Spurcycle Compact Bell

Designed with flat bar commuter bikes and mountain bikes in mind, the small but powerful Spurcycle Compact Bell is designed to take up as little bar space as possible without compromising on volume. More ding for your buck.

There's something extremely pleasing about the design of the original Spurcycle bell, and it certainly delivers on volume. The new Compact Spurcycle aims to deliver similar performance in a slightly lower cost package that takes up less space on bars. In a world where we attach so much to our handlebars, that's pretty good thinking.

> Find your nearest dealer here

> Buy this online here

The Compact Spurcycle has a width of 9mm at the mount, compared to the 20mm wide mount of the original. The mount only fits bars of 22.2mm diameter, so any drop bars are out of the running for this more streamlined design. It's an easy mount, made from composite nylon with a hex key fastening.

The bell dome itself is made from brass alloy, while the clapper is inside this one rather than on the outside, as in the original bell. Where the original is made in the USA, this version is manufactured in Taiwan.

Once you've fiddled around with where stuff is positioned on your bar, it's fairly straightforward to make this accessible as you ride. Operation isn't quite as effective as I'd have liked, with a few fumbles with the trigger, which is on the small side. The trigger certainly isn't as easy to use or effective as the original, and requires just the correct position on the bar to be fully accessible at the right angle for optimum operation.

The volume of the bell, when I managed to get the hammer action right, was reassuringly loud and very similar to the headphone-penetrating original. This is a bell that isn't easily ignored, and the sound just keeps on going too.

> 12 of the best bike upgrades under £50

> More of the best upgrades for your bike for under £50

Although intended to be a more cost-effective alternative (as well as smaller) to the original, there's not much in it price-wise, depending on where you buy it, with only about £5 difference at most. It's still significantly more expensive than the Lezyne Classic Brass Bell and still more spendy than the loud and design-led Knog Oi Luxe bell.

Overall then, the Compact is still an expensive bell in anyone's book, but it really is impressively loud and unobtrusive to mount on the bike.

Verdict

High quality and loud bell that takes up less space than the original, though it's still expensive