At some point it’s likely that you’ll need a bike bag or box to transport your bike. When you first start looking for a bike bag or box for your road bike, there’s a number on the market and it can be hard to know where to start. There’s soft bike bags, thicker padded soft bike bags and hard cases/boxes, which come in an assortment of sizes.
If you’re looking for a budget bike bag then Wiggle’s dhb Elsted wheeled bike bag is a definite winner. We ordered ours online from Wiggle at the last minute before travelling abroad for a training weekend and it arrived the next day.
The dhb Elsted bike bag is a large padded black bag with more than enough space for your road bike. It’s made from hard wearing padded polyster to help protect your bike, has wheel pockets inside the bag, side grab handles (which really come in handy when lifting into a vehicle etc) and wheels to move the bag around. The padded shoulder straps add another carrying option.
Whilst the extra padding of the dhb Elsted bag has protected our bike on car journeys, the bag is big enough to put a cardboard bike box inside it for extra protection for the longer journeys, especially when travelling by plane. (If you haven’t got a cardboard bike box to hand, you’re local bike shop will often have a stack of them that they’re about to throw out).
We dismantle most of the bike when transporting it in the bag but unlike some bike bags and cases we’ve found that we don’t need to remove the derailleur to fit the bike inside the bag – a big plus as we don’t like to tamper with our gear set-up.
This is a big bag and as a result it can be tricky to handle when pulling along to your destination. Having said that as long as it doesn’t tilt too far to one side or another it’s not too difficult to wheel it across the airport, and our bag is often packed full with additional bike kit.
The dhb Elsted bike bag is great value for the price and has a number of extra features including an integrated outer ID pocket where you can put your name and address details etc – very useful when trying to work out which is your bike bag on an airport conveyor belt, especially if full of other cyclist bike bags and cases.
We’ve now opted for a hard case, especially for the longer journeys and transport via plane as we like to have that extra protection for our carbin bikes and feel it’s worth the additional investment. In general, people tend to advise having a hard case or thicker padded bike bag for longer journeys.
Features:
- Tough 600D PVC coated polyester
- Interior – tarpee, wipe clean inner skin (really easy to wipe this silver surface clean)
- Thick (10mm), “no crush” closed cell padding
- Stiff, reinforced, tough base
- Nylon zips
- Inner Wheel sleeve pockets
- Side grab handles
- Adjustable and padded carry straps
- Outer ID pocket (to out your address info etc when travelling on airplanes etc)
- Measures 134x90x21cm
Pros: Great value budget bag with loads of space and good padding.
Cons: A large bag that can sometimes be tricky to manoeuvre.
Review Updates:
This review was updated on 24 June 2012.
