This paper reports on the infuence of sintering conditions on the flashover/preflashover characteristics of alumina insulators in vacuum under an impulse voltage. Four kinds of alumina insulator were studied, which were prepared using the same formula with different sintering conditions. The surface pre-flashover and flashover phenomena of different samples in vacuum have been observed under impulse voltage. Based on the experimental results, the characteristics of pre-flashover and flashover vary with different kinds of test samples. It was found that the insulators with a higher sintering temperature had a lower flashover voltage, and more active pre-flashover. From a scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis of alumina insulators, we conclude that the methods of preparing alumina samples can affect their microstructure resulting in a change in the pre-flashover and flashover performance as alumina insulators.