Lokithor Review Jump Starter Car Tire Air Compressor With Voltmeter And Flashlight
A useful portable solution that will help you solve car-related problems like jump starting a car in cold weather! Lokithor is also am air compressor that can inflate car tires, footballs and air mattresses. It also houses a built-in flashlight, voltmeter and a fast charging USB port for quickly charging a phone in a pinch.
One of the best things about Lokithor is that it does not need to be connected to the 12V car socket. It is self-powered so, you can use it standalone without being tethered to any external power, making it much more convenient to use without having to drag cables around. Lokithor houses a rechargeable lithium battery with 45Wh (10,000mAh) battery capacity and a 1000 discharge life-cycle, which means the battery will only start losing holding performance after being discharged (emptied) 1000 times. You can extend the lifespan of the battery even further though, by regularly charging the battery so, it does not fully discharged.
The Lokithor machine has a total of 6 buttons, including a dedicated standard flashlight button with a loud clicky actuation that lets you access 3 lighting modes: solid light, strobe (tactical) and SOS. The flashlight is rated at 300 lumens, although it doesn't seem that much brighter than the flashlight of a smartphone (see video below). That said, the seemingly low lumen output of the flashlight could be due to the wide (130 degree) beam of the flashlight leds and/or the low charge of the internal battery. The Lokithor flashlight has no red light option, which would have been useful as a warning light when breaking down by the side of a road.
Lokithor integrates an LCD screen and 5 metal dome membrane switches, which have a clicky and tactile hard press actuation, making them easy to operate. A few advantages you get with this type of dome switches is that they're fully waterproof, reliable and durable with a lifespan of up to millions of presses. The dome switch buttons include a dedicated "pump" button (start/stop) and up/down buttons for increasing and decreasing pressure values between. 0.8 bar/ 10 PSI (lowest) and 10 bar/150 PSI) (highest). Lokithor shows the current tire pressure too, which is handy for checking the car tire pressure beforehand. The buttons make no audible beep when pressed and, you can quickly increase/decrease air press by holding the buttons.
The 3.9-inch LCD display has a soft rubbery coating on top that completely seals it from the outside. The LCD display is large and bright enough that you can view it in direct sunlight without having to get too close to it. The LCD screen shows green color led bars to indicate the battery level. The pressure value is shown in large numerical fonts along with the word PSI or BAR. You can choose between PSI and BAR pressure. As far as inflation performance, Lokithor is able to quickly inflate footballs and a small car tire (195/65/R15) from flat to 35 PSI in just 5 minutes.
Just below the LCD display, there are two rubber pop up covers concealing the connectivity ports. The port on the right side houses a USB-C port (for charging only) and a USB-A port for charging external devices. The USB-C and USB-A ports support Quick Charge 3.0 - 15 watts (5A/3A) and 18 watts (9A/2A) with a charging time of 3 hours. When using a 10 watt charger, the charging time is around 7 hours. The port on the left is an EC8 female port.
The pop up covers are made of thick rubber and are hinged from the top so, they're easy to pull out of the way when plugging in the cables. The protective rubber covers feel a bit loose, although they're tight enough to minimize dust ingress and water ingress when inflating a car tire in the rain. That said, do bear in mind that Lokithor is not water resistant or dust resistant.
A heavy duty tire inflator hose adapter is included with Lokithor. You can easily attach the hose and detach it from the inflator by undoing the metal threaded plastic cap. At the other end of the hose, there is a valve wedge for inserting into the car tire nozzle. The valve wedge has a lever arm mechanism that makes it very easy to lock and unlock the valve from the car tire nozzle. The locking lever is made of thick metal so, it is extremely durable. The hose adapter cable is not proprietary, which means you can potentially use a third party one if you want a longer inflator hose. The included hose measures 56cm long and weighs 92 grams and feels good quality. It is made of a hard synthetic rubber inner core with a nylon fabric outer sheath.
Lokithor measures 25cm long, 14cm wide, 10cm high and weighs 1.7kg. The Lokithor inflator is made entirely of hard plastic with a heavy duty rubberized grab handle at the top to conveniently carry it around. The grab handle is lightly padded underneath it with soft rubber material. The included red and black jump starting cable clamps are made of thick 6AWG wire and hard rubber sheath. The spring loaded clamps are made of copper alloy and hard plastic. The jump starter cables measure 28cm long and are joined together via an EC8 plug that connects into the Lokithor machine. The EC8 plug has square/round connectors to prevent wrong polarity connection. The jump start cable clamps weigh 306 grams.
As well as being able to check the air pressure of car tires, you can also check the voltage of the car battery via Lokithor's built-in voltmeter function. the voltmeter lets you quickly find out the health of the car battery, which should be above 12.5 volts for a healthy car battery. When checking the voltage of the car battery, you ideally want to do it at "resting voltage" when the car has been turned off (or parked) for at least 2 hours to get an accurate voltage reading. The voltmeter function seems to only work when the car battery is connected to the car. It doesn't seem to work with the battery removed from the car (it trips error code 430).
Lokithor comes with a user friendly user booklet, which is clear and detailed and has illustrational pictures to help a first time users understand how Lokithor works. The user guide manual also has an error code page of possible error messages that Lokithor can encounter.
There are three Lokithor versions being sold via Lokithor's website. All three are virtually the same with the same with the exception of the jump starting power and battery capacity. The one pictured on this review it's the JA300 (45Wh) version with 1500A peak cranking amps and 800A cranking amps. It is suitable for 7 liter petrol/gasoline engines and 4.5 liter diesel engines.
The JA301 (74Wh) version has 2000A peak cranking amps, 1000A cranking amps and, it is suitable for 8 liter petrol engines and 6 liter diesel engines. The JA302 version (most expensive) has 2500A peak cranking amps, 1200A cranking amps and, it's suitable for 8.5 liter engines and 6.5 liter engines. The best way to determine which Lokithor model to buy is by checking the cranking amps rating of your car battery. The cranking amps rating basically shows how much the jump starter is able to discharge and sustain the cranking power. Lokithor can sustain the cranking power amps for at least 30 seconds in 0C (32 F) temperatures. At below 0 temperatures, the cranking power starts decreasing. Lokithor is, effectively, a battery booster being able to deliver the given cranking amps in -20C temperatures.
Lokithor comes well packaged inside a lightweight cardboard box with thick protective foam pads and other accessories such as a thick rubber USB-A to USB-C charging cable and inflator tips for inflating balls and air mattresses. There is also a drawstring polyester pouch to store the cable accessories, as well as a zipper bag which is large enough to fit the Lokithor machine and cable accessories. You can buy Lokithor from LokithorShop.com.
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