Pulse Jump Review: Don’t Let a Flat Battery or Tyre Ruin Your Day

After returning from a recent overseas trip, I fired up my car and drove to my local Bunnings for some garden supplies. I wasn’t thrilled about it, and become even less so when I went to leave: apparently there’d been enough juice in the battery for one start, but not two. Other than muttered swearing, silence echoed around the parking garage.

Fortunately, this is a story that ends well. Situations like these are exactly what portable jump starters are designed for, and because I’ve been reviewing them for the last few years, I had one in the car with me.

It turned what could have been a very bad day into just a minor annoyance, and I’ve been strongly recommending friends and family buy one ever since.

I like the one I’ve been using, but it’s quite bulky: I have to wedge it under the driver’s seat, which takes up a bit of passenger foot space. Is there a better option out there that does all the same things but fits in my glovebox instead?

Pulse is an Australian company that makes a variety of portable devices, from power banks to speakers and in this case, small portable jump starters as well. Could their Jump model become my car’s new emergency first aid kit? Only one way to find out.

Design and Extras

My first impressions of the Jump were very good. It sounds like a simple thing, but including a firm, compact travel case for a product that’s meant to live in your vehicle makes such a difference.

Every other portable jump starter I’ve used didn’t come with a case; either you had to buy it separately, or there just wasn’t one available at all. Big tick for Pulse including it by default.

The company tries to differentiate itself through design, with products that perform well and look good doing it. As far as you can make a utilitarian product like this seem attractive, it’s done a good job.

It comes in four different colours (mine was the titanium version), and is noticeably more compact than most others I’ve tried. There’s a useful inbuilt carry strap, and a control pad and display on the top that’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s worth reading the small instruction booklet, but chances are you’ll only need to do it once.

The Jump comes with a pretty standard set of accessories for a device like this. There’s a short set of jumper leads, a rubber hose for the air compressor, and four different valves to connect it to things that aren’t car tyres: bikes, beach balls, and the like. There’s also a short USB-A to C cable.

Most of the ports sit under a silicone flap on the bottom edge: there’s both DC and USB C input, USB-A output, and an EC5 socket for connecting the jumper leads. The air compressor socket is on the top edge, and the LED light takes up most of the right-hand edge.

Surprisingly, the USB C port is only for charging the Jump itself; you can’t use it to charge other devices. For that, you’ll need to use the USB-A cable, which means you’re limited to slower charging and smaller devices.

This gadget is clearly meant for dealing with vehicle emergencies, not topping up your laptop. You can still charge your phone from it, at least, which feels like the thing you’d most need to do in a pinch.

Specifications

Testing

I started out with the simplest test: how well does the Jump fit in my car? I’ve only got a small hatchback, and some of the larger portable jump starters I’ve tested in the past wouldn’t even fit under the seat, never mind in the glovebox.

No such issue here: the Jump is significantly smaller than the other models I’ve used. Without the travel case, it fits easily inside the glovebox, even with the air and battery cables alongside. Inside the case, which is by far the most likely way you’ll be transporting it around, I had no problem fitting it under the driver’s seat.

Once that was done, I held down the power button down, and after a musical tone, got big, chunky icons and numbers on the screen that made it obvious what was going on. Time to see how well it all worked.

Air Compressor

To use the air compressor, just turn the device on. There are a bunch of presets for different things you might want to put air into; press the mode (left) button on the control panel to cycle through them.

By default it’s set to 36 PSI for a car tyre, with other presets for motorbikes, bicycles, and inflatable balls. If the standard settings aren’t right for you, just press the + and – buttons on the control panel to change them.

If you’d rather work in different units like bar or kPa, hold down the mode button for a few seconds, then press it repeatedly to switch. Once whatever you’re inflating reaches the desired pressure, the unit switches off automatically.

There’s also a manual mode where you just select the target pressure without starting from a particular preset. I doubt most people will use it, but it’s there if you want it.

When you connect the air hose between the Jump and (say) your car tyre, the current pressure shows on the screen. To start inflating, just short-press the power button.

To test it, I deflated one of my car tyres to 25 PSI, set the target pressure to 33 PSI, and then started the inflator. There was no question as to whether it was working; like most air compressors, quietness is not one of its attributes.

The cable is pretty short (25 cm), but I was still able to stand the Jump on the ground beside the tyre while it inflated rather than having to hold it the entire time. I only have a small hatchback, though: depending on the size of your vehicle’s wheels, you may or may not be able to do the same.

The current pressure displayed on the screen started rising, and just under two minutes later, it hit 33 PSI and automatically turned off. Just before that, the battery icon dropped from four to three bars, suggesting it had used a quarter of its capacity.

With that in mind, I’d probably suggest saving the Jump for emergency situations or general small air top-ups, rather than relying on it to (e.g.) reinflate all four tyres after you’ve dropped them down for driving on soft sand. You might run out of battery before you’re done!

