The Restrap Canister handlebar bag is an excellent bagel-style bar bag with a practical volume of 1.5 litres. It has some neat external touches like mesh pockets for wrappers, a front light mount, and a bungee cord head tube strap to prevent trail bounce. It retails for £45, comes in 3 colours, and it is made in Yorkshire.
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The bag is made of 1000D nylon and is softly padded, meaning that your contents won’t rattle if they hit your frame. The handlebar mounts are also well-positioned to hold the bag clear of your head tube for all but the shortest stem users, I’d wager.
The straps are stitched to the outer material and come fitted with a rubber band strap keeper and a foam spacer pad to hold the bag slightly away from the bars. The straps offer a simple locking buckle that is easy to use and hasn’t released or slipped on test. They are long enough to cope with more spacer blocks, I tried 2 extra to really hold the bag off the bars, but you will need to purchase those yourself as they don’t come as standard.
However, having the straps stitched to the bag means working around your lights and GPS mounts rather than simply moving the straps to a wider or narrower position to accommodate them. I had to rearrange both of these items to work with one of my bikes but moving to a stem-mounted GPS mount solved that issue.
The 1000D material seems very weatherproof, and if a recent soaking was anything to go by, the whole bag is extremely water-resistant. The YKK zip offers decent water resistance, runs smooth, and looks like it should last a decent time. There is no zip garage, so the zip doesn’t fully close, but the gap is very small at the end of the bag and is partially covered by the zip pull. There is a zip pull at either end, so opening and closing is easy and helped by the Canister’s double-lined construction. This helps the bag retain its shape on the bars, whether half full or stuffed.
The Canister measures 200mm by 120mm, which by my math means it should really offer up more than the claimed 1.5 litres, but maybe the lining fabric might be robbing it of some of that volume. Still, it seems to hold pretty much all you need for a day ride, tube, pump*, levers, a mini tool, food, and there’s still more space for gloves, etc. It’s a really useful size and stops you from taking more than you absolutely need. That’s a good thing sometimes.
The inside of the bag is completely devoid of any organisation but is at least bright orange which is helpful when looking for small items you know are in there. The 200mm length could be a problem for riders looking to stash a mini pump in there. *My shortest pump is 220mm long so on paper it’s not going to work, but it does as the bags’ ends balloon enough to hold it. If you have a longer pump it might not fit through the opening though as mine is a tight fit.
The external wrapper stash pockets have plenty of stretch and provide an easy to reach place to stuff your used wrappers or half-eaten bars
The leatherette Restrap badge on the front is just that, vegan leather, no animals were harmed in the making of this bag. And the light holder is super tough nylon and will hold any strap-on front light but how useful that would be whilst the bag moves up and down I don’t know. It will certainly be useless for seeing where you are going, but as a safety option is a good idea.
The only mark against it in terms of design is that there is no provision for external storage of your wet gloves or your jacket or windproof you’ve just removed. There is no daisy-chain attachment webbing or any method of holding things externally with a bungee cord.
How does it compare to others?
At £45 it is much cheaper than some of the fancier US manufactured bags we’ve tested from Ornot $90 and Outershell $90 and Chrome at £63. Closer to home and nearer on the price we have bags from Camelchops £40 tested on road.cc, Mackworkshop £35, and Straight Cut £70 all offering more storage and extra features such as external daisy chain webbing attachments, bungee cords for storage, or expandable lids and waist belts. The Canister does fight back with a choice of 3 colours and the inclusion of the two foam spacers which shouldn’t be sniffed at so it’s not all clear cut. Plus it is made here in the UK so less shipping is involved.
The Restrap Canister is a good handlebar bag for day rides and mini-adventures. The double-lined slightly stiff construction means rock-solid stability on the bars and the inclusion of the headtube strap and a choice of 3 colours make it a really enticing offer especially if you don’t need some of those extras and space.
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Product purpose:
The Canister Bag features a rear shock cord retention strap along with a Hypalon loop to attach a front light, which is perfect for early starts or late finishes.
Handmade in our Yorkshire workshop from 100% waterproof textured nylon, with a nylon lining and finished with the classic vegan-friendly PU leather Restrap label.”
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Unable to adjust the fixing width around lights and mounts etc.
