Cube HPC bottle cage review

Forty quid is a lot to spend for a bottle cage, so what do you get with the Cube HPC bottle cage? Not a lot of extra weight.

Cycling Weekly Verdict

The Cube HPC bottle cage has a nice clean-looking design and very light. It’s just a shame that it does not hold the bottle more firmly

Reasons to buy
  • +

    Attractive design

  • +

    Very light

  • +

Reasons to avoid
  • -

    Doesn’t hold a bottle very securely

  • -

    A bit fiddly to fit

  • -

    Expensive

  • -

You can trust Cycling Weekly. Our team of experts put in hard miles testing cycling tech and will always share honest, unbiased advice to help you choose. Find out more about how we test.

At only 23 grams, the Cube HPC bottle cage is a real weight weenie’s delight. It’s also got a satisfyingly minimalist design, with no spine connecting the two bottle boss bolt holes, which gives your bike an ultra-clean look. The two arms which hold the bottle in place are very thin too and joined at their base to make sure that the bottle can’t escape in that direction.

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The Cube HPC bottle cage is available in high gloss black and white as well as a matt black finish, to blend in with your frame. Attachment is made a bit more fiddly by the lack of connection between the two fixing points and the degree of flex which this allows, but it’s a one-time job and easily enough accomplished.

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The Cube HPC's design looks nice but isn't that secure

The Cube HPC bottle cage's design looks nice but isn't that secure
(Image credit: mike prior)

More of a problem is the lack of security of the hold on the water bottle. Because the Cube HPC bottle cage is so light and the top retainer is quite low profile, I found that bottles tended to work their way loose over typically bumpy UK back roads. I noticed them rubbing against my legs and was able to push them back in before I lost them, but this recurred a few times on each ride.

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It was never dangerous and I’m not sure you could easily lose a bottle completely, but it did get a little irritating over time. A couple of bits of insulating tape over the top retainers reduced the problem. I’m not sure I’d want to use this cage if I were riding Paris-Roubaix though.

For more details visit the Cube website.

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Paul Norman

Paul started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2015, covering cycling tech, new bikes and product testing. Since then, he’s reviewed hundreds of bikes and thousands of other pieces of cycling equipment for the magazine and the Cycling Weekly website.

He’s been cycling for a lot longer than that though and his travels by bike have taken him all around Europe and to California. He’s been riding gravel since before gravel bikes existed too, riding a cyclocross bike through the Chilterns and along the South Downs.