I’ve been using the Vincero Design magnetic bottle and mount for the last eight months and I am impressed. I was dubious when the guys at Ison Distribution gave them to me at a show but nobody in their right mind turns down a freebie.

The system is comprised of a carbon fiber composite mount and high quality bottle that attach to each other using ridiculously strong magnets. You wouldn’t think it would work but you would be very very wrong to think that…

The edge16 mount is made of a carbon composite and weighs just 16g, hence the name. It comes with mounting bolts and screws into your cage holes as normal but as you can see it’s considerably smaller and neater than a big old ugly bottle cage. If you’re one of those people who is overly concerned about the aesthetics of your bike then this will surely please you, the rounded edges are pleasing to the eye and help guide the bottle into place too, double whammy!

You can only use Vincero Design bottles with the mount, they have a recessed magnet and the bottle fits nice and snuggly onto the mount. The magnets are incredibly strong, scarily so in fact; when the bottle is empty it can actually be a bit of a struggle to separate them if you pull at the wrong angle.

In use they hold fast, in the eight months I’ve been using it there has not been a single occasion when it has come loose even when I’ve been riding along bumpy country lanes or doing a bit of off-roading. If you are planning on riding Paris Roubaix then maybe it isn’t a great idea but in normal day to day use it is awesome.

I have 110% confidence in the magnets, I often go out with just this bottle. The only reason I still have the traditional cage on the bike too is because it has a pump attached to it but I may just start carrying that in my jersey pocket and get another magnetic mount.

To remove the bottle you just pull up and out and it releases with minimal effort, when returning the bottle the magnets fiercely pull towards each other and the shape of the mount guides it in to place perfectly every time, you don’t even need to look down.

There are two different bottles, the stratus20 (20oz) and the stratus24 (24oz). They are made from excellent quality plastic, as you can see mine hasn’t discoloured at all. They don’t leak due to the medical grade valve in the cap, you can hold them upside down and nothing comes out but when you squeeze the bottle boy oh boy does that thing blast your drink out. Easily the best bottle I have ever used, by a mile!

As an added bonus you can stick the bottle to metal things just for a laugh, what an wacky little thing.

A Vincero Design edge16 mount and stratus20 bottle will set you back £33.99, it’s not a cheap system but also no more expensive than a good quality lightweight carbon cage, I absolutely love it and would urge you to try one out for yourself. Yes, a normal cage is fine but this is exciting, innovative and rather natty, three good reason to get one in my book. Highly recommended!

They are available from Urban Cyclery, I work there so I suppose I should say that you can also get them elsewhere for the sake of transparency.

CHECK BACK TOMORROW TO BE IN WITH A CHANCE OF WINNING A SET FOR YOURSELF!

For ages and ages and ages I’d been holding off on buying a multi-tool to carry with me when I ride because they were all enormous, then I found the Lezyne SV5 and my search was over. Instantly.

All Lezyne products are seriously beautiful, both cosmetically and functionally. The SV5 is about as simple and basic as possible, it features CNC-machined aluminium side plates and 5 stainless steel tools.

On one side there are 5mm and 6mm allen keys and on the other 3mm and 5mm allen keys plus a phillips head screwdriver.

This thing is so rigid, to look at you might think that it would be a bit flexy and bendable but there is absolutely no give whatsoever when you are using the tools. The quality is second to none and it is a joy to use, every time I tighten a bolt I have to tell everyone around me how much I love the SV5, I’m sure they are sick of hearing about it.

The tool is so small you could hold it between your palm and your bars and it probably wouldn’t cause much of a problem. It’s like the Macbook Air of multi-tools, yes it’s lacking some of the ‘oomph’ of other tools but just look at how small, light and functional it is!

It comes with a stretchy faux-leather wrap which keeps the tools nice and clean, they are fairly tightly packed so don’t flop about the place anyway but it is a nice addition.

I love the Lezyne SV5 multi-tool and I can’t recommend it highly enough, it’s certainly not a workshop tool but will fix most problems you have when our riding and at 50g you won’t even know you’re carrying it.

