Multitool

The Lezyne Stainless 20 multitool is a high-end choice with most of the features you're likely to need out on the road.

The range of tools is exactly the same as you get with the Lezyne CRV-20 that we've also tested recently (the list is down below). Alongside the usual Allen keys and both flathead and crosshead screwdrivers, you get a couple of open ended spanners (8mm and 10mm), a tyre lever and a Torx (T25) wrench (although I have nothing on any of my road bikes that requires one of those).

The Lezyne CRV 20 multitool has enough functions to get you out of most mechanical troubles you're likely to experience on the road and it's tough enough to last the distance too.

The Lezyne Carbon-10 multitool is seriously light yet it manages to pack in most of the key features you need to get home should you suffer a mechanical out on the road.

You know a multitool is going to be expensive when it arrives in its own shiny tin with its name on the top. Open up the tin and you find a sleek-looking object inside...

Those sideplates are structural carbon fibre rather than alloy with carbon over the top, and the bolts are titanium – this thing really is as light as it looks.

Axiom's Corker has a couple of functions that other multitools miss, adding to the usual collection of Allen keys and screwdrivers a bottle opener and a corkscrew. Cheers!

Commanding the best part of 13 quid, Cyclepro's Ultra Five in One multi-tool looks overpriced and on cursory inspection indistinguishable from loads of others leaving Taiwanese factories in their millions. That said, the build quality is generally better than I've come to expect and it's certainly small and light.

Specialist bike-tool manufacturer Birzman is relatively new on the UK scene, but their product range is impressive, from hefty spanner sets for the workshop to little minitools for emergency side-of-the-road repairs. And it's the latter type we're testing here: the simplest of the minitools, with just five basic functions - three allen keys (4, 5, 6mm), a torx tool (t25) and a cross-head screwdriver.

Crank Brothers M10 is equipped to address most roadside fettling without the weight or encumbrance of chain-tool, spoke keys or wrenches. It's a delight to use and offers plenty of torque for those more awkward fixings. Complete with the same CNC machined, gold anodised aluminium sidebars and lifetime warranty, on many levels there's little to dislike, although a longer 8mm Allen key would've been more appropriate rather than simply scaling down the one on the M17.

I've been using the SKS CT-Workx for a while now and I really quite like it. It's a bit different to your usual multi-tool. Rather than making the tool fit the package, the package is designed around the tools.

A good example of this is the tyre levers: they are not narrow so they fit the ends, it feels more like the width of the tool is designed around the required width of the tyre levers.

Carradice tool