Free Parable Monkii V Cage Bicycle Bottle Cage

The Free Parable Monkii V Cage Bicycle Bottle Cage offers versatile carrying for use on all sorts of bikes including small-framed ones and most folders. It's easy to use, takes bottles up to 1.5 litres and you can remove it completely with no fuss. It may not be not the prettiest or most aero – but it is very practical.

> Buy now: Free Parable Monkii V Cage Bicycle Bottle Cage for £18.95 from Amazon

Free Parable's new Monkii V is an interesting alternative to a standard bottle cage and is designed primarily for non-standard bikes. Think folders, small-framed bikes, mountain bikes and the like, which can often struggle to accommodate a standard bottle cage.

The Monkii V Cage has plastic bosses that fasten to the bottle cage attachment points and then you just attach the Monkii Cage to the bosses, allowing you to remove the cage as and when you want. You simply strap the bottle in, and once in it's supported by V-shaped forks at the bottom of the cage.

It only took a matter of minutes to fit the plastic bosses to my bike's bottle cage mounts. And if your bike doesn't have bottle bosses, Free Parable's Monkii Clip and Monkii Corset accessories allow you to mount the cage in different places.

Once fitted, those plastic bosses stay put, and you can either take off the cage attached to the bottle or leave it in place and remove the bottle in a more traditional way. I found that the cage was a little more fiddly to get on and off than the previous version of the Monkii Cage I have used, but it was still pretty straightforward.

However, it meant that I left the cage in place and tended to just remove the bottle. Both options were a bit tricky when actually riding, so I'd be less inclined to use the Monkii Cage where speed and performance were important. That said, the instructions actually state you shouldn't operate it while riding. It did keep the bottle stable and didn't rattle or bounce out when going over bumpy terrain.

Where the Monkii Cage also excels, and not just for non-standard frames, is that it will carry bottles of all sorts of shapes and size – it's rated to carry up to 1.5-litre sized bottles with a maximum load of 1.5kg.

I tried it with a few different bottles and flasks and it worked very well, no matter what size I used. It also does double duty as a holder for bags and the like for bikepackers, and I found it pretty nifty for this too, happily taking a rolled-up compact sleeping mat or a bit of spare clothing in a dry bag.

With a simple Velcro fastening strap with grippy underside that hangs onto the bottle, there's very little here to go wrong, and it's a sturdy set-up without much of a weight penalty.

Value

At £18.95 it's a little dearer than many basic traditional bottle cage options, such as the £9.99 Topeak Ninja Master + Cage SK + that Stu tried out, but the Free Parable is more versatile and far less expensive than more luxury cage options like the adventurous and super-grippy Dawn to Dusk Captive 10 Cage at £54.99 that Mike reviewed.

It looks roughly comparable to the Granite Aux Carbon Bottle Cage that Ty tested for off.road.cc but the Free Parable cage is around £9 less expensive and a more practical and versatile option for bikepackers.

Ultimately, there are less expensive and more fancy bottle cage options on the market, but if you're short of space and keen to have a cage that could double up as a holder for pretty much anything, then the Free Parable Monkii V Cage Bicycle Bottle Cage might be a good option to try.

Verdict

Well-designed and effective – a versatile and stable load-carrying option for non-standard frames