Starter - Epic Pump + Cylinder

This is the best pump! I highly recommend it!

I am editing my review. I initially gave it two stars. Product was shipped not fully ready. Which I will detail. But the bottom line is, I was never able to get a Bathmate to work. The Epic works with standard cylinders and you can even use cylinders of other brands if you like them better. This is the proverbial game-changer

As far as the initial issues, none of the built-in presets worked. The app didn’t yet work. It didn’t come with a pad. I didn't even know that it didn't, I figured that would be a standard item with the product. But it's not, and their pad wasn’t even available. And I wasn't impressed with the documentation. Yet I could tell right away that the Epic pump head itself is really solid. Epic, you might say.

Since I received no pad, I bought some generic pads online. And since the presets didn't work, I used the pump manually. And to be honest, using the pump manually works fairly well. Having presets isn’t really critical.

After my initial review, the app has been updated and now works. But in its first iteration, it is still not super impressive. You cannot edit any preset. If you want to change a preset, you just have to delete it and recreate it. You need to write down your presets since you can never check them. I presume a future update will allow presets to be edited.

I bought pads from several different vendors. But what I found works best for me actually is no pad at all, and get a cylinder just the right size. The pump head is compatible with cylinders from other vendors and I got an oval-shapped cylinder just the right size. No pad might seem uncomfortable, but it’s not, at least not to me. While putting your member through a hole in a pad isn’t so easy. With my current setup with no pad, I have zero setup time, just stick it in and turn it on.

NOTE: Since Epic sells the head by itself for a little less money, if you have a cylinder you like, you might do that. The pump head has the standard 1/8" NPT thread that most cylinders use. (Actually, it seems like the straight thread equivalent, or 1/8" NPS but either is close enough.)

The Epic head itself is pretty awesome. I have a few things to mention that I would change. I wish the fitting that screws into the cylinder was replaceable. I have some concern that over time, that little fitting could break and then the pump head would be useless. If that fitting was replaceable, that would be better.

One little oddity is that the pump head displays in either inHg or cmHg. Yet the app presets are in kPa. LOL. Like their left hand doesn’t know what their right hand is doing. While I’m personally more used to PSI, the units don’t really matter, but the head and the app obviously should use the same units!

The battery indicator has 3 bars. After just one session after a full charge, it goes down to 2 bars, and then stays there for several days. I wish it was a % number, or maybe 5 bars, so that you can get a better sense of what your battery level really is. But I guess this is minor.

As far as documentation, it comes with a quick reference guide. And Baseem has some videos on YouTube which are a start. There was a QR code provided, supposedly to docs. But there is just a video telling you to download the app and join their Discord. No real docs in that video, but Baseem's YouTube channel has some information.

The quick reference guide tells you the timers on the presets, but it didn’t even say what the pressure settings of the presets were. I guess irrelevant since none of the built-in presets worked anyway, LOL. Now that the app works, I did build a preset, but just using it manually worked okay.

Now, what should my routine be? While as noted, I never got my Bathmate to work. I did happen to see that their recommended routine was 3 minutes pumped, 2 minutes break, for 2 to 3 sets per session. But the Epic app only allows up to 2 minutes. Therefore, the routine I'm doing is 2 minutes pumped, 1 minute break, for 4 sets. I've only been doing for a couple of weeks so no results yet, but the routine seems good.

Baseem says that he personally prefers air pumping instead of water pumping. This surprised me, as I bought into the idea from Bathmate that water pumping is superior. But after doing some sessions, well, I now think it probably makes very little difference. But it is convenient to do it in the shower, so I've been doing the water pumping.

Bottom line, the app is still marginal. There are a few minor improvements that could be made to the pump head, as I mentioned. But 100x better than a Bathmate. And I guess that's pretty Epic.