Review: Thule's Roundtrip Bike Duffle

If you’re lucky enough to be traveling with your bike, Thule’s new Roundtrip Duffle Bike Bag is designed to carry your gear, store your muddy shoes, and still have plenty of space for enough après-ride clothes for a week.

The Roundtrip looks like a standard duffle bag, but it has designated storage pockets for bike-specific accessories including your helmet, goggles/glasses, and shoes. Its strategic use of durable tarpaulin in select pockets makes it stand out from other higher-end duffles, allowing the storage of greasy tools and muddy shoes safely compartmentalized from clean clothes. Thule hasn't just slapped "Bike" on the name and called it good; it's truely a well-thought-out travel bag for mountain bikers.

The interior has an accordion insert with 18 cells for rolled-up clothing, dopp kits, and any other travel incidentals. The insert snaps in place to extend it, leaving an generous end space for a helmet, or the insert can be retracted to fully utilize the bag’s cavernous 55-liter space.

One padded, lined triangular insert cell is labled for glasses and goggles. A large zippered end pocket is a tarpaulin-lined for durability and easy cleaning for mud-caked shoes.

The underside of the large top lid is tarpaulin lined and has a zippered pocket for dirty clothes (you know this because of the sock icon complete with stinky lines). Have a pair of liners that have seen some things this trip? No worries. Cram them into the pocket with no contamination of your clean clothes.

The front side of the bag has a generous zippered pocket with mesh pockets and webbing straps for items such as power cords and bike tools. This pocket in turn has its own exterior zippered pocket, enough space for a large phone, passport or other items to which you’d want quick and easy access. The other side of the bag has a small mesh open pocket for an ID card.

The Roundtrip has three heavy-duty handles on top for easy grabbing from an overhead bin, and small reinforced loops for carabiners for attaching water bottles or other exterior gear. A single, adjustable messenger-bag style body strap allows you to quickly sling the bag across your body and distribute weight comfortably.

The Roundtrip Bike Duffle weighs 2.84 lbs. and measures a squishable 26.4 inches by 14.2 inches by 11.8 inches. Its exterior fabric is a bomber Bluesign 600D Polyester that comes in Black, Deep Khaki, and new colorways Mid Blue and Hazy Green.

Thule has done a great job with the Roundtrip. It's a bag that could live on my grungy floorboard with my gear ready to go for the next ride, but it deserves better than that. This is a bag I'll also use for trips sadly not involving mountain bikes. For $149.95 at Thule.com or REI it's a great value considering what comparable duffles sell for. It's a good-looking bag that certainly won't embarrass your traveling partner, if that's a thing. And for those blessed trips involving bikes, I'd be hard-pressed to find a better designed duffle bag than Thule's Roundtrip.