Giant Control Tower Pro Boost Track Pump

Giant's Control Tower Pro Boost is a neat solution to integrating a tubeless booster into a track pump that doesn't require a separate chamber.

In the main, most booster track pumps work in the same way: there's a pretty standard track pump bit that charges up a pressure vessel, and you can dump that air into your tyre to seat it. The Control Tower Pro Boost is different in that it uses one cylinder both as the main pump and the storage vessel.

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How has Giant done that? By inverting the pump mechanism so that the top barrel slides over the lower barrel, rather than using a piston inside. 'The inverted design is so that the pump can incorporate the dump tank,' Giant told us. 'Creating the tank at the bottom of the pump means we can use the over barrel to compress the air down for either the dump tank or a straight forward inflation process. As the bottom part is a tank, it's not possible to have a piston run through the centre of the pump, which is why we have the outer over barrel. We didn't want users to have to push and pull the tank up and down so this design allows the tank to be fixed at the bottom of the pump.'

Clear now? Anyway, the TL;DR (too long; didn't read) is: it's all in the one barrel. Which makes the Control Tower Pro Boost a very compact solution.

In use it's the same as other booster pumps. You flick a lever on the base to charge mode and then pump away until you've got the tank up to 200psi, then you attach the pump's head to the valve and flick the lever to dump all the air and seal the tyre. Getting the tank up to 200psi takes a bit of effort but it's easily achievable.

I've had decent success seating Giant's own Gavia Course 1 tubeless tyres, and Schwalbe G-Ones in smaller sizes (28mm Gavias, and 30mm Schwalbes). The main limitation of the design is that the tank is quite small compared to a pump with a separate booster tank, or something like an Airshot. So the bigger the tyres are, the less effective it is. The speed of the air dump is better than some other pumps I've tried, but it's not up to Airshot standards; if I've got big or tricky tyres to get seated, that's still my go-to solution.

If you're going to be seating road/gravel/CX tyres and you're unlikely to do anything bigger than a 40mm, say, then the Control Tower Pro Boost will definitely do a job for you. If you're just pumping up tubed tyres then it's an effective track pump: the Autohead chuck adapts seamlessly to Presta and Schrader valves…

…and it has a nice long hose that stows away neatly over the handle, which is well shaped and comfortable to use.

The base is nice and stable, and the big gauge easy to read.

One slightly annoying thing is that if you've flipped the lever to charge and you lift the handle, it stays lifted rather than dropping down again, because of the design.

> Buyer’s Guide: 13 of the best track pumps

Given the limitations of the tubeless booster – which may or may not be an issue for you – the Control Tower Pro Boost doesn't have universal appeal, and at £99.99 it's at a price point where you could buy an Airshot for your tubeless fettling and our favourite track pump, the Topeak Joe Blow Sport III for the same money. It's not as neat to do it that way, but you're covered for any size of tyre. As a one-stop solution for pumping and tubeless seating, it's decent enough but not outstanding.

Verdict

Compact tubeless booster pump that's effective for smaller road and gravel tyres