Fabric Hex Duo bar tape

Two-colour bar tape has been popular for a while now, first seen on the pro bikes – and let's not forget, they have mechanics to get it wrapped just so. Now lots of brands have bicolour tapes, and UK brand Fabric has just launched its existing Hex tape in a dual colour version, with a number of combinations to suit your bike. Hex is good tape, with a great combination of grip and comfort, although my past experience with it has shown it not be the most durable out there.

I've fitted Fabric's single colour Hex to a couple of bikes previously, and it is nice stuff to work with. The silicone adhesive strip allows you to unwrap and have another go if you don't get it quite right, and it's fairly strong and with enough stretch to make it fairly easy to get it to lie flat around the drops and the shifters. That much is unchanged here, and the join between the colours was plenty strong too, so the only challenge is working out where you want the colour change to be and how to achieve that.

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I was surprised that the red part was as long as it was – around half of the overall length – as when I've seen other bikes with dual colour tape it has typically transitioned in the drops, well before you get to the shifters. If you wanted, you could achieve that here provided you didn't want the whole of the tops covered, just by chopping off some of the red. In the end, I decided the simplest solution was to position the join so it took place largely concealed by the rubber hood of the shifters, figuring that this would give me slightly less of an OCD migraine about symmetry.

You don't get those short strips of bar tape to put around the back of the shifter junctions here, as you do in lots of other tapes, but there was enough to get decent coverage of my 44cm bar, if not loads left over.

There are two good, sticky sections of finishing tape and – bonus point – expanding bar end plugs, although these are plastic rather than aluminium like the fancy ones you get with pricier Supacaz tape.

If you're someone who agonises about getting their wrapping just right then I'd argue that throwing in a colour transition just makes life a bit harder than it really needs to be. If you have a bike shop take care of this sort of thing, or just fancy the challenge then it makes for a different look to your cockpit.

Out on the road, I really rate Hex tape. It's cushy and grippy, with enough squidge to help with higher frequency road buzz but not overly bulky for most tastes. I've found it to offer great grip in all conditions, with all gloves or none. My only reservation is that I've found it isn't the most hard-wearing of tapes. Looking back over previous purchases, I've typically got a couple of years out of a pack before it started wearing out. That's been the case on the two bikes I ride the most – if you ride a lot on a single bike then I reckon you could get through this in a year.

Whether you'd be happy dropping £27 annually on bar tape will determine whether you think this is acceptable value. I've bought Hex tape a couple of times myself, although the second time it wore out I decided to swap, and am currently eight months into a roll of Lizard Skins DSP tape. That's on my best bike, though, so with the winter we've just had, it's not had enough use to make a meaningful comparison in terms of lifespan yet.

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It's a bit like tyres – the most deliciously supple, light and grippy tyres are rarely the ones that you can run for years and years. Fabric Hex is great bar tape, and if you don't mind replacing it every now and then, I'd certainly recommend it. For my money, one colour is enough for bar tape, and that colour is almost always black.

Verdict

Grippy and comfortable bar tape that's now bi-colour, but not the most long-lasting