem on the tire and so this one we're gonna see if it has the same like issue or like response and we're gonna see what that what's up with that but for the most part um i would say the hose on this one is about like mediocre compared to the vaere one i mean i'm just literally like feeling the thickness and feeling like if it has any give in it but we're gonna find out this one seems like a medium size between the wire and the harbor freight one but yeah so next we're just going to be putting it to the test to see how fast it could pump up one of our tires all right we just got the three tires over here we're gonna use the three compressors hook them up to the battery and then see how long each one takes and we're gonna use the trusty iphone timer so this is what happens when i leave larry with this guy for one night one night he leaves the key in the ignition the entire night and now look what we're doing we have to jump it yeah that's what happened all right come on can't be trusted okay it's not like we have like stuff to do huh i said it's not like we have like stuff to do today all right don't start right now give it a minute i heard it beeping so something happened well this is what larry looks like guys you're curious fifth just set the camera on time lapse on deflating tires it's like nothing is moving and then there's gonna be a time lapse of that in my defense it was a time lapse of us deflating the tire and then it wasn't going to be of the air coming out you can't see that obviously okay we just uh put down all the pressure in the tires to 11 psi uh we're aiming for 12 but we kind of overshot one of them and then we have to adjust the others and if you guys are wondering we use these little air deflectors tire deflators uh i think they work the fastest they're like way faster than those arb single hand ones where you have to pull them out these you just put them on all four tires and then you just walk back around and undo them one by one and then you're done so yeah all three tires are at 11 psi so let's see how long they think all right so we're gonna use the crappy harbor freight one to set the benchmark so let's see how long this guy takes and then yeah all right we're gonna fill these tires up to 35 psi i think everybody just runs them at like 30 to 35 so it only makes sense to go up to that uh have the time already and then when i flip the switch i'm going to start it and now when we do start it and do the whole thing i'm going to turn the engine on i just have it off right now so it doesn't mess up with the mics and everything so yeah and [Music] okay guys one thing about the harbor freight one is that it reads like way inaccurate like the actual pressure is about like five or ten less than what the gauge reads like the actual pressure was like 25 and the gauge was reading like 35 to 40. all right guys so this harbor freight finally reached 35 psi it took three minutes and 16 seconds so ah i mean i mean that's okay let's put that as like our face that's plus the number to be right now but i'm pretty sure it's going to get vegan if you ask me but yeah so there's number one we have two more to do let's go all right so next up we have this mini bill um again we've never used this so this is gonna be a completely like honest and like first impression review of the whole thing um one thing it's heavy okay so that's annoying compared to the other ones but maybe there's a reason it's heavy maybe it's gonna be better we don't know we're just gonna hook it up and then and start going got it ready think so got the all right timer about to start right now [Music] um make sure it doesn't all right what's he reading well if it tells me i'll let you know 29. all right so the gauge was reading what 35 or 40. which was it i don't know but it's your neck it was wrong that's what matters it was it was not 29 okay so we're at a minute 29 so we're just gonna keep going and see where it goes all right all right all right so it's at 36 however the gauge was reading like 40 45. so right on the timer we have two minutes and 11 seconds so maybe take that back like how many seconds like five seconds five to eight seconds and so this one beat our sad friend from harbor freight but we still have one more and we'll see how that goes all right so our final one to which of the test is the vi air again to mention this is the one at the higher uh price range at 220 dollars let's save it for it one cool thing to note about this one specifically that the other two do not do is that even once you have it on so i flip the switch on right i'm not i'm not pumping anything up however it turns off but the switch is still on so this is something that's cool you don't have to constantly run back to the compressor turn it on and off once it senses that it's not putting air into anything it'll shut off so that's something else that's cool one thing that i would say is the one downfall that i've realized about this is that you have to sit here and hold this to in order for the air to go in there's an easy fix to this just putting one of those velcro straps we just haven't gotten one yet but once we get that i don't think i'm gonna have any complaints but let's put it to the test and find out ready set tell [Music] all right so we just finished with the buyer one um this one showed the most accurate gauge on the actual compressor it showed 35 psi and on our little one it showed 35 psi so that's pretty cool of all three that's the one that was most accurate however it did take two minutes and 40 seconds um so i think that's in the middle of the two um of the other two but yeah so that's um the last one that we have to test today um all right guys so that finishes up our little test on the three compressors again this was a harbor freight for seventy dollars um the smittybilt for 150 and the vayer for about 220. um so this mini belt did pump up the tire the fastest we went from 11 psi to 35 psi so if you're looking for something in that price range that would be a good choice however in my own opinion i'm not biased in any way but in my own opinion i would say that the vair has feels and has the best quality out of the three um again the smittybilt um like the accessories and everything the hose seems more similar to the harbor freight one than it does to the vire one again this is just my opinion you can make your own um opinion about it but yeah thank you guys so much for watching this video really appreciate it um we'll be back with a lot more hit us down in the comments if you have any questions or if we missed anything on the video if you have a question or want to see a picture of it close up or anything let us know yeah thank you so much and stay tuned for more

Channel: Overlanding World

Views: 48,551

Keywords: offroad, overland, overlanding, offroading, camping, aircompressor, arb, discovery2, landrover, wheeling, trucks, cars, smittybilt, viair, harborfreight, tires

Id: jtOcizRMehg

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021