Daily Mail's Sophie Hines Reviews Asgard

Featured in: The rise of the Asgard shed! Celebs surge popular bike storage in middle class gardens - but are they worth the £800 price tag?
Author: Sophie Hines, Lifestyle & Digital Editor

The rise of the Asgard shed! Celebs surge popular bike storage in middle class gardens - but are they worth the £800 price tag?

If you live in a city and own bikes worth caring about, there are really only two options: drag them through the hallway scuffing the paint every evening, or spend the rest of your life feeling anxious every time you come home. I did both for longer than I'd like to admit before acquiring the Asgard Access E Plus - and the relief has been, frankly, disproportionate.

Bike theft in London is not an abstract worry. I wanted something that a determined thief couldn't simply crowbar open in thirty seconds (and something that, equally importantly, didn't make the garden look like a crime scene in itself).

Asgard Access E Plus

The Access E Plus is built from heavy-gauge galvanised steel with a pick- and drill-resistant locking system. It's not marketing bluster; you can feel the weight and solidity the moment you open it. This is a product designed by people who understand security.

Asgard garden sheds have actually proven popular amongst UK celebs, with stars like Ewan McGregor and Rhod Gilbert kitting out their backyard with this reliable storage unit. It actually serves a purpose, and won't be left unused like a trendy fire pit or hot tub. Unlike other middle-class garden cliches, it's clear the Asgard shed is an investment you won't regret splurging on.

Product Specs
Capacity: 3-4 adult bikes (including e-bikes)
Dimensions: H1140mm, W2306mm, D1053mm
Weight: 122kg

What we love:
• Highly secure.
• Pick & drill resistant lock.
• Attractive, functional design.
• Easy to use.
• Multiple colours including grey.
• Great quality materials.
• Made from galvanised steel.

What could be better:
• May not be ready fast enough for some.
• The bike sheds are made to order, so may not be suitable if you are in a hurry.

The Asgard Access E Plus was installed in my London garden (on a concrete base) and used as our sole bike storage for storing two adult bikes and two children's bikes, plus scooters, on a daily basis. We tested it through a huge mix of weather - cold, boiling and rainy - and assessed ease of use in a family context (which I would say is about the most hectic test of all).

Performance

While keeping your bikes safe is one thing, you don't want the shed to be an impenetrable fortress for yourself too (especially if like me, you are not particularly practically-minded). The thing about a bike store is that you use it every single day - perhaps multiple times, often in a rush, in my case frequently with children in tow. If it's fiddly or slow, you'll start cutting corners, and cutting corners is how bikes get nicked.

The Access E Plus opens and closes with satisfying, no-nonsense ease. This limits the time my children need to run around the garden making mischief while I wrestle with a complicated mechanism. It sounds like a small thing, but busy parents will understand it isn't.

The capacity is generous - three to four adult bikes would fit comfortably, although in our case there's also a big mix of scooters and kids' bikes in there too. Asgard sells a good range of add-on shelves, hooks, and hanging eyelets so you can customise the interior properly. We use hooks for helmets and a shelf for a pump, lights, and a miscellaneous graveyard of puncture repair kits, which keeps everything in one place and means school-run mornings are less chaotic than they were.

Design

This, I'll admit, was a big concern for me. I'd looked at metal bike stores before and written them off as industrial grey boxes that look like they belong outside a postal depot rather than in a residential garden. The Access E Plus is different, and I say that as someone who fretted about it quite a bit before ordering.

I chose the grey, partly because it's a neutral that works with most garden schemes, and I hoped that it would read as intentional rather than utilitarian. It's a muted, contemporary shade - smart without being flashy. Several neighbours have actually stopped to ask what it is, which is not a sentence I expected to write about a bike shed. I'm excited to have become my neighbourhood shedfluencer.

Value for money

At £785, the Access E Plus is not an impulse buy. But the maths is straightforward: a single decent bike costs more than that, and you can fit up to four in here. The 10-year warranty means this isn't a purchase you'll be repeating in a hurry, and the British-made construction backs that up - nothing about it feels like it will need replacing anytime soon. Compared to the cost of a bike theft (financial, logistical, and emotional), £785 starts to look like very sensible spending. The accessories (hooks, shelves, an optional wooden floor) add to the outlay but also to the usefulness, and none of them are essential from day one.

How does it compare with similar products?

The main rival in the UK secure metal bike storage market is Trimetals. It's a solid, well-regarded product, but it competes on different ground: its locking system relies on standard padlock points rather than the pick- and drill-resistant integrated lock on the Asgard. For urban areas where bike theft is opportunistic and targeted, that difference can make a difference. Trimetals is also not specifically designed for e-bikes, whereas the Access E Plus comes with built-in waterproof electrical socket mountings for overnight charging - a helpful feature as e-bike ownership grows.

On aesthetics, it's a closer call. Both sit in the smart-but-functional category; neither tries to look like garden furniture. The Asgard is the pricier of the two, but the security specification and the e-bike-ready design justify the gap for anyone in a high-theft area or running electric bikes.

How does it rate online?

Asgard as a brand rates 4.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot (classed as "Excellent") across more than 800 customer reviews. The pattern across reviews is consistent: buyers praise the build quality, the solidity of the finished product, and the security, with many specifically commenting on how much better it looks in situ than they expected. Customer service gets a strong write-up too, with staff described as responsive and helpful. The most common grumble is delivery lead times: Asgard products are made to order in Britain, which means waiting, and a handful of reviewers found that communication during the wait could be better. Worth factoring in if you need it urgently.

Among cycling publications, the Access E Plus has been reviewed positively. Road.cc called it 'incredibly secure' and praised how straightforward it is to assemble, while BikeRadar highlighted the construction quality and ease of access. The Access E Plus product page on the Asgard website carries over 90 customer reviews, the overwhelming majority of which are four or five stars.

Why trust us

Sophie Hines is a lifestyle editor with 16 years journalism experience. She has previously worked for Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and Fabulous. Like all our expert testers, Sophie's reviews are honest, impartial and offer a full picture of the products she reviews.

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