Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review | 2024

Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review – Overview

There has been a recent trend of paddle board companies releasing new compact iSUPs. These boards are designed to fold up tightly and fit into smaller and smaller bags for easier transportation. Some of them can even fit into overhead storage on an airplane!

The biggest issue with these compact kits is inflating your board. Shrinking the hand pump to fit in the bag has made it difficult, and even painful, to inflate your board. Battery-electric pumps are great, but are either too large to fit with such a compact kit, or have a lower pressure limit.

The Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S is the answer. This incredibly small pump easily fits into most compact iSUP bags (especially if you ditch the hand pump), and has its own internal battery to inflate your board anywhere you take it.

At 4.0 pounds for the entire pump kit (including the instruction manual and storage bag), the Cachalot 2S is a no-brainer for space-saving inflation.

— Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review Summary and Ratings —

Specifications

Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review – Features, Usability, and Portability

The Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S is extremely portable and multi-functional.

The biggest – well, smallest, I suppose – thing about the Cachalot 2S is its size. This thing is tiny.

The longest dimension (including the hose ports) isn’t even 7”. The pump itself weighs just 2.7 pounds (1.23 Kg), and the entire kit including the bag, additional hose attachments, and instruction manual is just 4 pounds (1.81 Kg).

It’s absolutely small enough to fit in with even the smallest of compact iSUP kits (usually even with the hand pump still in the bag).

What makes it truly portable is the internal battery. Inside the Cachalot is a 5200 mAh / 57 Wh lithium-ion battery. That gives the Cachalot enough juice to inflate 3 average-size paddle boards between uses. More on that below.

In the kit you also get 7 different hose attachments to inflate SUPs, beach balls, air mattresses, inflatable kayaks, and more. There’s also a 12v power adapter and a USB-C cable for charging the pump or charging your phone from the pump.

The pump itself is very easy to use.

There are four buttons under the over-size display. Tapping the power button while the pump is asleep will show you the battery charge icon for quickly viewing its general charge status. Holding the power button wakes the pump up. Use the ‘+’ and ‘–’ buttons to adjust the pressure setting for the pump. You can switch between PSI and Bar with the circular-arrow button.

The Cachalot allows you to set the pressure down to the tenth of a unit (PSI or Bar). While helpful for metric users, it can be tedious to tap away at the button to change the settings in PSI, so instead hold the +/– buttons to rapidly cycle up and down.

The Cachalot 2S has a very large screen. While it’s great that the numbers are super-big, there isn’t much else going on with the screen. You get an indicator for PSI or Bar settings, and a very low-resolution battery icon with just 3 bars. The screen does read the current pressure of the board while inflating, but no other indication on battery voltage or lifespan. More on that below.

But the biggest problem is the screen readability. In bright daylight it’s basically impossible to read the screen at all. Shading the screen helps, but it is still very difficult to read. I would glady have a much smaller screen size if it had a brighter and higher-contrast display.

Once you’ve set the desired pressure level, just connect the hose to the Inflate port on the pump and then to your board and press Power one more time to start the pump. It will turn itself off when the board has reached your target pressure.

When you are done paddling for the day, you can change the hose to the “Deflate” port and start the Cachalot again to remove all of the air from your board. This step is particularly important for compact paddle boards that must be folded in a specific way to fit into their compact bags.

Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review – Inflation Speed and Battery Life

The Cachalot 2s uses a multi-stage pump to inflate paddleboards and other items between 0.1 and 20.0 PSI powered by an internal battery.

In addition to using the Cachalot 2S (and all of the other iSUP Pumps we’ve reviewed) in real-world applications, we also run a standardized inflation speed test using the same mid-size paddle board for all pumps.

Measured inflation times for the Cachalot 2S to bring a 11’ x 32” x 6” iSUP up to 15 PSI ranged between 12 minutes 30 seconds and 14 minutes. The difference in time was due to the charge status of the internal battery.

With an average inflation time of arond 13:15, the Cachalot is in the slower half of electric pumps we’ve tested – and it’s a far cry from Outdoor Master’s claim of 6-8 Minutes. While the inflation time is relatively slow, that is the tradeoff for the compact form factor of the pump.

However, I do believe the pump could be much faster with a simple firmware adjustment by Outdoor Master.

Most electric SUP pumps have two pump stages like the Cachalot. The first stage is a high-volume/low-pressure mode, while the second stage is a low-volume/high-pressure mode. Most pumps will automatically change between the two once a certain pressure is reached (usually 0.9-1.0 PSI). However, the Cachalot 2S operates on a timer. It will always run the first stage for exactly 3 minutes before changing to the second stage.

In our test board, it only takes the Cachalot 2S around 1:30 to inflate to this ~1.0 PSI range. It could inflate the board a minute and a half faster if it used a pressure switch instead of a timer!

But the biggest improvement that could be made is when inflating smaller items like kayak seats. These normally need between 6-10 PSI, and take less than a minute for most electric pumps or hand pumps. But the Cachalot will always run its first stage for 3 full minutes before adding pressure, even for a small item like a kayak seat.

The pump is powered by an internal 5200 mAh / 57 Wh lithium-ion battery. While the pump does come with a 12v power adapter, the Cachalot will not operate while plugged in to a 12v power source. The adapter is only meant to charge the pump from a 12v source.

Outdoor Master claims that the Cachalot 2S will inflate and deflate 3 paddle boards between charges. We almost got 4 full inflations from the Cachalot before the battery went flat. After inflating our test board three times in a row, the Cachalot 2S was able to get it inflated to just over 9 PSI on its fourth attempt.

In addition to inflating your iSUP, the USB-A port on the Cachalot 2S can be used to power and charge other items like your phone. The fully-charged 57 Wh internal battery can charge a phone around 5 times, making it really handy if you’ve been listening to music and taking pictures all day, but need to call an Uber to get back from the beach.

Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review – Warranty and Customer Support

Outdoor Master offers the longest warranty on an electric pump that we’ve found – 2 years for the pump itself when purchased from Outdoor Master. Additionally, they offer a 30-day return period, and sell replacement hoses and adapters separately if you lose or break them. If you have questions about your Cachalot 2S pump, you can reach Outdoor Master via email, phone, website form, or social media.

Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review – Final Thoughts

The Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S is an extremely portable and versatile electric SUP pump. It’s a perfect companion for compact iSUPs – or adding to the bag of any inflatable paddle board. While it’s not the overall fastest pump we’ve tested, it’s portability and ability to be used as a power bank is well worth a couple extra minutes. If you are looking for a low-profile electric SUP pump, the Cachalot 2S is just the thing for you.

Outdoor Master Cachalot 2S Battery Electric Pump Review – FAQ