Order from Urban Cyclery and get an extra 10% of with the code ‘tfd-uc’.

I’ve had a SmartAss on my bike for a few weeks and guess what, it actually works! It’s such a simple little thing that there’s hardly anything I can say about it really except that it’s really well designed, fits like a dream on all the saddles I have tried it with and is very well made.

It’s certainly not going to save your ass if it’s absolutely pissing down (nothing will) but if you’re riding around in the wet or get caught in a bit of a shower then it works great, my ass has never been so dry with so little effort on my part to keep it that way.

One thing I hate about my screw-on-to-the-seatpost-fender is that when I mount my steed I always kick the bloody thing off to the side then have to ride whilst trying to look backwards and tap it “a little more to the left, a little more to the right, a little more, more, argh, too much!” The Smart Ass by Ass Saver is small enough that that isn’t an issue, it’s really secure when it’s fitted properly over the saddle rails too, far more so than you might expect.

If you want to hide it away you can fold it up and fit it under your saddle, it’ll still be there next time you need to keep your ass in pristine condition. It’s great knowing that it’s there at all times and not something you have to try and remember if you think it may rain later.

I have a white Ass Saver up for grabs, all you have to do is answer one simple question on Facebook… or you can buy one for just €6 direct from ass-savers.com

As fixed gear riders we don’t need many tools, yeah it would be nice to have a full blown bike tool kit but in reality we only need a spanner; a couple of allen keys; a chain whip; a lockring tool; a pump and tyre levers and we’re good to go. The FGLDN LockWhip™ Tool kills three of these birds with one stone.

The tool was designed by Andy Ellis, founder of Fixedgearlondon, who comes from a product design background, this is not something that has just been funded by mummy and daddy after a chat in a pub, it’s a fine piece of design both in terms of function and form.

Chain whip tools generally have a long piece of chain and a separate short piece, not in this case. The end of the tool is curved so that you just need to wrap the single chain all the way around your cog and it fits perfectly against the end of the tool, ready for tightening.

There is an open ended 15mm wrench which I would describe as a ‘perfect’ fit, without a doubt the best fit I have ever had the pleasure to use actually, there is no way you’ll damage your wheel nuts with this tool. This can also double as a pedal wrench, it’s what I use and it works a treat.

On the other end of the LockWhip™ is the lockring tool, again this is so well designed, a lot of lockring tools just aren’t the right shape and forever pop out of the groove when you are trying to use them, I have never had that problem with this.

The tool is thick and boxy, it looks industrial and feels like a real man’s man piece of kit. it would also scare even the most hardened mugger if you pulled it out of your pocket when they were trying to get hold of your iPhone.

The LockWhip™ is not small, you couldn’t just sling it in a jersey pocket but then this is a tool designed for ‘urban riders’, the kind of people that probably carry a backpack. You get good torque due to the length which makes using every part of it a joy. Here you can see it alongside a normal spanner and the Pedros Trixie which performs many of the same tasks but simply isn’t as good due to the fact that the shapes and tolerances of the specific tools aren’t as well executed, in fact the lockring tool is plain wack.

The Fixedgearlondon LockWhip™ tool is made in the UK from hardened steel and costs £26 which is a lot cheaper than if you were to buy the 3 tools of a similar quality separately. I can’t recommend this tool enough, go and buy one now!

I love Knog, they make the mundane exciting and that is especially true in the case of the USB Boomer Rechargeable; they are waterproof, flexible, bright and environmentally friendly, Knog really have turned the knob all the way up to 11.

The Boomers are the brightest, biggest and most expensive lights in the Knog range but don’t let that put you off, for a little bit of extra bulk and a few more quid you get a seriously bright light that will actually show you what’s coming up ahead as well as warn others that you are in the vicinity.

The USB version don’t need 2 AAA batteries so they are over 10g lighter than their aesthetically identical and same sized cell filled namesake. I found that the battery version gobbled through batteries like nobodies business, I had to buy high end branded ones all the time which was becoming quite expensive.

