BxB Upper Hand Frame Bag Review: A Good Grip

Prior to Jay Ritchey’s time making some of the best bikepacking bags on the market, he followed folks such as Lael Wilcox as they traversed mountain passes and winding roads during some of the toughest bikepacking races on the planet. In all his time seeing some of our steeliest ultra-racers compete from behind the lens, Jay witnessed many of the failure points for bags taken to their limit. Through all this unintended, first-hand research, Jay developed a particular disdain for zippers—an omission that might go unnoticed without taking stock of the entire BxB lineup. Having owned a few of Jay’s designs over the years, I can attest to their strength, versatility, and durability. That said, creating a stock, multi-sized frame bag is no easy feat, particularly when you want to stand out from the crowd and offer something distinctive.

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BxB Upper Hand Overview

Offered in four different lengths, the Upper Hand is Jay’s attempt to build a half-frame bag without zippers. Much like Jay’s other frame bag Miles reviewed, the simplistic yet capable BxB Upper Hand features two flap-style side pockets and a small opening at the fore for a hydration hose. The non-drive-side pocket allows access to a thinner, less voluminous pocket, and the drive-side is the only access to the primary compartment. Attached by supplied elastic cordage for the top tube and two velcro straps intended for the head and down tubes, the BxB Upper hand offers a modular, customizable attachment system.

On the topic of attachment, zip cordage is one of those features users either seem to love or hate, but it’s something I’ve found has a few benefits. First and foremost, it looks great. Velcro straps can give a bike that unintended striped T-shirt look, and unless it matches the aesthetic, it can look a bit odd. Second, with the variety of tube shapes that alloy, steel, and carbon bikes use nowadays, velcro (and even Voile straps) can sometimes be difficult to fit. Elastic cordage allows for a custom fit to whatever tube shape is available and, much like a shoelace, can be tightened or loosened at certain sections depending on need. It’s the kind of modularity that seems insignificant but serves an important purpose. The only real negatives I’ve found are that cordage tends to marry a bag to a bike more than your average velcro strap, and it can be more difficult to grab the top tube in hike-a-bike scenarios.

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BxB’s Benefit

As stated, the core idea with a lot of Jay’s bags centers around non-zippered closure systems. Frame bags these days tend to feature zippered closures as they offer better access from the riding angle, but I found the flap system employed on the BxB Upper Hand to be as capable. The benefit here is two-fold. Where the zipper on my trusty Outer Shell half-frame bag dictates much of the bag’s structural shape, the flap system allows the Upper Hand to remain unchanged in structure whether open or not. The advantage is that items are less likely to fall out when opening and closing while riding. On either side, the contents of the compartment remain in the position they’re already in, whether the closure is open or not, and the closure system only exposes the upper half of the bag. The bag’s structural integrity becomes less stable with zippered systems, and things can easily fall out.

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The other benefit is with overloading bags. We all know we shouldn’t do it, yet it tends to happen when you’re on an adventure and pressed for space. Overloading my frame bag occurred a fair bit when I rode Mega Mid South, using my frame bag as a loading point for my next snack. With an implicit understanding that space will clear up as you eat snacks, it’s easy to accept a much tighter squeeze than intended when leaving the gas station. That said, the one time I had an issue with a zipper was on that very trip. After 300-some miles of jostling, dusty, overstuffed riding, the zipper had enough. The BxB’s Upper Hand closure system is more accepting of a larger load and won’t damage the bag if done. The flap system can accommodate less-than-ideal cargo in a pinch, and you’d have to abuse the cordage well beyond reason to break it. Even so, say the cord snapped. The natural position of the flap is closed, so it wouldn’t actually render the bag entirely useless, unlike a broken zipper.

Ultimately, the dynamic with the closure on the BxB Upper Hand is one that trades a more immediate ease of use for a more mechanically simplistic system. While the flaps make it such that the opening for the frame bag isn’t as large as a full zipper, I didn’t find it limiting in storing or removing items. In fact, the limitation of the closure size kept things inside the bag when aimlessly pulling out a jacket or a snack better than on my zippered bags. I was quite shocked by this, and it’s a feature that has re-oriented my perspective on closure systems.

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BxB Upper Hand Fit

The potential drawback of offering standard sizing for any bag is that it may not fit perfectly with your selected frame. Where front and rear bags have a much larger tolerance for fit, inner frames are highly specific to brand and size. Bag makers do their damnedest, but only so much can be done. Such was the case with the BxB Upper Hand. The exposed inner head tube of my medium (a roughly 54/56cm frame) prototype Velo Orange limited the size that could be accepted and didn’t fill out the length of the top tube. It’s not a huge issue, and the benefit of frame bags like this one is that they’re more likely to fit into a variety of frames as opposed to just one. So, it’s always good to shop around, as there’s potential for a non-custom option to fit your bike almost perfectly.

Even with the less-than-perfect fit, the combination of top tube cordage, head tube, and down tube attachments secured the bag more than sufficiently. It should also be noted that, like many of Jay’s other bags, the BxB Upper Hand is offered in a variety of lengths to try and allow for a multitude of fits. Alas, whether you use a spare tube or a larger, vertical bottle on the seat tube, you can always get creative in filling excess space behind a frame bag like this one.

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• Model Tested: BxB Upper Hand 17″L
• Weight: 217 grams
• Volume: 2.5 liters
• Place of Manufacture: Tuscon, Arizona, USA
• Price: $120
• Manufacturer’s Details: Bags by Bird

For more on the BxB Upper Hand, visit BagsByBird.com.

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