JOYROOM Phone Mount vs Heavier RAM-Style Mounts for Touring Bikes

I have been riding long enough to remember when the answer to "where do I put my phone?" was a jacket pocket and a prayer. These days I run a JOYROOM handlebar mount on my 2017 Road King, and I spent most of last summer also running a heavier RAM-style mount on the same bike, same routes, same canyon roads outside Twin Falls. I wanted to know if the extra weight and the extra hardware actually bought me anything. After roughly 2,000 miles of switching back and forth, I have a clear answer: for touring, the JOYROOM mount is the one I reach for, and the RAM-style mount is the one I keep in the garage for a job it does better.

This is not a lab test. It is a long ride with both mounts bolted to the same handlebar at different times, through heat, cold mornings, wind, and one rainstorm that had me pulling over twice. I am a 54-year-old rider who has been doing this for about 30 years, and I care about one thing: does the mount hold the phone where I can see it, without shaking it to pieces and without making me nervous every time I hit a rough patch.

The short verdict: The JOYROOM mount holds your phone rock-solid, installs in minutes, and lets you forget it is there. The RAM-style mount is built like a tank and feels like one too, but for touring miles the JOYROOM is the better daily companion.

How I Compared Them

I ran the JOYROOM mount for about 1,200 miles first. I bolted it on in early May, a Tuesday morning with the temperature sitting right at 48 degrees, and I left it on through most of June. Then I swapped in the RAM-style mount for about 800 miles, from mid-July into August. Same bike, same handlebar area, same phone, same roads: daily runs into town, weekend loops through the canyon country south of Twin Falls, and one long multi-state trip that included interstate stretches, chip-seal back roads, and a few hours of wind strong enough to lean into.

I kept a spiral notebook in the saddlebag for the first month and I kept the habit all summer. Every ride got a line: the date, the route, the temperature, and whether I touched the mount at all during the ride. It sounds like overkill, but memory lies to you on a long day and the notebook does not. By the end of June I had 23 entries for the JOYROOM mount and a clear picture of how it behaved. When I switched to the RAM-style mount in mid-July I kept the same notes, so the comparison on both sides comes from the same kind of record.

I judged both on the things that actually matter on a touring bike: how fast they install, how securely they hold the phone, how much vibration reaches the phone, how easy they are to use with gloves on, and how they feel after three hours in the saddle. I also paid attention to the stuff that does not show up in a spec sheet, like whether the mount rattles against the bars at idle, whether the phone wiggles loose over a long day, and whether I found myself checking it every time the road got rough. That last one turned out to be the biggest difference between the two. I stopped checking the JOYROOM mount after about two weeks. I never stopped checking the RAM-style mount, even on days when it never moved.

The Short Answer

The JOYROOM mount is lighter, cheaper, easier to install, and holds the phone just as securely for touring speeds and touring roads. The RAM-style mount is heavier, bulkier, and built to a standard that makes sense for dirt bikes and aggressive off-road use, but on a street touring bike that extra bulk is mostly dead weight. If you ride pavement, canyon roads, and the occasional gravel pull-off, the JOYROOM mount is the better buy. If you beat your bike through rough terrain on a regular basis, the RAM-style mount earns its keep.

	JOYROOM Mount	Heavier RAM-Style Mount
Weight and bulk	Lightweight, low-profile, disappears on the bars	Heavy metal arm and clamps that add noticeable bulk
Install time	About 10 minutes with the included hardware	Closer to 30 minutes with multiple adjustment points
Phone security	Auto-lock arms hold the phone firmly at highway speeds	Finger-tightened clamp holds firmly once you get it right
Vibration damping	Built-in cushioning takes the edge off engine vibration	Solid metal transmits more vibration to the phone
One-handed use	Drop the phone in, arms lock automatically	Requires two hands to tighten and release
Rough terrain	Fine for pavement and gravel roads, not for aggressive off-road	Built for harsh abuse, holds through serious pounding
Price	Typically costs less for the whole kit	Usually costs more, and you may need extra pieces
Best for	Touring, commuting, and everyday street riding	Dirt bikes, ADV riders, and hard off-road use

Where the JOYROOM Mount Wins

The biggest win is how easy it is to live with. The JOYROOM mount has an auto-lock design: you drop the phone in with one hand, the arms close around it, and you are done. With riding gloves on, that matters. The RAM-style mount requires you to line up the phone, tighten a clamp, and make sure it is square before you pull away. It is not hard, but it is a two-handed job every single time, and on a cold morning with stiff gloves it gets old fast. The morning that settled it for me was a Thursday in late May. I was running late for a cattle auction up near Buhl, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, and I dropped the phone into the JOYROOM mount without setting the coffee down. The arms closed on their own and I was rolling in under ten seconds. I tried the same move with the RAM-style mount the following week and it took both hands, a full minute, and a fair amount of muttering before the clamp was square.