Jump Starter

Using the jump starter was equally straightforward: plug the cable into the socket on the bottom edge of the device (it only fits one way), and hook the alligator clips on the other end to your vehicle battery.

The cable is fancier than others I’ve used, with a smart controller at one end uses lights and beeps to let you know what’s going on. A solid green light means you’re good to try and start your vehicle, anything else means there’s a problem. From a safety perspective, this is a great idea.

Less great is the fact that this is the only portable jump starter I’ve used that doesn’t give a voltage measurement when it’s connected to a battery. Usually you’ll at least be told what the current level is, so you can see at a glance whether the voltage is low before you start.

Instead, you’ll either get nothing on the screen if the device isn’t powered on, or just the usual air compressor information if it is. Because of that smart controller, you don’t need onscreen information to use the jump starter safely, but it feels like a missed opportunity for a bit of extra value.

My car battery wasn’t dead when doing my testing, thankfully, so I can’t tell you for sure that the jump starter works in an emergency. What I can tell you, though, is that when the Jump was properly connected to my battery, the red light on the controller disappeared and I was able to start my car as usual.

I’ll borrow a multi-meter at some point and test the voltage output properly but for now, I have no reason to doubt it.

Like every other portable jump starter I’ve used, the jumper cables are pretty short, just 36 cm end to end. That didn’t cause much of an issue for me, but on larger vehicles, you may find it harder to find somewhere safe to sit the device after you’ve attached it to the battery terminals.

One last thing to note: the Jump has a peak output of 1000 cranking amps, and can start vehicles with a 12V battery and up to a 3.5L engine. That’s fine for the vast majority of cars on the road, but you’ll need something beefier for trucks, extra-large utes and SUVs, and the like.

Torch and Charging

To use the LED light on the side, turn the device on and hold down the torch button on the control panel. The default is a steady, moderately-bright white light; short-press the torch button again to get a brighter version, or a red light that flashes SOS in Morse code.

With a maximum of 5W even at it’s brightest setting, this isn’t a super high-power torch, but it’s fine for its intended purpose of signalling for help or poking around in the engine bay at night.

As I mentioned earlier, the USB C cable is only for charging the Jump itself, not other devices, and takes a while. It’s rated to a maximum of 10W, and that seems about right: regardless of the wall charger I used, my tester never measured more than 8.7W.

Even so, it did at least charge slightly faster than the five hours listed in the manual. Using a 20W wall charger, the Jump went from “Lo” to fully charged in 4hrs 40 minutes.

When it comes to powering other gadgets, use the USB-A to C cable that comes in the box, or any other you’ve got lying around. Tap the power button and you’ll get up to 12W out of the USB-A port, which isn’t what anyone would call fast charging in 2026 but could be worse.

The speed you’ll actually get, however, may not even be that high. I tried it with three recent phones, an iPhone and two Androids, and didn’t measure more than 7W at any point. As a result, took almost 90 minutes to charge from 35% to 70%.

There’s also a 12-15V DC input port, intended for charging from a car accessory port or appropriate wall charger. There’s no cable for it in the box and Pulse doesn’t sell one, however, so you’ll need to provide your own.

Verdict

The Pulse Jump is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s plenty to like about it, starting with that bundled travel case: I’ve never understood why other companies don’t at least offer it for a device that’s pretty likely to be bouncing around inside your car for years.

The size is another win: it’s noticeably smaller than the other models I’ve used, which means it fits easily in my glovebox when it’s not inside the travel case, or under the seats when it is.

The downside with the smaller size, of course, is a smaller battery capacity. It’s unlikely to be an issue when topping up your phone or jumpstarting your car in an emergency, but it doesn’t take much effort to drain the Jump’s internal battery when you’re inflating tyres with it.

The air compressor works well, with a few different valve adapters that makes it useful for more than just car tyres, and the torch is functional if not particularly bright.

Like pretty much all of its competition, the cables could also do with being a bit longer, especially if you’ve got a larger vehicle.

I really like the smart controller built into the jumper cables; I just wish the device showed the current voltage as well, so when my car doesn’t start, I can tell whether it’s the battery or the starter motor that’s given up.

Charging is a bit of a letdown: only being able to charge other devices from the USB-A port feels antiquated in 2026, and charging speeds are slow, both of the Jump itself and anything you plug into it.

Overall, though, the main features of the Jump work how you hope they would, and if you’re buying this mainly as a way of ensuring a dead battery or deflating tyre is an annoyance rather than a crisis, it’s a small, well-made way of achieving that. I just feel like with a few small tweaks, it could have been even better.

If you’re based in Australia (Pulse only ships domestically at this stage), you can buy the Jump directly from the company.

All images via author