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Point one clearly goes to the hip bag. One look at the trendy neighbourhoods in the big cities and you know that hip bags are all the rage right now. If you want to be trendy, you don't carry your mobile phone and change in your trouser pocket, but in a practical belt bag. However, the hip full-beard wearers are making a fundamental user error and carrying the bum bag over their shoulder instead of around their hips. However, this is where it plays its second trump card: good ventilation. In contrast to the rucksack, the cooling wind blows around your back even on sweaty climbs. Even if the backpacks' back systems with terms such as Air Support Pro, Air Pad System or Vent Active promise a cooling breeze around your back like on the summit of the Zugspitze, it is usually the air between their structural padding that is the problem.
Hipbags also have the edge when it comes to handling. While you always have to take off your rucksack before you can reach the contents, you simply swing the hipbag forwards and look down on your belongings with a bird's eye view. But only as long as you limit yourself to the essentials. And this is where the rucksacks become interesting. The hip bag may work well on a quick lap around the house or an enduro race, where you don't carry much other than tools, a spare inner tube, pump and bars.
As soon as the equipment grows, its advantage shrinks. This starts with the water supply. Most hipbags offer the option of carrying either a hydration bladder with a volume of up to 1.5 litres or up to two bottles of water. In practice, however, 0.5 litres is the maximum amount of liquid that can be carried. When filled to capacity, the straps often pull uncomfortably on the stomach. In addition, the bags bulge out at the back with a full bladder and no longer fit snugly against the back. It is therefore better to use the water bottle in the frame triangle for hydration.
It also becomes problematic if you want to spend a whole day out and about in changeable weather. A light windbreaker can usually be squeezed somewhere between the inner tube and the pump. But what if you also want to take a change of shirt, rain jacket and provisions on board? Then it's as tight as the sardines in the tin. More than four litres hardly fit into one of the test bags. With a daypack with a volume of around 10 to 16 litres, however, there are no longer any restrictions when choosing the length of the tour. This also became clear quite quickly during our practical test: Most hipbags are only really comfortable to carry when they are as small as possible. Fully loaded, the daypacks easily outperform the hipbags. Although most of the weight rests on the hip belt when correctly adjusted, the shoulder straps additionally stabilise the load and prevent unpleasant tensile strain on the lower back. Where the weight of the hipbags pulls downwards towards the back, a good daypack distributes the load evenly over the entire length of the back.
Incidentally, the test winner among the rucksacks is available for an extremely reasonable 100 euros - almost a bargain when you consider that the best hip bag costs just 20 euros less. But being hip has its price.
You can download the complete comparison test of the 7 hipbags and 9 backpacks from BIKE 7/2021 as a PDF below the article. The test report costs 1.99 euros.
Why not free of charge? Because quality journalism has a price. In return, we guarantee independence and objectivity. This applies in particular to the tests in BIKE. We don't pay for them, but the opposite is the case: we charge for them, namely tens of thousands of euros every year.
TEST HIPBAGS
TEST PUSH BAGS
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Stefan Frey
Editor
