Have you ever been riding along, enjoying the music being streamed to your spiffy new wireless earbuds from your phone, tucked safely away in the rear pocket of your jersey…And then hit a bump, which sent your phone sailing into a rock garden screen first? Yea? Me too.

There are a ton of options available today for stashing your phone while you ride. However, none of these options offer ease of access quite like a bicycle phone mount, which mounts your phone to your bike’s handlebars or stem. This seems like an all the more attractive solution, as many of the devices that we once used while riding are now all stored in our phone. Phones take the place of a GPS, a bike computer, and for many riders an mp3 player (remember those?). Having access to it all right in front of you can be a boon, but you also want to be sure that your phone is well protected, vulnerable as it might feel perched atop your handlebars.

We reviewed what we consider the top bicycle phone mounts on the market, to help you choose the right one for your needs, be they road biking or mountain biking. Most mounts require you to use a particular case, and we also took into consideration how useful each brand’s cases were both on the bike and in your daily life, since switching phone cases for every ride would be a real pain.

TheBest Bike Phone Mount of 2021

Top Picks

Quad Lock Out Front Bike Mount

Rokform Sport Series Mount and Rugged Case:

Morpheus Labs M4s

Quad Lock Bike Kit

Quad Lock Out Front Bike Mount

Not available in a kit, the Quad Lock Out Front Bike Mount will require the separate purchase of a quad lock case, or the Quad Lock Adapter, which uses 3M adhesive tape to secure a Quad Lock locking mechanism onto whatever case you already have. As for the Quad Lock Case, it is low profile, and you can purchase a separate “Poncho,” which is just a slip on rubber cover to make the case waterproof. However, the Poncho also limits the effectiveness of touch screens.

There are two options for the Quad Lock Out Front Bike Mount. The first is the standard Quad Lock Out Front Bike Mount, made of plastic. The second is the Quad Lock Out Front Bike Mount Pro. It is like the standard Out Front Bike Mount except it is made from CNC machined aluminum rather than plastic, and it extends 63mm in front of your bars, rather than the 38mm of the standard option.

Both use Quad Lock’s easy to snap in and out locking mechanism, which is a breeze to operate one-handed. The mounts themselves secure using a 3mm hex screw clamp, and each Out Front Bike Mount comes with spacers to make the clamp fit different sized bars.

Overall, we quite liked the Quad Lock Out Front Mount, whether on the road or in the trails. We also liked the fact that it worked with a wide range of handlebars, and even gives you the option of an adapter so that you can use it with whatever phone case you choose. However, we do wish that the standard Quad Lock Case had an integrated magnet and that it came with the GoPro adapter and Poncho, which are both sold separately. In the end, we felt that these were minor shortcomings, and named the Quad Lock Bike Mount our top pick for best overall bicycle phone mount for any riding style

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Rokform Sport Series Mount and Rugged Case

The Rokform Sport Series Universal bicycle phone mount and Rugged case combo was a top all-around choice for a fairly heavy duty mount and case. 

The Rokform Rugged case is available for both Android and Apple phones, although Rokform does provide a wider range of case options for Apple users. In the end, we skew toward Android phones and all mountain style riding, so naturally, the burly Rugged case was the perfect choice for us. The Rugged case itself is rugged, as its name suggests, and offers a great deal of shock resistance, although the screen side of your phone is not protected, so we definitely recommend using a glass screen protector as well, if you plan to use the Rokform Rugged case for intense trail duty. It also includes an integrated magnet for use with Rokform or third party car mounts.

The mount itself, meanwhile, is among the more simple and effective bicycle phone mounts in our review, but also fairly tough to install. The mount uses a silicone band along with a plastic clamp. This is the same style of bar mount that has been used by headlights and bicycle computers in the past, and it will work on almost any handlebar.

The only real downside to the system is that stretching the mount around your bars to get an ultra tight fit is a real pain, and might even require pliers to achieve the perfect fit. On the other hand, it doesn’t take any special tools, and is a very simple process, with no small pieces to get lost. Once the mount is on, it is easy to pop your phone in and out. 

While it is not perfect, we think that the Rokform Rugged Case and Sport Series Bar Mount is just about the best bicycle phone mount on the market. At $70, the combo is not the cheapest around, but plenty of phone cases alone cost this much. Meanwhile, iPhone users might also want to take a look at the Morpheus Labs M4s, which is not Android compatible.

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Morpheus Labs M4s

The Morpheus Labs M4s is a great bicycle phone mount system for iPhone users, and with the mount and case combo costing only $49.99, it is also a great value.

The case is one of the thinnest cases compatible with a bicycle phone mount, and could easily pass for just another phone case. It is definitely one that would not be out of place as a daily carry case, and this makes it a particularly great option for those who plan to carry their phone in the same case that they use while riding. The case also features an integrated magnet, and you can purchase Morpheus labs or any other magnet compatible car mount to make this a great all around phone case. You can also add an additional cover to the case to make it “waterproof” but this does greatly reduce the sensitivity of touch screens.

The Morpheus Labs M4s mount itself uses a screw clamp for removal and installation that was among the easiest of any bicycle phone mount in our review. This makes it ideal for riders swapping between bikes. However, in addition to being incompatible with iPhones, the Morpheus Labs M4s mount might not fit every handlebar. With carbon mountain bike handlebars ranging up to 35mm, the Morpheus Labs M4s could do to accommodate a slightly larger bar. 

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Quad Lock Bike Kit

The Quadlock Bike Kit sits somewhere between the average and more expensive bicycle phone mount kits in our review, depending on which variation of it you need, with android kits selling for $59.95 and iPhone kits selling for $69.95. A  waterproof “Poncho” can be purchased separately, further adding to the Quad Lock Bike Kit’s cost. This is a slip on cover that makes the Quad Lock Bike Kit’s case waterproof, although it also severely limits the effectiveness of touch screens.

Overall, everything about the Quad Lock Bike Kit is low profile. The case itself could easily be any ordinary carrying case, though it would certainly pass for one with higher shock resistance than most. One negative for the Quad Lock case is that it does not have an integrated magnet. This means that if you rely on a magnetic mount for your home or car, then you will need a second phone case for those situations.

As for the mount itself, it is simple, effective, and easy to install. It comes with two sets of o-rings. One for larger handlebars and one for smaller. This makes for an extremely easy install, which will work well on handlebars or stems. However, you only achieve the most secure fit possible on the largest bars that each o-ring will reasonably accommodate, meaning that the  Quad Lock Bike Kit’s bicycle phone mount might or might not be very secure on your handlebars. This isn’t too big of a deal for road riding, but it makes us shy away from the Quad Lock Bike Kit’s bicycle phone mount for use on the trails.

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Conclusions

None of the Phone Mounts on our list are perfect, but we saw great merit in each of them. Meanwhile, there are a number of other manufacturers making bicycle phone mounts, from top tube bags to mounts that screw into your bike’s headset. However, we did not feel that most of these were worthy of any “best of” type of review, and we were not in favor of adding phone mounts to our headset. That is why our list of the best bicycle phone mounts is limited to four. However, as always, we will have our eyes open looking for new phone mounts that we feel good about recommending.

If you have had great experiences with a phone mount that we did not review and might not be familiar with, drop us a line! We might try it out and add it to our review.