The Boomer Rechargeable feature four modes: Strobe Flash, Strobe Pulse, Random Strobe and Steady which has something for everyone. I always keep my front on constant and the back on any of the strobe modes, all of which are suitably blinky enough to attract the attention of even the dullest greasy handed white van man. The front blasts out a very impressive 55 lumens with the back giving out a nice 30 lumens. The front has a hot point in the centre like most other lights but the beam is actually much wider than the majority of it’s contemporaries, it even lets a bit of light out of the sides so that drivers can see you from all sides rather than just the front and back.

The run time on the Boomer Rechargeable is good, bad and irrelevant. On steady you will get up to 3.5 hours which is extended to 12 hours when using the strobe modes, these times are really just numbers though because how often do you ride for 3.5 hours in the dark? Most of us will be using these for commuting which for the vast majority is under an hour, so just charge them up every few days and you’ve got a set of lights that never run out of juice. Where charging is concerned you can either plug them into your computer or a USB wall socket adapter, I use the one that came with my iPhone. An added bonus for all the hippies in the house is that you won’t be sending batteries to landfill, so you can be extra smug when riding your bike.

A couple of batches of Knog lights in the past suffered from two problems, namely switching off when hitting a bump and/or dying in the rain, both of these problems have been fixed with the USB Boomer. I’ve been jumping all over the place with mine switched on and ridden in the rain for hours and can confirm that the problems don’t exist on this model. They are completely waterproof because of the way the silicone outer body fits around the main body at the lens, I have found a bit of moisture on the inner plastic body of the rear light but not enough to cause any problems.

It’s hard to find fault with these lights, a small niggle is that the front one won’t really stretch around your headtube if you don’t want it on your bars but there is always your fork if you like your bars clear.

The Boomer Rechargeable sell for around £28 each which is just a few quid more than the AAA version, it may seem expensive compared to some of the other lights in the Knog range but you’ll save a fortune on batteries over time and they’l l make you safer on the road. The best price I’ve found is on Amazon, they are a little bit more on Wiggle, for more info check out the Knog product page and if there is anything I’ve missed that you’d like to know post a comment and I’ll remedy it asap.

I am really anal about my chain tension to the point of madness. If I can’t get my chain just right I throw my bike and sulk like a big baby but I’m not ashamed because I think it’s justified. Some frames have built in dropout adjusters but most don’t so you can either ‘walk’ your wheel back until it’s straight and your chain is taut, force a plastic bottle between your tyre and downtube or just buy some chain tensioners, the absolute dogs bollocks are the NJS stamped MKS ones.

I first saw these at the Cycle Show in 2009 and was instantly struck by their beauty, other chain tugs are huge and ugly but these are tiny little things that could certainly be featured in a design book. As with all NJS stamped parts the quality is second to none and made from the highest quality materials, these are no exception. They fit snugly against the back of your dropouts and are so small that you’ll forget they are even there.

As you can see from the photos they fit over your axle and slip into the dropout, with both on the inside of the frame (as they should be) you may need to pull your seat stays away from each other a bit to get the wheel in. You can use them on the outside of the dropouts if you really have to but the knurled part of your track nuts won’t be gripping your frame then which may cause some troubles.

They feature a double threaded system (see above) which means you can pull the wheel right back to the point where your chain is right and not have anything protruding from the main body. It’s kind of hard to explain but a very clever design, basically there is the part that goes around the axle and then the main body; they are pulled towards each other when you tighten them rather than just one part pulling the other. So with a bit of practice you can position the double threaded bolt at a point where it will stay inside the body, it just looks nicer.

These are without a doubt the best chain tensioners out there and definitely worth every penny for both their good looks and their excellent functionality. They are available from VeloSolo for £27.95 a pair.

NOTE: There are a few different versions of these, the ones in the photos above are the NJS 5mm ones for steel frames, you can also get 8mm ones for alloy frames. There are others that you need to use a spanner with rather than an allen key too.

