Dawn To Dusk Kaptive 10 Cage

The Dawn To Dusk Kaptive 10 Cage is a very grippy - and very expensive - full-carbon way to keep your bottles clutched. Multiple design features work to keep your bottles where you want them, no matter the terrain. What price a drink of water?

Water bottle cages have one job, but go to any mass-start gravel event and you'll see that many designs don't even do that. When I did the Dirty Reiver 200km race with the road.cc team a few years back, the first rocky descent was littered with bottles and wafts of regret as people arrived at the bottom to find their hydration strategy literally missing.

At that point – or more likely a dozen miles on when they reached down only to grasp air – I bet many people would happily pay £54 plus postage for a cage like this.

And that's really the target market for the Kaptive 10 cage - people riding rough terrain and relying on their hydration staying put whatever.

> Buy now: Dawn To Dusk Kaptive 10 Cage for £54.99 from Multisport Distribution

The kind of terrain where missing a half-litre of fluids could be the difference between happiness and either cramp or dehydration. If that's the sort of riding you do, the price is likely second to the peace of mind.

Featuring 4K carbon weave construction, six grip arms, a 3mm-thick base, a 5mm-deep hook and angled top edges, everything works together to hold really tight to any bottle. All this means it isn't for those with really small frames, frame bags, or anything else that would prevent a straight pull to get the bottle out.

The angled top outer edges at least make reinsertion easier than otherwise would be the case. Dawn to Dusk even suggests the Kaptive 10 can be mounted horizontally or facing downwards on your top tube, butted up against your stem for knees-free extra bottle capacity. I tried this on my mountain bike using DtD's Bear Hug strap-on mount, and it worked just fine. The bottle stayed gripped.

After a year on test, the logos on the outside of each cage still look like new. There's scouring inside the cage where bottles have been removed or replaced whilst covered in gritty filth, which is to be expected. You get a five year warranty against manufacturing defects or workmanship (not crashes though).

It's shown no change in its ability to hang on to bottles over the roughest terrain I could throw my gravel bike at, either, despite the efforts of Perthshire's roughest tracks. Not once has a heavy 750ml bottle even begun to slip.

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Testing with the official road.cc Digital Force Meter (OK, a hand-held luggage scale), I measured over 14lbs (6.3kg) of force required to break one of the firm's own Aqua Flow bottles free. A range of other bottles all took between 11 and 13lbs of force to release - even rather soft bottles with a minimal indentation for the cage hook.

Tests on the plethora of other cages littering the workshop showed most take around 3-5lbs of pull force to release a bottle, and some were pretty nice and a few rather pricey.

Value

Which brings us to 'what price security'? £54 is a large sum of money for a bottle cage - but not unique. The SKS Pure Carbon Bottle Cage is £46 and weighs 23g less, if that matters. Stu found it grippy enough, but then he rides that manicured chalky southern gravel, not the rugged stab-you-in-the-kidneys-as-soon-as-look-at-ye granite of the Scottish Highlands.

The Topeak Shuttle Cage X is £66.99, weighs about the same as the SKS cage, but as with the SKS there's no grip force claimed.

The only real competition from a security point of view then is from Dawn To Dusk itself. The Kaptive 8 or side-entry Sideburn 8 are both a bit weaker at 8lbs of force for the same price, while the Kaptive 14 creates – you'll never guess – 14lbs of force. But that costs more at £59.99.

Overall

Unlike so many rivals, the Kaptive 10 does exactly what it promises. It also takes a beating and still looks good. If you need your hydration to stay put anywhere on your bike yet be easily accessible, however rough things get, it's well worth the high investment.

Verdict

Excellent way to keep bottles safe yet easily accessible over really rough terrain