Bike Accessories bought on Aliexpress - Part 1 - Clothes

Links on this post are affiliate links - If you use the links in the post and buy stuff on Aliexpress, I will get a small provision, but your price stays the same.

Riding a (Road) bike can be an expensive hobby. One starts out just with the bike but upgrades more and more things:

• Bike parts: wheels, replacements for drive train, power meter, heart rate, GPS, specific tools
• Clothes: Bibs, jerseys, base layers, shoes, gloves, leg warmers, wind jacket, rain jacket
• Accessories: GPS holder, bell, bottle holders, lights
• Backs: Seat post bag for repair stuff, or more when doing Bike packing

Buying all this stuff is obviously very expensive. This is why I order a couple of things from that list on Aliexpress (or directly in China, when I am there), which I definitely can recommend for a couple of the things listed above. The price is extremely competitive, the quality often suprisingly good, only downside is the delivery times, which take from 2-6 weeks in general.

In this part, I want to share some clothes, which I had a good experience with. Clothes are perfect for ordering from China, because they are very light and compressable, which makes the delivery convenient. When I started out biking, I bought my first pair of clothes from sport department stores here in Germany. Some of those things are still in use (Jacket, Shoes), but others, like the Bib and gloves are under more stress and worn out pretty quickly. All of those things I have now replaced with clothes bought directly from China. The money I save for that, I could invest in tech, like Power meter or trainer.

Besides having some “Fake” copy brands, there are 2 “brands” on Aliexpress for clothes that are generally good quality: Raccmer and X-Tiger. From those, as you will see, I prefer Raccmer, which has a much cleaner design and good color selection, whereas X-Tiger is sometimes very ugly, but still good quality.

Bibs

Buying a Bib Short in Europe is usually 50 EUR - 200 EUR. Having very good offers starting at 14 EUR on Aliexpress, this is the major saving opportunity. Avoid sets of jersey + bib. In my experience the sizes do not fit good together, at least for me: Usually the short is very tight on the legs, bug the jersey is very loose. For my recommendation, you can usually buy the jersey in the same size like you normally would (L / XL), but take the bib 1 or 2 levels higher (XL XXL) if you don’t have very slim legs and belly :)

I found the Raccmer bibs to be of very good quality: the cushion is still in position after 3-4 years, size fits good, if big enough, no threads, material is comfortable for me, at least for tours about 100km. Maybe when going longer a personalized bib like Everve’s can make a difference here. This model, I already bought a couple of times:

I also have a long bib from X-Tiger but honestly, I don’t were this very often, as I find it to tight. I prefer the short bib + warm leg warmers for temperatures 4-12°C.

I also bought some rip offs of a Brand Clothing for fun by two shops, and the quality was also quite good. No danger here, just know what you buy! In the end I don’t need to buy a fake Brand, just take the no name “No-Brand”s like Raccmer instead.

Baselayer

Good offers, especially for warmer temperatures. I have a couple of those jerseys by Raccmer in Black and White. The white is very light with big meshes, so perfect for summer.

Until now, I haven’t bought a winter baselayer from Aliexpress, yet. Still have a couple that I bought from Aldi.

Jersey

We stay with Raccmer here. There a tons of different jerseys on Aliexpress with a variety of cool designs. Especially the long sleeve I like very much.

Jackets

I have bought this rain jacket 2 times already. The Rain Jacket is extremely light and thin, and can fit inside the jersey pocket. Because it’s so thin, it is also more easy to tear. But because of the good price, just order 2. Also great for a backup rain jacket in the car or so.

I also bought this one, which is more thick, but honestly didn’t try it out, yet. Also because it is slightly bigger and thus a little to large for taking in the back pocket of the jersey. Would recommend the first one.

Because I still have two rain jacket for temperatures from 0-12°C, from Vaude and Alex bought before my Aliexpress discovery, I haven’t had the opportunity to replace those yet. Same goes for a wind vest by Vaude which is unbreakable.

Gloves

Gloves are some of those parts which needs more frequent replacements, because you lose one, the hand parts are rubbed off, or the cover color peels off. Luckily, we can shop this at Aliexpress, too. Just measure your hand girth to get the right size.

This model is very thin and light, perfect for summer. The threads around the fingers will loose after some time though. But honestly I’ve had the same issues with locally bought gloves before.

I tried the following for colder weather between 2-10°. Those are okish, a little sturdy, because of the shell material, and the threads inside are maybe uncomfortable for sensitive fingers. Though for the price totally fine. But unfortunately, I’ve lost one. 🤷‍♂️.

Recently received, but havn’t tested it extensively. But looks fine now:

Caps

For this early spring season, I bought this warm cap. I find it comfortable and warm, comfort zone is 0-9°, maybe even below zero, but haven’t tried it yet :)

Things I haven’t tried yet (but will if the need arises)

• Leg/Arm warmers

• Winter jersey

• Winter base layer

• Wind vest
• Light cap for 8-14°C
• Summer cap
• Buff
• Winter bib
• Warm jacket for -5° to +8°C

Conclusion: Until now I had zero bad experiences with bike clothes bought on Aliexpress. The only downside is with all online cloth shopping: Stuff that does not fit. In my opinion some of the Major Brands™ have a comparable quality. In the end, making clothes is no rocket technology, and the Brand companies will produce in Asia anyways and most of the markup is for the marketing and sponsoring those Brands will do. Quality is great, just read the description and size tables of the products.