Which clip/cage style pedals are the best in your opinion?

Soma quad gates with Toshi doubles.

Plastic clips I find to be flimsy and weak, single straps get the job done, but a nice metal clip designed for doubles and a double strap setup is the most secure next to clipless.

Personally I think the straps matter more than the clips. I find my plastic double clips + MKS Fit-Alpha double straps are far sturdier than my Soma Fourgates with two sets of Christophe singles. Besides, the plastic ones can surely take a beating, and you won't cry over high cost when/if they scratch or break.

Quad gates are nice, but they tend to dig into your feet if you were thin shoes (like vans or chucks). With a good set of double straps I don't see a huge difference between clips.

Cleanupinaisle3, what plastic double clips are you using?

Ditch the clips and straps and get some Holdfasts. Expensive for what they are but competitive to good doubles and clips. The wide strap feels like it transfers much more power to the pedals to me then all but the tightest doubles and you get easy adjustability and a bit of added clearance without the clips. Only drawback is that they are made for platform BMX pedals. To me this is a plus. I love my Haro Smallblocks and they are light and cost $8.

This is what i wanted to hear.

I have tried all clips and straps, and while some clips and straps are better than others. clipless is by far the best you can experience.

But if it has to be clips and straps, MKS silvian pedals with MKS clips feel great. I have used cheap straps with them and expensive double straps, they felt very similar.

BUT THAT was the best clip strap combo I have had. Maybe toshi doubles would add to it, but as being as you can get a clipless setup the same price as a a pair of toshi's, I wouldn't recommend it.

my hold fasts are no where near as secure as my wabi cycles straps and plastic clips.

Holdfast look comfy, but how do you get them tight on your feet with a set and forget method?

Holdfast is one big strap. How is that going to be more secure with a toe clip and a single/double strap?
There's still going to be more in and out movement in the former set up, no matter how much you tighten them.

Tricksters use them because they're easier to come out of and stronger for the pulling-up motion.

I affirm this all 100%. I had MKS sylvans and clips, and some Soma doubles (the best the LBS had), and I can say the setup was "good enough". Its limitations were almost entirely inherent to a clip/strap system itself, which I have now fully realized since going clipless. (Shimano M520 SPDs can be gotten for like $25 online then you just need to get some MTB shoes. I always wore the same shoes riding anyway, so now I just always wear my shimano M076s)

I gotta give a thumbs down to plastic cages, I can't imagine a universe where I would prefer those, give me the rigidity of metal please. (maybe if I wanted to ride in dress shoes?)

holdfasts suck

I got them off a friend for $5. I'm honestly not sure what they are.

They're actually far less flimsy than my Soma Fourgates/Quadgates. it's a lot easier to compress the metal ones than it is the plastic ones. The plastic is really stiff and thick.

The toe clip is just a framework for the strap, all the actual holding comes from the strap. The force against the pedals is down and up (if you pull the pedals on your upstroke) so the clip doesn't add to the holding power. Think about clipless pedals, the point of contact is under the ball of the foot.

Holdfasts hold my feet over the pedal more securely than the Wabi doubles and plastic clips I had with less play and easier in and out. They just feel more secure and convey more power to the drive train. It could have to do with the concave pedals I use with it are wider and more grippy than the GR-9s I ran with the doubles but that's just how it feels to me. If you ride regular sneakers they work great.

You can argue aesthetics and price but I think most of the people here dissing them haven't actually used them. I 'm not sure where you are getting the "in and out movement". Once you jam your feet in, they feel really tight. You need a little pivot to the side to get your feet out. The power on the upstroke is noticeable.

You're ignoring forward foot forces. A properly-sized metal toe clip resists forward pressure by the foot. So instead of just strictly Up or Down force, it's more of a 180°(+) arc where you can apply pressure. And with clipless it's 360°.

I disagree. Toe clips were designed to work with cycling shoes with slotted cleats and caged pedals, such that once the straps were pulled tight, the cleat will resist all front to back forces. Furthermore, it's the strap that resists upwards forces and the pedal that resists downward forces. The sole purpose of the clip is to resist twisting movements of the foot and to help keep the strap located on top of the foot.

Right but the since the strap grabs around the widest part of your foot, your foot doesn't go any more forward with the Holdfasts either so you have the same resistance. You can push forward against them, just like clips but I think the feeling is more akin to clipless since it is translated by the strap directly to the pedals rather than by the clip which has flex in it or at least that's how it feels. The more you push forward, the tighter the strap grips you foot which goes directly to the pedal. The feeling is very direct.

Also again having a wide, concave BMX pedal, your foot has a lot more tension against the pedal to start with. It sits in the concave more than on a flat platform or a cage.

Yeah they may have been designed that way for use with slotted cleats, but they're not like that anymore. I'm saying when I had toe clips, my foot went all the way into them, and the cage resisted my forward pressure at the toe. You don't agree that a metal clip can resist forward pressure? Perhaps you've only used too-large of clips or too tall of shoes or something.

I wasn't suggesting otherwise.

I don't really understand how a toe clip can resist twisting foot movements. Are you thinking of the slotted cleat again? Does anyone still use those?

I wasn't really talking about Holdfasts, I'm not familiar with them myself. i was just countering what you were saying about clips/straps allowing only strictly up/down forces

Perhaps a tiny bit of force, but once you apply any significant force, the clip will just flex. Once this happens the top of the clip will rotate up until the strap restrains it. When combined with a tight strap, a clip can thus resist forward foot forces, but it's still really the strap and not the clip that is doing the real work here.

Hold fasts are the closest thing I have found to clipless. They can be a bit tricky to get into with BMX pedals but once you get a feel they are great. I never get the feeling that my foot is backing out of the strap as I'm trying to stop like I always did with various types of clips.

MKS Slyvan pedals w/ All-City metal clips and double straps. I like them very much.

I kinda disagree. A quality metal cage doesn't flex much against the small amount of forward-facing pressure I'm talking about. It's just retention. I agree that a metal cage would flex if pulling up on it, but a strictly forward-facing pressure is indeed resisted at the toe, the cage can't flex in the forward direction, or the bottom half of it would have to be stretching. I don't want to have to draw a picture, this is all kind of a subtlety. Of course the vast majority of our pedal force is in the downward direction.

I believe what he was referring to is the pressure felt when stopping a fixed gear with your legs. The stiffest test of a any foot retention is going to be making a hard skip stop. In this case all the pressure is going to be at the top of the foot.

Yup. I do.