Customer Reviews

Fizik Dual Bicycle Bar Tape

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fizik handlebar tape costs about $10 more than the standard "cork" tape you'll get in stores, but it is the best $10 you can spend on a bike accessory.

Looks and feels great, the is extremely durable, even when it gets wet. I wrapped my commuter bike over 2 years ago, and it still looks like it was done yesterday. In comparison, my road bike was done with Cinelli, and two years later it's already worn and must be redone.

Bending this stuff to your will & the handlebar is not an easy task. Getting a nice, clean wrap around corners & levers will require considerably more time & effort than for cork tapes, which are usually very forgiving in these areas. You will find that you have to re-wrap corners a couple of times to stretch the tape & get it to lay flat. Fortunately, the tape handles all of this abuse well; I realy leaned into this stuff & felt no sign of weakness or fragility. The tape ends are cut to angles that should make beginning & ending the tape easier, if you wrap for self-tightening, one of these angles is going to make starting the tape a little weird (not to mention that because you have to reverse the wrap either the tops or drops of your bar will not have the color striping). This brings me to the end plugs, mine required a lot of sanding to get them small enough to even fit in my bars, let alone fit in there with bar tape.
Fully installed, my handlebars now look like something out of a Tim Burton movie, it'll be fun for a year but I will be going back to a solid colored tape next year.
So why four stars? These are a challenge to install, but I didn't buy them because they would be easy to install; I wanted the aesthetics & I wanted the solid feeling that they afford. They offer both looks & firmness in spades.

Been using Fizik tape for 5 years or so, this is the best yet! Thick, and durable. I already have the gel pads installed, the combination is awesome. I could see this tape be difficult to install if you didn't know what you were doing due to the tape stiffness. Take your time and you will have a beautiful product.

this stuff feels great in your hands. it's not very soft but i think if used in conjunction with the gel you would be in heaven. it applies easy, there is a nice ridge which i use as a guide when rapping the bars. this will help make sure there are no gaps when you are done. i'd definitely recommend this.

I purchased this bar tape sight unseen because of Fizik's strong reputation for quality products. I was looking for some really 'cushy' tape, due to hand numbness and found the Dual Bicycle Bar Tape. The tape is somewhat cushioned, it has a felt-like layer on the under side and it also benefits from the stitched air pocket. But in order to really get that 'cushy' feel, I also purchased Fizik Bar Gel with Four Pieces (No tape), which really allowed me to achieve the feel that I was looking for( the gel flattens out quite a bit with the the bar tape though).I purchased the black/gray which has a suede like feel to it that I really love.
It is very sturdy. As other reviewers have mentioned, it takes a bit of force to get the tape to lay correctly, but it will yield. I also wanted to mention that this is my first experience in wrapping handle bars and I didn't find it as difficult as some earlier reviewers had suggested. As some have stated, it does not include instructions, but if you just pay attention to how the bar tape is applied as you remove the original/existing tape, you can reverse engineer the process and successfully apply your new tape. If your starting from scratch on a brand new pair of bars than you have more than likely applied bar tape before.
All in all, I really do like this bar tape. It's sturdy, has a great suede-like feel, and looks, well, to each his own but I like it. Definitely unique looking. And if your a 'newbie' like me, go ahead and take a shot at it, if you mess up, the tape allows for a correctional re-taping. I had to re-wrap the second side( for aesthetic reasons, I wrapped in the same direction as the first side which had the 'swirl' pattern going the same direction as the first side, it didn't look right.) and the tape was fine, it looked just as good as the other side.

Great stuff, but challenging to install. I'd never wrapped handlebars before, and didn't have the old tape as a guide, since what had been there was worn-out old foam that I'd cut off.

I had to try a couple of times in order to get it evenly wrapped, and to get the direction of the wrap symmetrical on both sides, and to end up with about the right amount at the end of the wrapping process. The tape itself stood up pretty well to being removed and reapplied several times, and seems solidly in place now despite all that messing around. A warning: the finishing tape supplied with the product adheres very strongly to the handlebar tape itself, so if you go ahead and put that finishing tape on, as I did, and then decide you need to re-do the main wrap, you may have trouble getting the finishing tape off, and it won't be salvageable. So I ended up using black electrical tape to finish off both sides.

The other thing is that the end plugs are very challenging to get in. That may have to do with the diameter of my handlebars, but also seemed to have to do with the thickness of the wrap tape when folded into the bar end, and with the plugs being pretty resistant to compression. I ended up carving down the prongs on the plugs, so they could press toward one another more--the prongs were simply too broad to be able to be pinched together, so I cut a little off the end of each, where it would meet the adjacent prong. I had to do this, and lubricate the plug and bar-end with Windex, and use a mallet, in order to install the end-plugs. It may be different for you, if you have a larger-diameter handlebar.

I used gel padding under the tape, which probably made things a little trickier. This tape is so cushiony, I'd probably skip that next time.

Overall, this tape looks great and feels great--I love the spiral of color on the bars, which matches my frame, and the tape feels comfortable and grippy on the hands. So it was worth it, and I'd definitely use this stuff again.

This was a gift to a family member who is an ardent biking enthusist with 2 carbon bikes, one for trail biking and one for road and triatheons. This is a recent gift which was applied on the road bike's handlebars. The feedback so far is that the Fiskar tape is really great in feel and looks, great quality. To test its durability, more time will be needed to see how it holds up.

This grip tape was exactly what I wanted. It shipped quickly, and in sensible packaging. The quality is brand new. It looks and feels great on my bike.

looks great, works great, got here on time in great condition, easy to put on, cant think of anything bad to say

I bought this to replace the dirty white bar tape on my bike. It looks nice and muted in the pictures, and I have the version with the black/grey on another bike, but this was just too much. The red is bright and just looks too garish on the bars when all is said and done. It's thin, goes on easily and has some cushion, but I just couldn't get over the looks and took it off that night.