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Guee Mag One Cage Free System

7
£44.99

VERDICT:

7
10
Clever answer to the question "How do I fit a water bottle on a small frame or under a frame bag?"
Weight: 
122g

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If you have a small frame, or bikepacking luggage taking up your main triangle, the Guee Mag One is a clever combined bottle and cage that pivots out sideways thanks to its nifty magnetic attachment.

Instead of a cage, the system has a mount that incorporates neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) magnets. Since their invention in 1982 by General Motors and Sumitomo Special Metals, NIB magnets have become ubiquitous in applications that require high-power permanent magnets. They're the reason earbud headphones work, they allow modern hub dynamos to produce useful amounts of power and without them ebike motors would be much bigger and heavier.

> Find your nearest dealer here

The Guee Mag One has four NIB magnets, two in the mount and two in the piece that fits into a moulded recess in the bottle. You attach the mount to your bike with the included pair of M5 dome-head 3mm Allen key screws and you're away. Get the bottle reasonably close to the mount, and the magnets do the rest. It's not the same as putting a regular bottle into its cage, but it's just as easy, and rapidly becomes second nature. Lightly sprung plastic latches on the bottle help to keep it in place.

Guee Mag One Cage Free Bottle Holder - cage.jpg

It stayed put while I bounced over some of the roughest local drove roads. Cambridgeshire's fens are intercut with knackered old concrete-surfaced byways, often with steps or gaps between the slabs, or chunks of the surface simply missing. Some of them were tarmacced over sometime in the late Paleolithic and that tarmac is now full of holes. If a bottle doesn't jettison over this stuff it'll stay put anywhere.

To remove the bottle, you twist it clockwise. That means it doesn't matter if there's something in the way of the upward path of a traditional bottle. The Mag One is therefore perfect for bikes with restricted space in the frame, whether it's because they're very small or because there's a frame bag under the top tube getting in the way.

Guee Mag One Cage Free Bottle Holder - bottle fixing.jpg

The bottle comes out to the right-hand side of the bike if you've mounted it on the down tube. If you're left-handed, that might be a problem. I certainly found it awkward to remove the bottle with my left hand, but I'm very right-handed. Left-handed folks who are used to compensating for a right-handed world might have less difficulty. With the Mag One on the seat tube, it comes out to the left, which is definitely awkward for me. It'd be nice if Guee made versions that released clockwise and anti-clockwise. That way you could get one of each and fit them to the down tube and seat tube to match your dominant hand.

The bottle magnets sit in a plastic moulding that's recessed into the bottle, and can be removed if you want to put your bottle through the dishwasher. Make sure you put it back in the right way up, following the arrows, or the magnets will repel those in the mount and it won't work. You lose a little capacity because the mounting is moulded into the bottle. A standard water bottle like a Camelbak Podium can hold just over its claimed capacity of 710ml. The nominally 600ml Guee bottle will take 645ml if you fill it right to be brim. Most of the Podium's extra capacity comes from it being a few millimetres fatter than the Guee bottle.

Judged as a bottle, the Mag One does the job just fine. Its screw-on lid fits snugly and its silicone pull-valve dumps plenty of water into your mouth. It's quite stiff though, requiring a decent tug to get it open. The main body is made from food grade polypropylene and has no discernible effect on the taste of the contents. The polypro formulation here is a bit stiffer than most, but that's a very minor niggle.

Guee Mag One Cage Free Bottle Holder - bottle.jpg

Guee isn't the first company to come up with a magnetic bottle mount. Vincero Design's Stratus system has been around for a while, and works well. The Stratus design doesn't provide the space saving you get from the Mag One, though its low-profile mount looks tidier when you don't have a bottle on the bike. Swings, roundabouts.

At £45 the Guee Mag One is expensive; over three times the price of a typical good quality bottle and cage. However, you can get the same thing under other labels for about £30 (see below). That's a reasonable premium for the space saving it offers and the extra parts and mouldings necessary to get there, but £45 is a bit silly.

> Find more road.cc reviews of bottle cages here

I think Guee has missed a trick in making the mount work only with a proprietary bottle. The conventional bottle and cage is one of very few remaining universal standards on bikes, and a small player isn't going to change that, however clever its alternative. If the magnets and latches from the Guee bottle could be fitted to a conventional bottle, that would open up the market for the Mag One. I'm imagining something like a pair of hose clips (but much tidier) to attach the bottle part of the system. Then you could use your favourite bottle, or a pair of Zefal's one-litre Magnum bottles if you want to carry lots of water, or you could carry anything else that's roughly the diameter of a water bottle.

