The admitted benefit of the digital ones are accuracy. Mechanical pop out gauges, or even dial gauge styles, they have limited accuracy at pressure below their spec and obviously don;t work at all or will be damaged by pressure above their spec.
E.g, for the pop out gauges, you’ll usually see them sold in ranges of 5-30psi, 20-60psi, and 30-120 psi. 5-30 is good for lawn equipment, 20-60 for cars and light truck, 30-120 for heavy truck. A digital gauge covers all of them at once rather than needing 3 separate gauges banging around in the toolbox.
The digtial gauge can get you within 0.5psi while the mechanicals usually are within 2psi at best. And for big lawn or flotation tires that need like 3psi or less, forget it, you need digital, most mechanical gauges never even go that low…
I’m not driving a race car to where I need tire pressure that accurate. The mornings here start cold and warm up so that line impacts my tire pressure more than the variance in the gauge not to mention the tires warm up during driving. It does seem nice to have a constant ability to see tires pressure in the dashboard though. I just don’t have that.
The admitted benefit of the digital ones are accuracy. Mechanical pop out gauges, or even dial gauge styles, they have limited accuracy at pressure below their spec and obviously don;t work at all or will be damaged by pressure above their spec.
E.g, for the pop out gauges, you’ll usually see them sold in ranges of 5-30psi, 20-60psi, and 30-120 psi. 5-30 is good for lawn equipment, 20-60 for cars and light truck, 30-120 for heavy truck. A digital gauge covers all of them at once rather than needing 3 separate gauges banging around in the toolbox.
The digtial gauge can get you within 0.5psi while the mechanicals usually are within 2psi at best. And for big lawn or flotation tires that need like 3psi or less, forget it, you need digital, most mechanical gauges never even go that low…
I’m not driving a race car to where I need tire pressure that accurate. The mornings here start cold and warm up so that line impacts my tire pressure more than the variance in the gauge not to mention the tires warm up during driving. It does seem nice to have a constant ability to see tires pressure in the dashboard though. I just don’t have that.
Yeah… But in 99% of situations, within 2psi is fine.