Much like the original Frog the Frog Strobe is the smallest of the lights offered by Knog but unlike before there is not a lot of difference between the light output of it compared to the next one in the line up. The original Frog was 10,000 millicandelas and the Strobe is 25 Lumens, after a bit of Googling I found that 1000 millicandelas is equivalent to 1 lumen, so even though I got an ‘E’ in GSCE maths I worked out, all by myself, that the new one is 2.5 times brighter than its predecessor. Knog claims that they are both visible UP TO 600 meters away, call me cynical but if one is 2.5 times brighter then it should be visible more than twice as far away, the claim is moot anyway because it is unlikely that a road in a city environment will be 600 meters straight with nothing to obstruct the view of you and your bike from Ray Roadrage. These lights are still described as ‘safety lights’ and won’t light the way so you probably shouldn’t use them away from lit roads but they are seriously bright for their size!

As you can see from the photos the Frog Strobes are tiny little buggers, they are pretty much the same size as the original but squarer and with a more secure clasp at the back, I found that the original clasp was prone to falling off and was worried about losing it at times and not being able to fit the light in an emergency, theres no chance of that anymore. There is a subtle Knog logo in the silicone body now which is a nice addition, there are a load of wack ripoffs out there and this adds a bit of extra oomph to the overall unit. The stretchy loopy bit that attaches to the clasp is a bit stiffer this time round and I found it a bit tougher to stretch around my headtube than before but not enough to make me think I was pushing it too far so it’s all good.

The battery compartment door is very basic and just snaps closed, it does seem pretty secure though. The overall build is much sturdier than the Frog and feels like the more expensive lights in the range, this is reflected in the price which is a couple of quid more than before but more than justified.

The battery running time is listed at 50hrs on steady or 80hrs flashing but I don’t even see that as a factor, 50hrs in the dark is a lot of miles, you’d probably get to the bloody moon in 50hrs running a half manly gear like I do. The original Frog had just two modes: constant and flashing, the Strobe has four: Strobe, DISCO Strobe, Epeleptic (sic) Fit Strobe and Constant. I was expecting the flashing modes to be completely wild but they aren’t, they are basically single flash, double flash and repeating flash, I like them all. When you decide on your favourite mode you can hold down the button for two second to store it as your default setting which is a really cool feature.

I left my bike out in my back garden the jungle for a few minutes to try and catch a glimpse of the Frog Strobe in it’s natural environment, I was not disappointed. I returned later in the day and was lucky enough to get to film (in glorious HD) the full mating display of the male, check out the video below…

Knog Frog Strobe Settings from The Foot Down on Vimeo.

…And on that bombshell I shall wrap this thing up, the Knog Frog Strobe is a great upgrade to a classic, it is far better than the original and worth every penny. They are available from Wiggle. Hit up the comments with any questions or comments.

The N.E.R.D comes in both 9 and 12 function models with the following features (bold ones are only on the 12 function model):

Since getting this computer riding any kind of distance is much more fun, it’s great to see exactly how far you’ve gone and watch your average speed drop as the hours go by and you become weak, pathetic and far less attractive to the opposite sex. It’s so easy to use, there are no buttons as such, the entire screen acts as a button so each press of it moves on to the next display making it really easy to change to what you want to see as you are riding.

Both N.E.R.D’s are wireless, the transmitter and the receiver are extremely light and housed in 100% waterproof medical grade silicone. There’s no fucking about putting these things on your bike, you just wrap the thing around it and hook it on, I’ve never experienced any movement when riding, some people claim they have but they must be a bit slow in the head and managed to attach them wrong (they must be REALLY thick).

The transmitter and the receiver are not really that small but does that matter? A cycle computer is not meant to be a fashion accessory (although this is as close as they get), it’s there to show that you are a total saddo who is probably wearing cycle shorts under your jeans (yes you!) because as much as you want your performance to improve there is no way you are flashing your junk in public (but you know that chicks are thinking about your rock hard thighs). The N.E.R.D is like a cool looking pair of thick rimmed glasses worn by a hot graphic designer rather than a pair of National Health specs on the face of a lycra-clad, overweight roadie wannabe. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not small but it’s good looking.

