Abus Allium 10 Litre Pannier Office Bag

Bike luggage that transfers from the bike to everyday life is fast becoming the ‘in’ thing, but it’s only useful if it’s, well, useful.

The Allium from Abus is an attractive and well made bag, made from tough water repellent 450D and 630D nylon fabric. It has hardwearing Rixen & Kaul Vario fastenings to secure it to a rear rack, a roomy (10 litre capacity) lightly padded main compartment, a front zipped pocket and a zipped pocket in the flap with a port for a headphone cable. The bag can be carried briefcase style by a top handle, or with a carrying strap. With its chocolate brown and black colourway, with floral motif, it’s a bag styled primarily with women in mind as a general purpose casual messenger style bag.

But here’s the thing. You’d probably not put a laptop in it, even in a waterproof sleeve, since it’s open to the elements at the top and all but the most compact netbooks don’t really fit anyway. The opening at the top means that folders, files etc are prone to water damage even if only from road spray, and yet it is styled as a briefcase type bag. As a general use pannier it’s not really roomy enough for very much, and there are better shaped and sized bags available from Abus for that purpose, making much better value for money. So, in essence, it’s a product without any real niche to fill. It's also expensive for its capacity and usefulness.

I’d be really quite impressed at anyone who could successfully manage to use an MP3 player located in the flap pocket too. It’s not exactly convenient.

Verdict

Well made and attractive but lacking in genuine usefulness. Does not represent good value for money.