This bottle and cage pairing here is available under at least three brands. The Restrap Mag Bottle is exactly the same thing and so is the Fidlock Bottle Twist. The Guee bottle is actually marked Fidlock on the bottom. Fidlock is a German company that makes buckles and fasteners like the magnetic buckle on some Abus helmets, so it seems likely it originated the design.

Whichever version you get, the Guee Mag One is a well-executed answer to the problem of cramming water bottles into tight spaces. It fits to your bike just like any other bottle cage and it stays put on rough roads better than some cages I've used.

Verdict

Clever answer to the question "How do I fit a water bottle on a small frame or under a frame bag?"

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road.cc test report

Make and model: Guee Mag One Cage Free Bottle Holder

Size tested: Volume: 600 ml

Tell us what the product is for, and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?

Guee says:

Cage free bottle system, simple & elegant way to attach bottle. Perfect solution for small or unique-shaped frames! BPA free, bottle replaceable.

Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?

A perfect solution to the cramped spaces of small or uniquely-shaped frames.

A simple and elegant way to attach bottles effortlessly to the frame.

Restores the beauty of your frame when bottles are not mounted.

Engineered with neodymium magnets for secured mechanical locking. No more dropped or ejected bottles, no matter how rough the road or how little fluids you have left.

Toxic-free cap and large sized valve gives an easy liquid flow while using.

100% BPA free bottle, convenient size.

Bottle replaceable

Specifications

Volume: 600 ml

Material:

Bottle: Food grade PP

Cap: Silicone

Bracket: Plastic & neodymium magnets

Rate the product for quality of construction:
 
8/10

Tidy mouldings, very good fit and finish.

Rate the product for performance:
 
9/10

Does what it's supposed to do very, very well indeed.

Rate the product for weight (if applicable)
 
8/10

About the same as a typical standard bottle and cage.

Rate the product for value:
 
4/10

There's no getting around the fact that £45 is a lot of money for a bottle and cage, and the Restrap and Fidlock branded versions of the same thing are substantially cheaper.

Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose

Very well; very straightforward and easy to use.

Tell us what you particularly liked about the product

The satisfying click as the magnets pull it into place.

Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product

The pull-valve is a bit stiff. It's right-hand-use-only when mounted on the down tube.

Did you enjoy using the product? Yes

Would you consider buying the product? No, but only because I don't have an application for it.

Would you recommend the product to a friend? Yes, if they had a very small frame or needed a bottle that fitted with a frame bag.

Use this box to explain your score

The Guee Mag One works very well, but it's expensive, which pulls its score down.

Overall rating: 7/10

About the tester

Age: 48  Height: 5ft 11in  Weight: 85kg

I usually ride: Scapin Style  My best bike is:

I've been riding for: Over 20 years  I ride: Most days  I would class myself as: Expert

I regularly do the following types of riding: commuting, touring, club rides, general fitness riding, mountain biking

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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6 comments

Avatar
cdamian | 6 years ago
0 likes

Fabric has a similar thing: http://fabric.cc/shop/waterbottle/

The problem is reattaching the bottle while riding,  it has to point in the right direction.

Avatar
VonPinkhoffen | 6 years ago
0 likes

I'm looking at getting a few of the monkii cages for my bikepacking rigs - no magnets, and can use any bottle as it's a removable cage. http://www.freeparable.com/monkiicage

Avatar
Edgeley | 6 years ago
0 likes

If the concept catches on then sure as anything someone will take up the suggestion at the end of creating a way of using conventional bidons.  

For that reason, I'm out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Jhi5ttuSs

 

Avatar
simonmb | 6 years ago
0 likes

Is that your bike @John-Stevenson? Damn fine rides from Enigma. Is there a review by you on the site?

Avatar
armb | 6 years ago
1 like

I'd be interested to see a comparison with a Topeak X-15, which doesn't have the magnetic slickness, but does (at least in theory) let you use the cage of your choice while pivoting for access on a small frame or under a bag, and is cheaper (if you already have a cage and bottle you like).

I haven't tried one; I ended up buying a "side pull" cage (to go under a frame bag on my son's bike - he needed another cage anyway).

Avatar
kompot replied to armb | 6 years ago
0 likes

-delete-

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