Zefal produces many kits that comprise a case for your phone, a Z Bike Mount, and a water resistant cover. The surface you’re sticking the adaptor to must be flat and non-porous, so the hard plastic back of your mobile phone is ideal.
Many phone cases are good too, but soft materials, such as silicone, rubber and TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane), are out. The adaptor itself, which measures 65.5mm x 55mm and has a stack height of about 7mm, is made from polyamide and TPU, while the sticky stuff is 3M VHB (Very High Bond) adhesive tape.
You attach your phone by locating the adaptor on top of the mount and giving it an eighth turn clockwise. One thing you don’t get here is any sort of cover for your phone, so if you get caught in the rain it’s going to get wet and perhaps dirty from road spray.
The extra £6 you pay there gets you a soft thermoplastic polyurethane case for your phone plus a transparent cover to help keep the rain out. Having used both systems, I’d say they’re of comparable quality and equally secure, so Zefal’s Universal Smartphone Adaptor Bike Kit provides better value for money.
It doesn’t offer any protection from impact, rain or dirt, but it does a great job of holding your phone securely and firmly so you can use apps as you ride.
Zefal Z Console for iPhone X
It provides impact resistance and optional protection from rain and mud too, and is also cheaper than an equivalent system from key rivals. You push your phone into the soft thermoplastic polyurethane case (a little hole on the back leaves the camera uncovered) and attach the Z Bike Mount to your stem with stretchy rubber O-rings. You could fit the mount to your handlebar if you wanted, although Zefal doesn’t say this, perhaps because this positioning could result in your knee hitting the phone when you’re riding out of the saddle – unlikely but possible, depending on your bike setup. A polycarbonate section on the back of the case fits on to the mount; you twist your phone 45 degrees clockwise and it locks in place, either in portrait or landscape orientation.
Either before or after the case is locked to the mount – I found it easier to do before – you can put the transparent cover in place over the front of your phone. A lot of phones these days have an IP67 rating anyway (which means they can handle being dropped in a metre of water for up to half an hour; although the water-resistance degrades over time).
I couldn’t text as quickly with the cover on, for example, swiping up from the bottom of the screen is sometimes difficult, and I occasionally had to press icons a couple of times to get apps to launch. Bear in mind that the cover muffles the sound a bit too, so you might want to whack up the volume in order to hear alerts.
Unlike a Garmin Edge computer mount, say, you don’t just twist the Zefal case in the opposite direction to release it.
If you did manage to knock your phone into the road – by dropping it at the start or end of your ride, say – the case and cover offer a lot of protection from impact.
The stack height is similar too, your phone sitting about 25mm above your stem with each system, although the Quad Lock case has a slightly lower profile than Zefal’s when not attached to its mount – there’s less of a bulge on the back to accommodate the fixing hole.
Best bike phone mount: 7 popular phone cases and holders tested
Smartphones are becoming increasingly useful to us riders thanks to a ton of ride-friendly training and navigation cycling apps. A dedicated bike computer won’t drain your phone’s battery, is designed specifically for the job in hand and offers connectivity (typically both ANT+ and Bluetooth) to a wide range of accessories. Using a smartphone, on the other hand, means you don’t have to splash out on a separate device and normally offers a user-friendly interface. Plus there’s a growing number of apps and, generally speaking, you’ve always got your phone on you for quick trips by bike, so it’s a popular choice for cycling to work.
We’ve pitched the most popular bike phone mounts head-to-head to find out which are worth buying. Should you want to learn a little more about the different designs and what might work best for you, then head to our buyer’s guide towards the bottom of this page.
Best bike phone mounts, as rated by our expert testers The following products scored at least 4 out of 5 in our test. To release, pull down the retaining ring and twist – even though the lock is firm, it’s an easy operation.
With its high-quality construction and a kit system that allows you to buy only the parts you need, the Quad Lock feels worth its relatively high price. The padded bag sits on the top tube, attaching around that and the stem with Velcro straps. The phone goes easily in the lid section and is held firmly in place against the cover by Velcro flaps, which help to ensure a good connection with the touchscreen and reduce reflection. It would be a tight fit to get a spare tube and tools in there too, but a small grab-strap makes it easy to take all your valuables with you when you leave the bike.
The Zefal Bike Kit is relatively simple to fit and rock-solid in use, thanks to a no-tools-needed setup that uses rubber O-rings to attach the mount to a bar or stem. The snap-on phone case has an integral fitting that allows you to swap it between different mounts and uses – although it’s a bit too chunky to persuade us to leave it on all the time. We tested the Bike Bundle version of the SP Connect, which includes a stem cap/bar mount plus a weather cover as standard, making this good value. For another £10 the Road Bike Bundle has an improved mount that holds the phone out front, with space for a light/camera.
This is one of the better phone cases: it has a tactile feel and the integral mount is low profile enough not to get in the way during everyday use. But there isn’t a positive click when locking it in place and it requires a firm hand to release it.
The mount on the back of the case can be used as a stand – it works better in portrait mode but is useful enough to consider leaving on permanently, removing a hassle factor when setting out. There is an upgrade bracket available as an extra that holds the phone out front, with space for a light or camera.
While it’s not very sleek or hi-tech, we found ourselves warming to the Riverside 520 way more than anticipated simply because the tube-mounted twin bags are very convenient.
The kicker is that the straps could be longer, which means some ingenuity is required to fix it securely in place.
The phone goes into its holder easily, but because it isn’t held firmly against the cover, reflection from the plastic can sometimes make it hard to see the screen. These sorts of mounts, generally speaking, will allow you to align your phone in either portrait or landscape orientation.
Although for the sake of keeping it out of the way of errant knees, it’s best to use portrait orientation if the phone is mounted on the stem. Instead, they use a universal mount that attaches to your handlebars or stem, and will grip practically any phone even if it’s already in a protective case.
The obvious advantage is that you don’t need to buy a new mount when you change phones (and you can lend it to people), but therein lies its disadvantage, too: we reckon they’re a lot less secure. If you’d rather keep the real estate on your bar clear, then carrying your phone in a frame bag is the alternative. The key consideration is whether the transparent window provides sufficient protection from the elements while also allowing you to operate the phone’s touchscreen. So if you can’t hear the audio alerts, the frame-bag option may be more suitable for riders who are willing to stop when they want to use their phones.
Most mounts come in various sizes and guises to accommodate as many varieties of phone as possible, but double-check before you plough ahead with your purchase.
The Best Bike Phone Mount
In our tests, phones vibrated hardly at all—let alone rattled or shook—in the Quad Lock products, no matter how bumpy the road became. Both the phone cases and the universal adapter twist to lock into place on the mount, which in turn clamps onto a bike’s handlebars. The indented socket on the case’s back was among the least noticeable of the case-type bike mounts we tested.
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