Do pressurizers really work?

Every week people write to us asking us or questioning the effectiveness of tennis and paddle ball pressurizers, and we always answer the same:

it depends on what type of pressurizer, how you use it and the previous state of the balls

Because precisely these are the three keys that determine the effectiveness of a good ball pressurizer. In this entry we will explain the first of the keys, the other two we will deal with in later publications because they are more complex:

types of pressurizers:

To simplify, we will say that there are two main types of pressurizers: threaded ones, which work by compressing the air from a blind container without valves, and those that use a manual inflator to add pressure through a valve installed in the lid.

First part of the video demonstrating why the pressurizers that do not have an inflation valve do not work well to recover the internal pressure of the balls between matches.

Jokes apart from the photo, we mean it: these types of pressurizers, when working at low pressures in the 14-16 psi range, they do not add pressure to the interior of the ball and therefore the only thing they help is that the ball does not degrade further by leaving it in the bag without pressurizing. They are cheap, costing around €20, but don't be fooled, if your level of padel or tennis is good or you aspire to be good in a while, it's a lost investment. Hence the complaints we receive from many users of this pressurizer model telling us that they do not work and thinking that any other device will not work either.

However, the other type of pressurizers, those that have a valve in the lid to add air through it, do work if they are used well, because when working in a pressure range of 30 psi, they do add pressure to the inside of the ball through the pores of the rubber itself: