Arkel XP Top Tube Bags: A Worthy Replacement

For six years I ran an Apidura Expedition top tube bag, and I absolutely loved it. Two different versions, three years each, one velcro and one bolt-down. I never thought I'd change my top tube bag. Then the zipper died.

Apidura has a really good repair and replacement program, and I could have gone that way. But I took it as an opportunity to try something different. I am a bike bag reviewer, after all. Decathlon was nice enough to send us their Rockrider top tube bag, and it was really cool, my first time running a flip top. What I couldn't shake were my doubts about it keeping water totally out through a Vancouver Island winter.

So when Arkel mentioned their new XP top tube bags in conversation, I was instantly interested. I needed something a lot like the Apidura Expedition, and totally waterproof.

Fair warning before we go any further: I'm going to sound super critical here. That's because I love these bags. When I love something I tend to get critical and take a deeper look, poking at the thing that might annoy me in year three. These bags are pretty much staying on my bike for a long time. So I'm being judgy through a lens of love.

Two Bags, Three Names

Arkel is from Sherbrooke, Quebec, and they've been at this since 1988. They sent us two top tube bags: the EXP rear, which straps to the seatpost and top tube, and the XP front, a normal top tube bag at 1L, a decent amount of volume for the category.

The naming seems a bit of a mess. The rear tag says EXP Frame bag. The front tag says XP Frame bag. The site calls them both XP Waterproof Top Tube bags. The tag also says 1L on the rear while the site says 0.75L, which is a big enough gap that I'm going with the site.

The XP bags are designed in Canada and made in China which surprised me. Every Arkel we've reviewed so far has been fully made in Canada. The Arkel site says "almost all made in Canada," so this isn't new for them. Just new to me and I fully understand when and why companies need to manufacture overseas.

Getting Them On The Bike

Arkel included excellent hardware, nice bolts for the front bag. That's worth making a bigger deal of than it sounds, because I really don't like getting a bag with the wrong hardware, or none at all. A huge manufacturer once sent me a top tube bag with plastic bolts. They broke immediately and left plastic I had to drill out of my frame.

They also included some stickies to protect your frame, which I didn't use but thought was a classy touch. The front has three bolt-on hole series underneath, so it'll sit on just about any frame, including compact low profile headsets.

Worth flagging before you buy, you need 17.5 cm of clearance between your saddle and top tube for the rear to fit at all, and wider frame tubes need the longer ten inch straps.

I put two black Bivo bottles on at the same time I put on the Arkel bags, because I'm tired of sick gross plastic bottles. Black Arkel bags, black bottles, carbon ENVE fork, root-beer BigLeaf. It came together better than I expected. The fabric is 420D ripstop polyester on both, welded seams, YKK waterproof zipper, and visually it reminds me of something Tailfin would make. Which isn't a sentence I expected to write about Arkel. That ultra-tech feel is new for the brand, not what I associate them with.

I liked the look enough that I asked them for a bar bag to match and ordered a burrito bag. It didn't arrive in time for the shoot. Can't wait to try it.

A Closer Look At The Front Bag

I'm loving the front bag, and everything after this is a nitpick.

It's almost an exact replica of my Apidura Expedition. I'm hesitant to use that word, but that's what it is. Coming off a bag I loved for six years, that's not a complaint. It's the reason I wanted to try it.

The numbers: 55 mm toward the stem, tapering to 45 mm toward me, 24 cm long, 12.5 cm tall. I love the inner mesh pocket, and there's a card sleeve on the right I keep going back to. Both well thought out and well designed. There's a USB cable port too, which I haven't used. Not a ton of surprises, and that's fine.

The one thing I didn't see coming was the inner bladder liner, which I'd never come across before, so I pulled it out and set it aside until I figured out it was a candy holder. Arkel calls it a removable plastic sleeve for candy, which is about as literal as it gets, so I put candy in it without washing it first. However my candy ended up tasting like plastic, which is entirely my fault.

Even clean, I'm not sure I'd use it. Zipping open a top tube bag to get candy isn't ideal. I keep mine in the mesh on the back of my roll bag where I can grab them without looking. They do get really dusty in there but it turns out I'd rather eat dusty candy than fish for clean candy. If you were carrying a serious load of trail mix, though, it'd make a lot of sense. Just wash the bag first.

A Closer Look At The Rear Bag

This is the first time I've ever run a rear top tube bag, and most of what follows isn't about this bag. It's about the position.

I thought these were a relatively new bag category but Apidura, Restrap and Tailfin have all had something on the market for a few years now. It's 0.75L, 15 cm long, 45 mm wide, 17.5 cm tall, and it swallowed my lightweight backup fleece. Fit perfectly which genuinely surprised me.

It also feels like it could go in more than one position: on the top tube, strapped to the seatpost, or up at the top of the inner triangle strapped to both. You could even mount it underneath the top tube at the seatpost. That's not practical for me because of my tall Bivo bottles but with a shorter bottle and a cage set a little lower, it might be a really practical place to keep stuff.

How They Ride

My first impression was that the front bag looked huge, so I expected some wag. At install, I skipped the forward bungee around the headset, figuring the bolts alone would be stable enough. Bolting on its own is strong enough, but it does allow a bit more movement up top than you'd get with a head tube strap. Once I started loading it up and riding, I noticed that wobble, so I added the bungee after the fact, and now this one barely moves. I've had more wag out of every other top tube bag I've used, which tells me there's real structure built into it. The Apidura was slimmer with less volume, so it opened up and gave me access to everything at once, whereas this one is wide enough that things slip down the sides and I end up fishing around for them.

The rear bag is a different story, though again, it's the position more than the bag itself. It brushes the side of my thighs now and then while I'm riding, which isn't a showstopper, but my brain logs it every time, and standing over the bike at a light the bag tends to be up my butt. To their credit, Arkel gets ahead of this in their own FAQ, where they say the width is built to limit contact, that the bag needs to be filled without bulges, and that riders worried about rubbing should look at something else. On a fully loaded bikepacking trip, though, that volume is worth a bit of thigh contact and I wouldn't think twice about it.

The other thing I keep noticing is how fast the rear bag comes off the bike. Two rubber straps and a velcro strap, and it's in your hand in a few seconds, where every other bag I own is more or less stuck on the bike. There's no handle and it isn't meant to be carried around, but I find myself taking it off at rest stops frequently.

The Question I Keep Circling

This is a different vibe than I'm used to from Arkel. The bags I've tried from them in the past were legitimately clever. The Rollpacker is the one that got me. That rack system was genius, a bag like I'd never seen, and I still haven't seen anything quite like it. I loved it so much that sending it back was super disappointing.

These are different. Welded, technical, made offshore, squarely in Apidura and Tailfin territory. Nothing wrong with any of that. But clever isn't the word for the XP bags, competent or capable might be more appropriate.

Wrapping Up

Both bags work exactly as expected, which is the whole point. No surprises, nothing I don't like, nothing that needs a workaround. I don't think being blown out of the water is what you want from a top tube bag anyway. You want something that holds your stuff, stays put, keeps the weather out, and never becomes a thing you have to think about, and that's what these do.

I plan on running the XP bags for a long time. The front stays on for sure, the rear comes on and off depending on what I'm doing. The waterproofness and the sealed zipper are what I'll love come winter, and that's precisely why I was interested in the first place. I have no doubt they'll do what I need them to do.