Bottlecage: Similar or no matter?
 

My Dearest friend has two same model of bottlecages , they are the awful model made in plastic.
I bought a carbon model (it was not bad at all as aestetics) and give to him as a gift with a new bottle (same color of his bike) included.
Some days after he told me he's not going to replace his currently bottlecages becouse he look to have the same models installed.... seriusly?

I was a bit afraid becouse seems he does not like the gift but who cares? in italian we says "il gesto conta" it's the thought that counts (i hope is correct in english).

(So...) Do you prefer to have the same model of bottlecages or no matter how they are?

Your English is better than mine. ;)
The bottle cages on my Litespeed and my Cannondale match the bikes.

Think the answer on this is really going to vary on personal preference. I myself would like the holders to be at least similar if not exact.

the seat tube cage I can put a cup Storebought water bottle or an Open can, in, the downtube one it will all spill out.

so functionally different cages go in the 2 locations, Potentially..

I dont know what your criteria of awful is ... do you have pictures ?

Buy him a second bottle and cage and let him figure it out

People can have peculiar preferences about bikes and biking. I like my cages to match. Also like my bottles to match. I have two black cages of the same style on one of my mountain bikes, but one has a gloss finish and the other a matte finish. Even that bugs me a little.

On the other hand, I don't really care much about what I wear when I'm cycling. I don't care much about what color my bike is. Don't care much about design aesthetics of a bike.

It's his bike.

The purpose of that bicycle is to utterly delight only one person in the entire world. It doesn't have to make sense to you or to me.

I have two stainless steel cages on both my single bikes and three stainless cages on our tandem. How important is that? Not so much.

I am trying out the Specialized Z cage II. It allows me to pull out the water bottle from the right instead of in a vertical motion. It comes either from a right side or left side orientation. Several colors available. Specialized offers different cages depending on the way the rider wants to access the bottle. So its more than just color.

https://www.specialized.com/us/en/ac...s/bottle-cages

I removed three letters from your sentence and it's slightly more awesome. :)

You need to buy him a bike that matches the bottle holder.

We have a winner!

Wire coat hanger loosely wrapped around your exquisite, custom carbon frame, so the big half-gallon plastic coke bottle has room to swing as it bangs back and fourth off your feet.

Seriously though, I agree with the matching your bike's finish to the cages, and if you have two they should match. The placebo effect of feeling good about your ride's appearance may even make you faster.

i think i'm going to do that :)
he is the kind of person who deserve this and more.

Ideally, I would like the cages to match. But just this past Wednesday I went on a "long" ride in pretty high heat and just attached a 2nd cage from an old bike I had laying around.
I usually only use 1 cage for about 30 miles, but since this was scheduled for over 50 in the heat, I thought it would be wise to carry more water...sooooo, I just attached the silver aluminum cage to my grey/silver bike. My other cage is black.
Somehow, I managed to ride my bike without so much as a snicker from anyone from my group. :)

On one bike.. If I have 2 cages, then they should match.. or be close, but it doesn't really matter. I don't necessarily have to have 2 cages on each bike, but since I've been doing longer rides lately, they're handy.

I think it would be bad form to give a single cage to a person that had 2 cages on their bike, and expect them to get a second one like it.

My Bike Friday uses a squishable plastic cage. It is a pretty awful cage, but it is important to be able to squish it.

Wow i didn't expect that poll results

I like stuff on my bicycles to match. I like matching hubs, rims and tires too. I even like my groupsets to be the same colour. I remember when the Shimano 105 groupset first came out and I was disappointed because it was flat anodized insted of the bright silver of previos grouopsets. I thought if anything on that 105 groupset got scratched you couldn't sand/file or buff it out like you could with a silver finish groupset.

Cheers

The man is Italian! Style matters!!...

Identical cages, unless he wants to make a fashion statement (same style, different colors perhaps?...).

Anything less is heresy.

There's a big of your difference between your poll and your post.
Poll: Do you prefer to have the same cages
Post: Do you prefer to have the same cages even if they don't work worth crap

There's a difference between those 2 results. :D
For my first cages, the front one didn't work worth crap but the back one worked ok. I replaced the front one with a new model. When I had confirmed it was a really good cage and worked well, I spent $20 to replace the back one with the same model even though I didn't "need" to because I prefer how it looks. Had the cost been say $1,000 somehow - would have been a different story.

I have these on my bike to, they are fantastic cages. I have the plastic version which costs $20. Was absolutely worth spending $40 on replacing my 2 metal ones that did not work well. The price difference for the carbon model was not worth it unless you're counting grams on a racer, imo.

I didn't care enough to vote indicating [C] I dont Care As Brian said to the assembled throng." Figure it out for your self."

I prefer matching cages because I know my bottles will fit correctly in both, I once had mis-matched cages and my bottle would alway fall out of one of them when I hit a big bump or was going over a tall curb.