Exspider 8.5 Seat Bag with LED Flash

Ah, it was almost such a good seatpack. The Exspider is a cavernous pack that'll easily swallow enough survival kit for an epic ride. The only problem is that if you do fill it up, it's not really built well enough for the job in hand.

As standard saddle mounted seatpacks go, this is more or less as big as they come. The 8.5 seat pack will swallow tools, tubes, gels, your phone... there's even straps to mount your pump underneath it. On top of that it has two expanding wings for even more stuff, and a built-in LED light at the rear. It attaches via a quick release bracket at the saddle rails and a Velcro strap on the seatpost, and once it's mounted it's a pretty solid unit.

If you have a narrow saddle or your pedalling action means your legs are very close together, this pack will probably be too wide for you. I found that it just brushed my legs a tiny bit when it was full, but it wasn't a big issue. I stuffed as many gels and bars as I could into the pack and set off on a long ride across the country. And the pack didn't really stay the distance.

Okay, it's still in one piece. But if you're going to make a pack that'll swallow a kilo of stuff it needs to be strong enough to cope with that kind of a load, and the Exspider isn't. The top panel isn't rigid enough, and the rivets that hold the quick release bracket are working loose. That meant quite a swingy seatpack near the end of an epic ride, which was pretty annoying, and now I don't think I'd trust it to last on another big one.

I still like the pack, and I'm going to replace the rivets with some bolts and stiffen up the top section somehow. It's good to have a seatpack that can swallow a big load sometimes. But I can't recommend it as sold.

Verdict

Designed to take a big load, but not well-enough built to survive if you actually put a big load in.