Review: Review: Lezyne Carbon Cage SL
Gorgeous, smooth performance, and super light. One for a payday purchase!
Like organic sausages, the Lezyne Carbon Cage SL (side load), is a premium option, significantly more expensive than it’s regular counterparts, but like those farm-fed piggies, once you’ve got the cage in use, you know it’s (probably) worth the money.
It grips like a vice, keeping bottles of all sizes snug within its carbon arms, this was ably demonstrated over the hideous roads of Nottinghamshire, including farm tracks, road-works, and strada bianchi.
It’s USP? that’s got to be the side-loading aspect right there.Rather than the traditional up and down entry and exit of everyone else, Lezyne has opted for a sideways bottle trajectory.
Obviously this means that your cage has to be suitable for your favoured arm, instinct takes over no matter how much you try to resist, so if you are reaching with the ‘wrong’ hand you will struggle to take the bottle out. However, if you’ve matched the bottle to the correct arm, then everything works groovily.
The entry and exit motion seems more natural, especially removing the bottle as you can just pull it out naturally without any finesse needed, knowing that the carbon cage will simply open and close again. Putting the bottle back and you have a wider target area with which to aim, making things a little easier (but let’s be honest, it’s not that hard in the first place).
Looks might not be the most important part of your bike (or it might be, I’m not here to judge), but by golly this is a looker! As you can see from the pics, the cage looks pretty awesome, the carbon weave being shown off to full effect!
It’s hard to recommend at the price of £1.50 per gram of carbon fibre, but the good news is that Lezyne also make a standard plastic version as well for a lot less, but sharing the same style!
Having said that, if you are looking at shaving every last gram of weight from your ride, and you’ve already got close to single digit body-fat percentages, then this could be the cage for you!
Maybe one for the Christmas list?! Certainly one for the Transcontinental race!