GT Carbon Bottle Cage

Just like with bike frames, carbon fibre bottle cages are almost invariably lighter and more costly than their aluminium or steel brethren. This carbon cage from GT is reasonably lightweight and competitively priced for carbon, and – more importantly – does a good job of hanging onto your bottle.

For something which fulfils a relatively simple function, I've always thought it surprising that there are so many different designs for the humble bottle cage. After all, we've mostly all been riding bikes whose frames are the same fundamental shape for more than a hundred years now. Designers of cages, though, appear to have no such consensus.

I've been testing an 'adventure road' bike which just begs to be steered off the tarmac and pointed down the most un-road-like trails, only previously visited on a mountain bike, and this is as stern a test of a bottle cage as the Roubaix cobbles. The GT cage uses a pair of wings to wrap around the bottle and keep it secure, with each wing subtly flared outward at the top to make it easier to get the bottle in and out. It feels well-made and kept a firm grip on a variety of different bottles during testing.

Pleasingly, this firm grip isn't at the expense of easy access to the bottle – I had no problems removing or replacing the bottle in its cage, even when clinging with a notably less tenuous grip to the back of the club chaingang. So in terms of useability there's really nothing to fault.

Weighing in at 31 grams, this is not the lightest carbon cage out there – Elite and Bontrager have superlight models weighing in the mid-teens. As with most things at the very lightest end of the spectrum, bottle cages weighing this little are likely to be more fragile. At the other end of the weight range, basic £5 aluminium cages can weigh as much as 80g.

Our Stu tested a smart aluminium cage from GT a while back which weighed only 47g and cost a measly £11. For a third of the price, I'd be willing to carry another 16g, but if you're lucky enough to have one of GT's spanky new carbon Grade bikes, this may be the one that you want to go with it.

Aesthetically, cages aren't generally that exciting, but you want something that doesn't look too out of place on the bike. This cage is a plain black – there's no carbon weave visible – with the GT logo slapped rather clumsily on one of the wings. Take a look at this similar cage from 3T to see how some Italian style can improve things.

Hasty branding aside, this is a decent cage which does a great job of keeping your bottle secure without making it unduly difficult to get it out; you can buy lighter, but not by an amount that you'd ever be able to discern on the bike, and in terms of pricing it's towards the lower end of the scale for a carbon cage.

Verdict

Effective and competitively-priced carbon bottle cage