The IT Nerd

I recently received a pitch from a Malaysia based company to try out their new product which is the Fobo Tire 2. Seeing as I have tried a couple of these sorts of products in the past, I had them send one over to me. The Fobo Tire 2 is a Bluetooth 5 based tire pressure monitoring system that has some interesting things going for it. And some glitches that need to be ironed out. First let’s have a look at the hardware that comes in the box:

In the box, you get the in car receiver on the top left, the pressure sensors on the top right, on the bottom left you get two wrenches to allow you to lock the pressure sensors to the valve stems so that you can avoid them being stolen. And on the bottom right you get a set of velcro stickers to stick the in car receiver to your dash.

What’s interesting about the in car receiver is that it is powered by a pair of AA batteries which is different than similar solutions that rely on being plugged into a 12V outlet. That means that the tires are always being monitored even when the car is not running. That’s cool because that means that you will immediately get alerted to a tire issue when you get into the car.

Looking at the tire sensors the material that the part of the sensor that makes contact with the valve stem are made of a brass type material that is similar to what the valve stem is made of. That means that you will not have any issues with galvanic corrosion which can cause the sensor to fuse to the vale stem and result in you paying to have the valve stems cut off and replaced.

If you take apart the sensor, you can see the orange rubber ring that makes the sensor water proof. The battery that the sensor uses is a CR1632 which should last about a year.

This is how the sensor looks like when it is installed. Since the sensor is silver, it may stand out on your car. Which means that they might be stolen. That’s where the wheel locks come in. They are a set of bolts that you put on the valve stems and then you can use the included wrenches to tighten them. That removes the possibility that the sensors will be stolen.

All of this is driven by an app called Fobo Tire 2 that is available for iOS and Android. Once you sent the recommended tire pressure, it will monitor the current tire pressure, the status of the battery, and the temperature of the tires as that might be a sign of you being at risk of a blowout.

Now besides monitoring the four tires on your car, the app will monitor the spare tire as well. That’s unique as I could not find a similar product that does that. This is a total win because it is important to have a fully inflated spare just in case you should need it. Or put another way, you don’t want to be that person who never checks their spare, and it is massively under inflated the moment you get a flat.

Another cool thing was that it comes with an Apple Watch app. Which seeing as I am a big Apple Watch user, I had to try out. The only problem was that it consistently crashed when I tried it on my Series 5 Apple Watch. This is a quirk that I expect to be ironed out by the time that this product is available. Finally, the app supports tire rotation. So if you get your tires rotated, you will be able keep the sensors in sync so that if you have an issue with a tire, you are able to zero in on the tire with the issue.

Installation was straightforward. But I did find some quirks that can simply be explained by the fact that I was supplied an early production unit. For example, it took me multiple tries to set up the sensor for the spare tire. And to share this setup with my wife’s phone took me several tries to get it to work. But I am going to go out on a limb and say when this is available for purchase, these should be non-issues. All in all, installation should take about 10 minutes or so. Should you get a flat or a slow leak, you’ll get an alert on your phone as well as the in car receiver where it will give you a very loud alert as well as a flashing light that corresponds with the wheel that has the issue. That way you do not have to have your phone to know if you have an issue. Or if you’re like me, and you are on Team iPhone with Apple CarPlay, you will still get an alert on the in car unit even though notifications on your phone are silenced.

Gripes? Well I have already mentioned the quirks that should be ironed out by the time that this ships. But beyond that, I didn’t really come across anything that is a problem that is worth mentioning. The Fobo Tire 2 is $159 USD normally. But there are deals on their website that will save you quite a bit of money as it is available for pre-order with shipments starting in May. If your car doesn’t come with factory installed tire pressure monitoring system, the Fobo Tire 2 is very much worth a look.

This entry was posted on April 8, 2020 at 9:00 am and is filed under Products with tags FOBO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.