This review is not going as smoothly as I would have liked, I’m talking more crap than sense. The receiver which is also the display can be removed from the silicone housing and rotated so you can mount it on your frame/stem or your bars, something not possible with a lot of other computers due to the mounting hardware, I prefer mine on the stem so that I have all the bars for my hands. The silicone housing also makes it really easy and painless to remove them when you wanna go into Costa to buy a vanilla bullshit thing.

Both parts take a single little round battery each which are super easy to replace (see pix), Knog reckons they should last 1-2 years of normal use which is great either way. You’ll see that I’ve used mine a fair amount, the spoke magnet has a bit of surface rust on it which is no big deal. I thought the white one would have got really dirty really fast but that’s not the case at all. I can see this lasting me for years. Actually this was attached to my bike when I got hit by a car last year, I broke my collarbone and a rib, tore a huge whole in my thigh muscle and smashed the car window into a million pieces but the computer didn’t budge and still works perfectly. If that isn’t a good reason to get one then I don’t know what is.

Have I covered everything? Are you sold on these things yet? If you want a computer that functions flawlessly, looks good and is made by a truly creative, innovative brand that deserves to be supported then buy a N.E.R.D. If you wanna be a cheapskate then buy a crappy one from Tesco but end up getting one of these anyway in a couple of months, the choice is yours.

Buy the Knog N.E..R.D cycle computer from Wiggle.

The large display is easy to read

The one piece design makes mounting easy

The unit can be removed from the silicone and rotated to go where you want it to

The transmitter can be attached to thin or wide forks

The spoke magnet is easily attached or removed with a coin

Receiver, spoke magnet and transmitter

Receiver and transmitter removed from their silicone housing

The rear of the receiver (note the button at the bottom)

The Transmitter takes a single LR44 battery

The receiver takes a single CR2023 battery

Have you got a N.E.R.D? What do you think of them? Hit up the comments with your own little reviews and questions.

JT had these right snazzy looking tiny little rubber things so when I was up in that London to see The Residents I took a trip to Brick Lane Bikes and the only thing I could afford (and actually needed) was a set of the rubber lights, the Knog Frogs!

CC ericrichardson

They are really small as you can see in the photos and made of a very grippy, flexible silicone outer that contains a small but powerful LED. To attach them to your bike you just pull the stretchy loop around your bar or seatpost and clip it to itself, I thought that they’d probably pop off but they seem to be holding fast. Knog reckon that they will burn for 80 hours (steady), or 160 hours (flashing) which is pretty impressive, to replace the batteries you just pop the electronic section out of the casing, nice and simple, elegant, hassle free, awesome! Another claim by Knog is that they put out 10,000 millicandelas which equates to being visible at up to 600 metres away!!! I’m not sure about that, in theory maybe but under normal riding conditions I’d imagine it’s quite a bit less, either way you need to know that they are a “safety light” so if you actually want them to light up where you are going then you better get some “proper lights” cause these things won’t light up any more than about 2 feet ahead of you unless you are riding down a pitch black lane. I think they do a perfectly good job of making you visible to all but the most ignorant driver, and make you look pretty, pretty, pretty good too so who cares if you can’t see where you are going?

They may do their job brilliantly but if you are scared of being looked down upon by ‘real fixed gear riders’ you must be aware of their hipster status, in fact Bike Snob NYC uses the charming name of ‘Hipster Cyst’s’ when referring to them. Yes they are unbearably cool looking but would you use a Dell rather than a Mac just because you were afraid of looking fresh? I don’t fink so.

CC ericrichardson

All in all I would highly recommend the Knog Frog lights, they come in 12 colours, are water resistant, probably wouldn’t break if you drop them (unless they land on the bulb) and are as light as a feather.