What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.

I’ve been using a little Porter Cable pancake air compressor since, I think, middle school. It’s still going but at 6 gallons, the size is a bit limiting. I think it takes a couple of refills just to pump up four car tires. Anyway, since moving into a new garage, I knew that I wanted something larger. After some research, I’ve decided to purchase the Kobalt Quiet Tech 26-Gallon air compressor. Now, I personally am no air compressor expert. I think this is only the third one that I’ve ever owned so I don’t have a lot of knowledge about the field. For this blog, I just wanted to share with you why I decided to go with this particular compressor.

First off, if something is advertised with giant words saying “Quiet Tech” across the body, you know it’s probably going to be quiet, right? Well, it is, relatively. Kobalt advertises that this compressor is up to 80% quieter. Quieter than what? I don’t know but compared to my pancake, it is quite a bit quieter. I don’t have any scientific way of measuring sound so for my own personal testing, I downloaded a decibel meter app for the iPhone and the results can be seen and heard in the video above, listen for yourself.

For this experiment, I had the phone about 6 feet away from the compressors. My results showed that the Kobalt sits just about 20 decibels quieter than the Porter Cable. You can do your own research about how decibel ratings work but that is a pretty significant difference. I doubt the iPhone app is super accurate, but it does provide some frame of reference. From my personal experience, yes the Kobalt is absolutely quieter and no doubt is the quietest air compressor that I’ve ever heard. That being said, it’s still pretty far away from silent. I really don’t know what to compare it to. I would say that it’s quiet enough for me to stand within arm’s reach away, hold a conversation, and barely raise my voice over normal levels. If I did this with the Porter Cable, I would definitely have to raise my voice, practically yelling. So, it’s quiet, but not something that you don’t know is there.

In terms of design, everything is functional and operation is just about the same as every other air compressor. There are two gauges, one for tank pressure and the other to show the regulated output pressure, a regulator, two output quick-connect couplers that work with industrial-sized fittings, and the on/off switch and pressure release valve is on the right side. Again all pretty straightforward. The only thing that I find annoying about this compressor is the water release port that’s located about dead center at the bottom of the tank. This is actually a good and bad thing. Good because all the water in the tank naturally moves down towards this outlet because it sits at the bottom of a curve. This is a bad thing because it’s just a little bit more inconvenient to access. I’m likely just going to take the stock fitting off and replace it with a hose so I can drain the tank without constantly rolling it outside.

At this point, I’ve only had the Kobalt compressor for a few days and have only tested it by airing up some tires so I don’t have too much to say about use. I’ll come back with a more in-depth review at a later time so subscribe for that.

And that’s going to be it for now. So far so good. The Kobalt Quiet Tech Air Compressor is quieter than what I previously used and holds significantly more air. No real complaints yet and hopefully things stay that way. I’m hoping to do a lot of projects in the future that will involve this thing so I hope you’ll be around for that.

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