Yahoo Autos Yakima CBX Roof Box Review | A different kind of premium cargo box
It probably won't come as surprising news that more people have been using their cars to go on vacation instead of risking several hours breathing inside airplanes and airports. With longer trips comes more luggage, and if kids are in the equation, then chances are that SUV you bought for its space and versatility suddenly isn't as spacious and versatile as you assumed. Enter the roof carrier. When mounted to a factory or aftermarket roof rack, a carrier effectively adds the volume equivalent of a midsize sedan's trunk to the roof of your car or SUV.
Roof carriers are obviously not new, but long before COVID, the outdoor adventure trend was increasing their popularity to the point that brands were diversifying their offerings to include "premium" choices. Besides possessing more advanced features and pricier materials, their sleeker appearance was a better match for the Volvos, Audis and other luxury models that owners were increasingly mounting them too (especially skiers).
The newest such "premium" roof carrier is the Yakima CBX, but it's doing things a little different. From an aesthetic standpoint, it moves away from the glossy black finish found on Yakima's existing premium choice, the Grand Tour, as well as Thule's popular Motion XT.
It instead has a sort of "micro-golfball" surface that creates a more matte finish and could potentially benefit fuel economy (as "Mythbusters" proved when it covered an entire car in golf ball dimples). This surface, in addition to the more angular design, makes it a better aesthetic match for more rugged vehicles like a Toyota 4Runner, Land Rover Defender or the Subaru Outback and Crosstrek I tested the CBX on.
Some of its features transfer from the Grand Tour, most notably Yakima's unique system for tightening the carrier's grab hooks to the roof rack. Rather than having tightening knobs or mechanisms at all four attachment points (as the Yakima SkyBox and all Thule boxes do), the CBX has one large knob that you move between each attachment point. It plugs into either side of the carrier when not in use. This allows for a flatter load floor and a larger knob that's easier to turn (once you've torqued it three clicks, you know it's secure).
The CBX is available in two sizes: 16 and 18 cubic feet. Both are common sizes for the industry, but as I've discovered in numerous luggage tests of cars, a cargo volume number doesn't always equate perfectly to how much stuff you can fit inside. It's the individual dimensions that can make a difference, and in the case of the CBX 16 I tested, those dimensions differ considerably from others in the industry, including those made by Yakima.
It is 83 inches long, 38 inches wide and 14 inches tall. That's longer and wider than the Yakima Grand Tour 16 and the Thule Motion XT L. It's a few inches shorter in maximum height, hence the common cubic-foot measurement, but it has more of a uniform height versus the others' ramp-like shape. In this way, it's more like Thule's high-end Vector M series –but the Thule's narrower width results in only 13 cubic feet of space. Being narrower could make it easier to mount something else to a full-width rack (like the Yakima Timberline used on the Crosstrek), which applies to all of the above in comparison to the CBX.
Though I didn't test any of those other carriers to compare, I can at least show how much can fit inside the CBX as well as how much space it frees inside a variety of test cars.