The second win is vibration. My Road King sends a steady thrum through the bars, and the heavier RAM-style mount passed that thrum straight to the phone. After an hour on chip-seal, the screen was harder to read and I could feel the buzz in my thumb. The JOYROOM mount has enough cushioning in the cradle that the phone stays readable and stable. There is a stretch of Highway 30 east of Twin Falls where the chip-seal is rough enough that my hands go numb by the third pass. I rode it with the RAM-style mount on a Saturday in July and the screen was genuinely hard to read by the time I hit the turnoff at Kimberly. The next Saturday, same road, same time of morning, I was on the JOYROOM mount and the screen stayed steady enough to read the county road names. That is a small thing until you are lost and low on fuel. Then it is the whole ballgame. I have used this mount for navigation on a 600-mile day and never once worried about the phone working loose. That is the whole job, and it does it.

Where the Heavier RAM-Style Mount Wins

I am not going to pretend the RAM-style mount is a bad product, because it is not. It is built like a piece of farm equipment: heavy metal, strong clamps, and a design that has been proven in the dirt for years. If you ride a dual-sport or an ADV bike and you hit rough terrain on a regular basis, that extra weight is insurance. The JOYROOM mount is not designed for aggressive off-road pounding, and I would not trust it to hold a phone through a rocky trail at speed. I gave the RAM-style mount one fair shake at the kind of work it was built for. There is a stretch of gravel along the Snake River south of Hagerman that washes out every spring, and I ran it one afternoon in August, about 14 miles of rocks and washboard at 35 to 45 miles per hour. The phone did not move, not a quarter of an inch. The metal arm took the pounding and the phone stayed exactly where I put it. I would not take the JOYROOM mount on that road at speed, and I will not pretend otherwise.

The RAM-style mount also wins if you need to position the phone in an unusual spot. The ball-and-socket arm lets you place the phone almost anywhere you can reach, which is genuinely useful on a bike with a complicated fairing. A friend of mine, a retired electrician who rides a Gold Wing with a fairing the size of a kitchen counter, runs a RAM-style mount because it is the only thing that gets his phone up where he can see it over the windshield. I have ridden his bike and I get it. The JOYROOM mount clamps to a bar and stays there. It does not reach around obstructions. If your phone needs to live somewhere other than the handlebar, the ball-and-socket arm is the answer, and no amount of clever cradle design changes that. On my Road King, the handlebar position I use is simple, so I never needed that flexibility. But I can see a rider with a tall windshield or a custom bar setup getting real value from it. That is the honest case for the heavier mount, and it is a good one.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the JOYROOM mount if you ride a street bike, a touring bike, or a commuter, and you want a phone mount you can install in ten minutes and then forget about. It is the right choice for daily rides into town, weekend canyon loops, and long multi-state trips. It holds the phone securely, keeps vibration down, and works with one hand even in gloves. It is also the better value for most riders, because you are not paying for off-road capability you will never use. My neighbor Tom, who commutes 40 miles each way on a Kawasaki Versys to the plant in Jerome, bought the JOYROOM mount after riding behind me for an afternoon and watching my phone stay put on a road that rattled his teeth. He has had it on his bike for two seasons and has not mentioned it once since, which for Tom is the highest compliment he can pay a piece of gear. He only talks about things that break.

Buy the heavier RAM-style mount if you regularly ride rough dirt roads, rocky trails, or aggressive ADV terrain. If your phone needs to survive serious pounding, the extra weight and the metal arm are worth it. And if you need to mount the phone in an unusual position that a simple handlebar clamp cannot reach, the RAM-style ball-and-socket system gives you options the JOYROOM mount does not. The rider I would point at the heavier mount is a younger guy I met at a gas station outside Hagerman who races a KTM in the Idaho hare scrambles series. He needs a mount that can survive a crash and a remount in the same afternoon, and the RAM-style mount has done that for him for years. I have no interest in racing, and I suspect most touring riders feel the same. Know which one you are before you spend the money. For everyone else, the JOYROOM mount is the one I would put on my bike and the one I actually leave on mine.