What is the Ultix SAS Bike Travel Case?
The Ultix SAS Bike Travel Case (lets just go with Ultix SAS) is a bike bag designed for a rider who is looking for a minimalistic, protective bike bag. The Ultix SAS is the smallest bike bag currently on the market, measuring just 115cm x 80cm x 30cm.
What makes the Ultix SAS different?
Other than being quite compact in comparison with other offerings on the market, such as the Pro Mega Bag that we tested a couple of years ago (https://flowmountainbike.com/tests/tested-pro-mega-bag/), the Ultix SAS offers another innovative feature with its solution to protecting your precious cargo through two inflatable frame pads.
The pads are inserted on each side of the bag, and provide a solid cushion between the outside of the bag and the bike within. We think this is an excellent solution for protecting your bike during transit, however it’s quite heavy, weighing in at 9.8 kilograms for the bag with padding.
How easy is it to pack your bike?
For the purpose of this review, we were planning to pack a large sized Mondraker Dune into the Ultix SAS.
The first thing that you’ll need to do is whip off the wheels and pop them away in their individual slots on each side of the bag. The reinforced plastic where the rotors and cassette sit are a nice touch.
From there, you would normally place the forks onto the fork mount at the front of the bag (the bag comes with different adaptors to accommodate 9mm, 15mm and 20mm axles), however we weren’t able to fit our Mondraker Dune into the Ultix SAS. Yes, the Dune is one of the longer bikes on the market, but the SAS wouldn’t have accommodated our medium sized Canyon Strive either.
So despite the Ultix SAS’s well thought-out features such as extra protection throughout, multiple pockets for spare parts and luggage as well as high quality finishing touches like large zippers, swivelling wheels and eight handles, this is not a bike bag that will fit every bike.
So if this bag doesn’t fit every type of bike, who is the Ultix SAS really for?
Despite having constraints on the type of bikes that it will fit, for hardtail riders or people with small frame sizes the Ultix SAS is a well thought-out, adaptable product. We think the inflatable padding is a great idea, and the overall quality is top notch.
If you’ve got a hardtail, a road bike or a smaller dual-suspension mountain bike, this bag is certainly worth a look. We’d would love to see a slightly bigger Ultix SAS in the future, so hopefully it’s in the pipeline.