Reviewed: Lezyne’s Micro Floor Drive is a traveller’s dream
Lezyne's compact, fully-functional mini floor pump is perfect for travel, touring, or mountain bikers with big packs
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The wonders of the humble floor pump can only be truly appreciated while sitting on a foreign hotel room floor, 200 pump strokes, 40 psi, and one case of tennis elbow into a half-hour-long tire inflation process. Mini-pumps, as a general rule, suck in inverse proportion to the amount of air that they blow. Smaller is generally worse.
Lezyne’s Micro Floor Drive is small but clever. The $45 pump, which features a stabilizing foot and long rubber hose, is designed to be used as a mini floor pump. No more tennis elbow, no more cursing the laws of physics as you try to push more than 70 psi into a road tire.
The Micro Floor Drive is compact — just 12 inches long — small enough to fit in most hydration packs and certainly small enough to fit in your bike’s travel case, while providing the usability and relatively quick inflation a true floor pump.
The CNC-machined pump comes in HP (high pressure) and HV (high volume) versions, intended for road and mountain bike use. The high-volume version is rated to 90 psi, so roadies who run slightly larger tires and lower pressures may be able to get away with the HV, which will reduce the strokes required to hit the desired pressure.
In our testing, the Micro Floor Drive HV cut inflation time in half relative to Lezyne’s own Alloy Drive HV mini pump. Because the Micro Floor Drive functions like a floor pump, inflating to higher, road-worthy pressures was much easier, and arm fatigue was a non-issue.
An in-line pressure gauge is available for an extra $15, for those who don’t like the pinch method of checking tire pressure.
The pump head is Presta and Schrader compatible, and, like the rest of the pump, can be easily disassembled for cleaning or replacement. The whole pump is well-built, with few moving parts. Durability is excellent. If something does go wrong, Lezyne sells spare parts for its pumps, a rarity these days.
Fixtures are solid and the foot at the bottom is just large enough to keep the pump from wobbling around as you inflate.
The handle doesn’t slide all the way into the pump body and doesn’t flip down onto the pump shaft, as it does on the mini floor pumps from both Bontrager and Topeak. That means no more pinched fingers.
If you travel frequently, a pump like the Micro Floor Drive is a must. No more dealing with CO2, no more pumping away forever on a mini pump. Touring cyclists and mountain bikers who ride with packs should take a second look as well — the Micro Floor Drive is only about 50 grams heavier than a standard mini pump, but is far more practical when in use.
Retail price: $45 with no pressure gauge, $60 with gauge
We like: Shorter inflation time, no pinched fingers, stable foot stand, long hose prevents broken valves
We don’t like: A bit heavier than a mini pump, would look nasty mounted on a road bike
The scoop: A must-have for cyclists who travel, or mountain bikers who flat frequently