I’ve seen them. You probably have too.
Ads for products of an almost unimaginable variety. Product names with an extraordinary amount of nouns and adjectives. Product images splattered with garish colours, text overlays, watermarks, and spurious claims - product descriptions with questionable grammar.
Yes. I’m talking about AliExpress. Since its arrival - a way to buy directly from manufacturers in Asia at unusually low prices - us consumers have become more comfortable ordering goods directly from overseas. And after the groundwork laid by AliExpress, SHEIN's fast-fashion boom and Temu's aggressive discount-shopping models have quickly followed. Throw in the likes of Fruugo and the e-commerce landscape is changing radically.
Together, these platforms have helped normalise the idea that we browse, compare, and buy inexpensive products from global sellers with just a few clicks. And while they’ve made global shopping somewhat more accessible, websites like AliExpress have also raised questions about the true social and environmental cost of convenience and affordability.
For those who choose to look beyond the aggressive advertising and too-good-to-be-true pricing, there’s a darker side to these platforms. In the race to offer ever-cheaper products, concerns over product quality, counterfeit goods, working conditions and environmental impacts have grown ever louder.
In the very week that I sat down to finish this article, the European Commission hit AliExpress with a €550 million fine for breaching its obligations relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe or counterfeit products. For counterfeit bike phone mounts, the worst result is a broken phone screen and a grapple with an offish insurance company, but in the product adjacent world of e-bikes this has - in some cases - led to danger to property and even life.
And since LOOP’s inception, we’ve battled an inexorable rise in copycat LOOP products listed on the likes of Temu. Look-alike bike phone mounts with overtly similar brand and product names but with a side order of slapdash manufacturing, questionable mounting mechanisms and eye-watering weights. And, this is despite both the Loop Mount and Micro Mount having patents in major territories.
Sure, there are clearly more egregious happenings in this strange old world of ours, and sure, there’s also an argument that things have gone too far in the overtly capitalist western world. Products with managed obsolescence, carefully curated brand identities, swish e-commerce platforms, social media adverts, and content creators - these are things that can, and sometimes do, raise a product's retail price.
But these days, when making a buying decision, how many of us can really admit we look beyond the purchase price? How many of us understand how a product is sourced or manufactured? Whether a product has a warranty or guarantee. Hell! What about if said business supports jobs (your author’s wages included!), communities and a local economy?
So as yet another imitation product popped up, I thought now, perhaps rightly or wrongly, was the time to shine a light on these knock-off bike phone mounts.
Size Matters
When designing Micro Mount, industrial designers agonised over everything - every detail - mechanisms, materials, machining and plenty of other things not beginning with M. The aim was to create a minimal, sleek bike phone mount that was universal to most devices. The Atweina Stem-mounted Stealth Mount is the complete antithesis of this design-led ethos.
A ginormous plate of god-knows-what held in place by a tiny round thread of nylon. Try adding that to a nice svelte commuter or an early 2000’s road bike, and it’ll look like a neon splash of graffiti on the wall of a medieval church. Very much out of place. I can’t be sure whether the squaring off the corners is an attempt to lessen the size of the thing, but unfortunately it’s given the mount an extremely basic look. And don’t get me started on the branding of the thing! It’s like something from a 1990’s Action Man.
Held in my hand, this phone mount seems incredibly light - almost too light. Something that for the princely sum of £19.09, I wouldn’t feel comfortable entrusting with my wildly expensive smartphone.
Weight matters
Sure, 68 grams isn't going to transform a bike ride, but it tells a story.
Good product design isn't about making something as heavy as possible, nor is it about shaving every gram. The LOOP Mount achieves the right balance by using precision-machined aluminium and carefully engineered components that deliver strength where it matters and remove material where it doesn't. The result is a mount that feels reassuringly solid without becoming bulky.
The MEROCA Bicycle Mobile Phone Holder Can Be Rotated 360° Hidden Ultra-Light MTB ROAD BikeAluminum Alloy Phone Holder (full name!), on the other hand, manages the worst of both worlds. Larger and more agricultural, at 186 grams it's over 50% heavier than our Loop Mount. That's extra weight sitting on your handlebars without offering any obvious benefit in terms of design, finish or confidence-inspiring construction.
If you're paying for more material, you'd hope it was because it was required. With the Meroca it simply feels like more metal for less thought.
Just plain rubbish
Be honest, how many times has something arrived at your front door, you’ve opened it, and in less than 10 seconds flat you’ve broken said item. This was very much the case for the Bike phone holder 360 rotating aluminium alloy base, a rather sad copycat of our highly acclaimed Micro Mount.
One gentle tug of the arms to see if we could mount our phone instantly rendered the mount useless. Bent arms meant the mount was neither able to retract nor open fully again.
Priced at £13.69 for a reason.
Universal? Sure
"Universal" is one of those words that's become almost meaningless on online marketplaces. Almost every LOOP copycat claims to fit every phone, every bike and every riding style. The reality is usually rather different.
Take the TTPro mount. The adjustable arms technically allow it to grip a wide range of phones, but only if they're the right shape, the right thickness and often without a protective case. My larger iPhone pushed the arms to their limit, while smaller devices held on little more than hope.
By contrast, LOOP's clamping mechanism is a defining feature of our bike phone mounts. Whether you're using the latest iPhone, a Samsung Galaxy or most other modern smartphones, the mount securely grips the phone itself rather than relying on clamps that look on feel extremely flimsy.
There's, perhaps, also a more important point. A phone mount isn't universal simply because lots of phones physically fit inside it. It's universal if you can confidently fit your phone, fit it snugly on your handlebars, whatever bike you ride, and remove it one-handed without wondering whether your £1,000 smartphone is about to bounce onto the tarmac.
Branding defiance
This case isn’t one of utility or design, merely a case of branding so cavalier, so reckless, that even I was flabbergasted. Right there, on the main body of the bike phone mount is the (old) LOOP logo. Clear as day. A .SVG or .PNG lifted from somewhere - probably the very site you’re reading this article on - and hurriedly sent forth to production.
Sure, ‘LOOP’ is a shorter, snappier brand than ‘Highway Mountain Bicycle’ but to lift the actual brand name, slap it on a product and blatantly copy the product in the process is… well, ballsy.
Fortunately, this particular example - the ‘Highway Mountain Bicycle Universal Classic Ring Phone Stand 360 Twisted CNC Aluminium Alloy’ (catchy, right?) is one that LOOP has since managed to remove from sale.
That brings me to the end of this rather unconventional article. Shining a light on why our bike phone mounts deserve your attention, but perhaps more importantly, it might help you look beyond the “Welcome Deals” or “Extra 1% Off” that litter the websites of AliExpress and its cousins.
For a much more considered assessment of buying bikes and accessories on AliExpress - with writing I could only dream of - I’d recommend Escape Collective’s Iain Treloar’s documentation of buying both a bike frame and chain wax on the platform. Or, for another view, Simon Von Bromley’s article over on BikeRadar covering the purchase of bike parts. Is “buy cheap, buy twice” still a maxim that we could, or even should, live by?
Over and out.
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