If you’ve ever spent a long day hiking uphill with a heavy pack, you know that the absolute last thing you want to do when you finally reach camp is blow up your sleeping pad. Huffing and puffing into a piece of plastic for five minutes when you’re already exhausted is its own special kind of torture. I used to just suck it up and do it by hand—or mouth, rather—because carrying a bulky, heavy electric pump into the backcountry was out of the question. But then I came across the Aerogogo GIGA Pump Air, and it has completely changed how I pack.
To say this thing is small is a massive understatement. It weighs exactly one ounce (28 grams). That is roughly the weight of a single AA battery or half an egg. It literally sits in the palm of your hand and disappears into a pocket. Store it in your sleeping pad bag, it’s so small. The secret to its ridiculous weight savings is that Aerogogo completely ditched the internal battery. Instead, it features a short USB-C cord that you plug right into a power bank, your phone, or an outdoor lantern. Since most of us are already carrying a portable power bank to keep our phones alive anyway, this design is pure genius—you get endless runtime without carrying dead weight.
Don’t let the tiny footprint fool you, though. When you plug it into a 5V/2A power source, this little micro-pump screams to life. It pushes out 300 liters of air per minute with 3.5kPa of pressure. In plain English? It fills a standard camping sleeping pad in about 45 to 50 seconds flat. It also works in reverse as a vacuum, which is honestly where it shines just as bright. Getting all the air out of a mattress so you can roll it back into its tiny stuff sack is usually a wrestling match, but this pump sucks it down bone-dry in under a minute.
It also comes packed with seven different nozzles and a neat little drawstring bag to keep everything organized. The variety of attachments means it plays nice with almost every major outdoor brand on the market (think Therm-a-Rest, Nemo, Klymit, Exped, etc.), and it handles pool floats and vacuum storage bags back home just as easily. Because the airflow is so concentrated, I’ve even used it to quickly stoke a struggling campfire and blow dust out of my camera gear.
Is it loud? Yes, it has a high-pitched whine to it, but because it works so fast, you only have to hear it for less than a minute. For around forty bucks, freeing up your lungs and saving your energy at the end of a long trail day makes this a no-brainer addition to any gear closet. If you’re trying to lighten your load without sacrificing comfort, this little silver cylinder is worth every square inch of pocket space.
